Legislature for eleven years, nor was there any legislation on woman
suffrage until a resolution to submit to the voters an amendment to
the State constitution giving full suffrage was presented to the
session of 1909. It was drafted by Senator George F. Cotterill of
Seattle, a radical suffragist, after many conferences with Mrs. DeVoe,
and was introduced, strangely enough, by Senator George U. Piper of
Seattle, an able politician and a friend of the liquor interests, in
honor of his dead mother, who had been ardently in favor of woman
suffrage. It was presented in the House by Representative T. J. Bell
of Tacoma. The State association rented a house in Olympia for
headquarters and Mrs. DeVoe spent all her time at the Capitol,
assisted by many of its members, who came at different times from over
the State to interview their Representatives and Senators. The work
was conducted so skilfully and quietly that no violent opposition of
material strength was developed. The resolution passed the House
January 29 by 70 ayes, 18 noes; the Senate February 23 by 30 ayes, 9
noes, and was approved by Governor Marion E. Hay on February 25.
The interests of the amendment were materially advanced later by
Senator W. H. Paulhamus, then an anti-suffragist, who "in the interest
of fair play" gave advance information as to the exact wording and
position of the amendment on the ballot, which enabled the women to
hold practice drills and to word their slogan, "Vote for Amendment to
Article VI at the Top of the Ballot." The clause relating to the
qualifications of voters was reproduced verbatim except for two
changes: 1. "All persons" was substituted for "all male persons." 2.
At the end was added "There shall be no denial of the elective
franchise at any election on account of sex."
During the campaign of 1910 the State Equal Franchise Society, an
offshoot from the regular organization, was formed, its members being
largely recruited from the Seattle Suffrage Club, Mrs. Harvey L.
Glenn, president, with which it cooperated. Headquarters were opened
in Seattle July 5, with Mrs. Homer M. Hill, president, in charge and
the organization was active during the last four months of the
campaign.[198] The Political Equality League of Spokane, Mrs. May
Arkwright Hutton, president, worked separately for fourteen months
prior to the election, having been organized in July, 1909. The
college women under the name of the College Suffrage League, with Miss
Parker as president, cooperated with the regular State association.
Following the act of the Legislature twenty months were left to carry
on the campaign destined to enfranchise the 175,000 women of the
State. It was a favorable year for submission, as no other important
political issue was before them and there was a reaction against the
dominance of the political "machines."
The campaign was unique in its methods and was won through the
tireless energy of nearly a hundred active, capable women who threw
themselves into the work. The outstanding feature of the plan adopted
by the State Equal Suffrage Association under the leadership of Mrs.
DeVoe, was the absence of all spectacular methods and the emphasis
placed upon personal intensive work on the part of the wives, mothers
and sisters of the men who were to decide the issue at the polls. Big
demonstrations, parades and large meetings of all kinds were avoided.
Only repeated informal conferences of workers were held in different
sections of the State on the call of the president. The result was
that the real strength was never revealed to the enemy. The opposition
was not antagonized and did not awake until election day, when it was
too late. Although the women held few suffrage meetings of their own,
their speakers and organizers constantly obtained the platform at
those of granges, farmers' unions, labor unions, churches and other
organizations.
Each county was canvassed as seemed most expedient by interviews,
letters or return postals. Every woman personally solicited her
neighbor, her doctor, her grocer, her laundrywagon driver, the postman
and even the man who collected the garbage. It was essentially a
womanly campaign, emphasizing the home interests and engaging the
cooperation of home makers. The association published and sold 3,000
copies of The Washington Women's Cook Book, compiled by the
suffragists and edited by Miss Linda Jennings of LaConner. Many a
worker started out into the field with a package of these cook books
under her arm. In the "suffrage department" of the Tacoma _News_ a
"kitchen contest" was held, in which 250-word essays on household
subjects were printed, $70 in prizes being given by the paper.
Suffrage clubs gave programs on "pure food" and "model menus" were
exhibited and discussed.
Thousands of leaflets on the results of equal suffrage in other States
were distributed and original ones printed. A leaflet by Mrs. Edith
DeLong Jarmuth containing a dozen cogent reasons Why Washington Women
Want the Ballot was especially effective. A monthly paper, _Votes for
Women_, was issued during the last year of the campaign with Mrs. M.
T. B. Hanna publisher and editor, Misses Parker, Mary G. O'Meara, Rose
Glass and others assistant editors. It carried a striking cartoon on
the front page and was full of suffrage news and arguments, even the
advertisements being written in suffrage terms.[199]
State and county fairs and Chautauquas were utilized by securing a
Woman's Day, with Mrs. DeVoe as president of the day. Excellent
programs were offered, prominent speakers secured and prizes given in
contests between various women's societies other than suffrage for
symbolic "floats" and reports of work during the year. Space was given
for a suffrage booth, from which active suffrage propaganda went on
with the sale of Votes for Women pins, pennants and the cook book and
the signing of enrollment cards. The great Alaska-Yukon-Pacific
Exposition of 1909 at Seattle was utilized as a medium for publicity.
A permanent suffrage exhibit was maintained, open air meetings were
held and there was a special Suffrage Day, on which Judge Ben B.
Lindsey of Denver spoke for the amendment. The dirigible balloon, a
feature of the exposition, carried a large silken banner inscribed
Votes for Women. Later a pennant with this motto was carried by a
member of the Mountaineers' Club to the summit of Mt. Rainier, near
Tacoma, said to be the loftiest point in the United States.[200] It
was fastened to the staff of the larger pennant "A. Y. P." of the
exposition and the staff was planted in the highest snows on the top
of Columbia Crest, a huge white dome that rises above the crater.
The State association entertained the national suffrage convention at
Seattle in 1909 and brought its guests from Spokane on a special train
secured by Mrs. DeVoe, as an effective method of advertising the cause
and the convention.
The State Grange and the State Farmers' Union worked hard for the
amendment. State Master C. B. Kegley wrote: "The Grange, numbering
15,000, is strongly in favor of woman suffrage. In fact every
subordinate grange is an equal suffrage organization.... We have
raised a fund with which to push the work.... Yours for victory." The
State Federation of Labor, Charles R. Case, president, at its annual
convention in January, 1910, unanimously adopted with cheers a strong
resolution favoring woman suffrage and urged the local unions to "put
forth their most strenuous efforts to carry the suffrage amendment ...
and make it the prominent feature of their work during the coming
months."
Practically all the newspapers were friendly and featured the news of
the campaign; no large daily paper was opposed. S. A. Perkins,
publisher of eleven newspapers in the State, gave a standing order to
his editors to support the amendment. The best publicity bureau in the
State was employed and for a year its weekly news letter carried a
readable paragraph on the subject to every local paper. Besides this,
"suffrage columns" were printed regularly; there were "suffrage
pages," "suffrage supplements" and even entire "suffrage editions";
many effective "cuts" were used, and all at the expense of the
publishers.
The clergy was a great power. Nearly every minister observed Mrs.
DeVoe's request to preach a special woman suffrage sermon on a Sunday
in February, 1910. All the Protestant church organizations were
favorable. The Methodist Ministerial Association unanimously declared
for the amendment April 11 at the request of Miss Emily Inez Denney.
The African Methodist Conference on August 10 passed a ringing
resolution in favor, after addresses by Mrs. DeVoe and Miss Parker.
The Rev. Harry Ferguson, Baptist, of Hoquiam was very active. In
Seattle no one spoke more frequently or convincingly than the Rev. J.
D. O. Powers of the First Unitarian Church and the Rev. Sidney Strong
of Queen Anne Congregational Church. Other friends were the Rev.
Joseph L. Garvin of the Christian Church, the Rev. F. O. Iverson among
the Norwegians, and the Rev. Ling Hansen of the Swedish Baptist
Church. Mrs. Martha Offerdahl and Mrs. Ida M. Abelset compiled a
valuable campaign leaflet printed in Scandinavian with statements in
favor by sixteen Swedish and Norwegian ministers. The Catholic priests
said nothing against it and left their members free to work for it if
they so desired. Among Catholic workers were the Misses Lucy and Helen
Kangley of Seattle, who formed a Junior Suffrage League. Father F. X.
Prefontaine gave a definite statement in favor of the amendment.
Distinguished persons from outside the State who spoke for it were
Miss Janet Richards of Washington, D. C., the well-known lecturer;
Miss Jeannette Rankin of Montana, afterwards elected to Congress; Mrs.
Clara Bewick Colby of Nebraska and Washington, D. C., and Mrs. Abigail
Scott Duniway of Oregon.
None of the officers and workers connected with the State association
received salaries except the stenographers. For four-and-a-half years
Mrs. DeVoe, with rare consecration, gave her entire time without pay,
save for actual expenses, and even these were at crucial times
contributed by her husband, from whom she received constant
encouragement and support. For the most part of the entire period she
was necessarily absent from home, traveling over the State, keeping in
constant personal touch with the leaders of all groups of women
whether connected with her association or not, advising and helping
them and on special days speaking on their programs. Her notable
characteristics as a leader were that she laid personal
responsibility on each friend and worker; from the first assumed
success as certain and avoided arousing hostility by mixing suffrage
with politics or with other reforms. She asked the voters everywhere
merely for fair play for women and made no predictions as to what the
women would do with the vote when obtained. It was her far-sighted
generalship and prodigious personal work that made success possible.
The Equal Franchise Society of Seattle planned to carry suffrage into
organizations already existing. It gave a series of luncheons at the
New Washington Hotel and made converts among many who could not be met
in any other way and was especially helpful in reaching society and
professional people. Its workers spoke before improvement clubs,
women's clubs, churches, labor unions, etc. A man was employed to
travel and engage men in conversation on woman suffrage on trains,
boats and in hotel lobbies and lumber camps. A good politician looked
after the water front. The Political Equality League of Spokane worked
in the eastern counties and placed in the field the effective worker,
Mrs. Minnie J. Reynolds of Colorado.
The Franchise Department of the W. C. T. U. had done educational work
for years under the leadership of Mrs. Margaret B. Platt, State
president, and Mrs. Margaret C. Munns, State secretary, affectionately
referred to as "the Margarets." Its speakers always made convincing
pleas for suffrage and Mrs. Munns's drills in parliamentary usage were
valuable in training the women for the campaign of 1910. Tribute must
be paid to the fine, self-sacrificing work of this organization. In a
private conference called by Mrs. DeVoe early in the campaign, the W.
C. T. U. represented by these two, an agreement was reached that, in
order not to antagonize the "whisky" vote, the temperance women would
submerge their hard-earned honors and let the work of their unions go
unheralded. They kept the faith.
A suffrage play, A Mock Legislative Session, written by Mrs. S. L. W.
Clark of Seattle, was given in the State House and repeated in other
cities. Several hundred dollars' worth of suffrage literature was
furnished to local unions. They placarded the bill boards throughout
the State, cooperating with Dr. Fannie Leake Cummings, who managed
this enterprise, assisted by the Seattle Suffrage Club, by Mrs.
George A. Smith of the Alki Point Club and others who helped finance
it to a cost of $535. The placard read: "Give the Women a Square Deal.
Vote for the Amendment to Article VI," and proved to be an effective
feature.
Mrs. Eliza Ferry Leary, among the highest taxpayers in the State, was
chosen by the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage as their
representative, but, having satisfied her sense of duty by accepting
the office, she did nothing and thus endeared herself to the active
campaigners for the vote. There were no other "anti" members in the
State. The only meeting held was called by a brief newspaper notice at
the residence of Mrs. Leary one afternoon on the occasion of a visit
by a representative, Mrs. Frances E. Bailey of Oregon, at which six
persons were present--the hostess, the guest of honor, three active
members of the suffrage association and a casual guest. No business
was transacted. With the "antis" should be classed the only minister
who opposed suffrage, the Rev. Mark A. Mathews of the First
Presbyterian Church, the largest in Seattle. He was born in Georgia
but came to Seattle from Tennessee. His violent denunciations lent
spice to the campaign by calling out cartoons and articles combating
his point of view. When suffrage was obtained he harangued the women
on their duty to use the vote, not forgetting to instruct them how to
use it.
Election day was reported to the _Woman's Journal_ of Boston by Miss
Parker as follows: "It was a great victory. The women at the polls
were wonderfully effective. Many young women, middle-aged women and
white-haired grandmothers stood for hours handing out the little
reminders. It rained--the usual gentle but very insistent kind of
rain--and the men were so solicitous! They kept trying to drag us off
to get our feet warm or bringing us chairs or offering to hand out our
ballots while we took a rest, but the women would not leave their
places until relieved by other women, even for lunch, for fear of
losing a vote. The whole thing appealed to the men irresistibly. We
are receiving praise from all quarters for the kind of campaign we
made--no personalities, no boasting of what we would do, no promises,
no meddling with other issues--just 'Votes for Women' straight
through, because it is just and reasonable and everywhere when tried
has been found expedient."
The amendment was adopted November 8, 1910, by the splendid majority
of 22,623, nearly 2 to 1. The vote stood 52,299 ayes to 29,676 noes
out of a total vote of 138,243 cast for congressmen. Every one of the
39 counties and every city was carried. The large cities won in the
following order: Seattle and King County 12,052 to 6,695; Tacoma and
Pierce County, 5,552 to 3,442; Spokane and Spokane County, 5,639 to
4,551. Then came Bellingham and Whatcom County, 3,520 to 1,334;
Everett and Snohomish County, 3,209 to 1,294; Bremerton and Kitsap
County, including the U. S. Navy Yard, 1,094 to 372. Kitsap was the
banner county giving the highest ratio for the amendment. This was
largely due to the remarkable house to house canvass made by Mrs.
Elizabeth A. Baker of Manette.
The cost of the twenty months' campaign is estimated to be $17,000,
which includes the amounts spent by organizations and individuals. The
money was raised in various ways and contributions ran from 25 cents
up, few exceeding $100. Over $500 were subscribed by the labor unions
and about $500 collected at the Granges and Farmers' Unions' suffrage
meetings. Dr. Sarah A. Kendall of Seattle collected the largest amount
of any one person. About $3,000 were contributed from outside the
State, chiefly from New York, Massachusetts and California. The first
and largest gift which heartened the workers was $500 from Mrs. Carrie
Chapman Catt.[201]
After the suffrage amendment was carried there was organized on Jan.
14, 1911, the National Council of Women Voters at the home of Mr. and
Mrs. John Q. Mason in Tacoma. Governor James H. Brady of Idaho issued
a call to the Governors of the four other equal suffrage
States--Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Washington--asking them to send
delegates to this first convention. He presided at the opening session
and spoke at the evening meeting which filled the largest theater.
Mrs. DeVoe was elected president and was re-elected at each succeeding
convention. It was non-partisan and non-sectarian and its objects were
three-fold: 1. To educate women voters in the exercise of their
citizenship; 2. To secure legislation in equal suffrage States in the
interest of men and women, of children and the home; 3. To aid in the
further extension of woman suffrage. As new States gained suffrage
they joined the Council.
Before Mrs. DeVoe went to the National Suffrage Convention at St.
Louis in March, 1919, she was authorized by the Council to take
whatever steps were necessary to merge it in the National League of
Women Voters which was to be organized there. Mrs. Catt requested her
to complete the arrangements when she returned to Washington and act
as chairman until this was accomplished. On Jan. 6, 1920, the Council
became the State League of Women Voters. Mrs. Nelle Mitchell Fick was
elected temporary and later Mrs. W. S. Griswold permanent chairman.
On the afternoon of August 21, old and new suffrage workers joined in
a celebration at Seattle of the final ratification by the Legislature
of Tennessee, which was attended by over two hundred women.
* * * * *
Election returns furnish conclusive proof that the women of Washington
use the ballot. After 1910 the total registration of the State nearly
doubled, although men outnumber women, and the women apparently vote
in the same proportion as men. A tremendous increase of interest among
them in civic, economic and political affairs followed the adoption of
suffrage and the results were evidenced by a much larger number of
laws favorably affecting the status of women and the home passed in
the ten year period following 1910 than during the previous ten year
period. Uniform hostility to liquor, prostitution and vice has been
shown; also to working conditions adversely affecting the health and
morals of women and children.
The vote of the women was the deciding factor in the Seattle recall
election of February 8, 1911, when Mayor Hiram Gill was removed
because of vice conditions permitted to flourish under his
administration. It was acknowledged that, due to a strong combination
of the vice and public utility interests of the city, he would have
been retained but for their opposition. His re-election later by a
small majority is explained by the fact that he begged the citizens to
give him a chance to remove the stigma from his name for the sake of
his wife and family, with whom his relations were blameless.
The State Legislative Federation, representing 140 various kinds of
women's clubs and organizations, having a total membership of over
50,000 women, has maintained headquarters at Olympia during the
sessions of the Legislature in recent years, to the advantage of
legislation. The W. C. T. U. also is an active influence. Miss Lucy R.
Case, as executive secretary of the Joint Legislative Committee of the
State Federation of Labor, Grange, Farmers' Union and Direct
Legislation League, took an important part at the elections of 1914
and 1916 in defeating the reactionary measures affecting popular
government and labor.
Representative Frances C. Axtell of Bellingham introduced and
engineered the minimum wage law and several moral bills in cooperation
with the W. C. T. U. Representative Frances M. Haskell of Tacoma led
in securing the law for equal pay for men and women teachers. Reah M.
Whitehead, Justice of the Peace of King county, prepared and promoted
the law relating to unmarried mothers. The Seattle Branch of the
Council of Women Voters established a "quiz congress," which requested
candidates to attend its meetings and state their position on campaign
issues and answer questions and many candidates importuned it for a
chance to be heard.
RATIFICATION. The Federal Suffrage Amendment was ratified on March 22,
1920, at an extraordinary session called principally for that purpose.
Governor Louis F. Hart had been reluctant to call a special session on
the ground that, due to the unsettled condition of the country at that
time, it would afford opportunity for the introduction of a flood of
radical legislation which would keep the Legislature in prolonged
session at great expense to the State. He finally yielded to the
persuasion of a large number of the leading women of the State and to
political pressure from his party in high places and called the
session, which lasted but three days and dealt only with the subjects
mentioned in the call.
The occasion was most impressive. The Capitol was thronged with women
who had traveled from every corner of the State to participate in the
occasion. Every available seat in the balconies of both Houses was
filled and the aisles and corridors were crowded. The hope and
expectation that at any moment the wires might flash the news that
Delaware had ratified and Washington would thus be the thirty-sixth
and final State to enfranchise the women of the whole nation, lent an
added thrill to the proceedings. At noon both Houses met in joint
session to listen to the Governor's message. Dealing with the
ratification he reminded the members that in 1910 the electors had
adopted woman suffrage by an overwhelming vote and said, "The State
has done well under the management of both men and women." A marked
feature of their proceedings was the gracious courtesy accorded to the
old suffrage leaders and workers, who were present in large numbers.
In the House the honor of introducing the resolution was accorded to
Mrs. Haskell, Representative from Pierce county, who made a strong
speech favoring its adoption. Not one vote was cast against it. By
special resolution Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe, referred to as "the mother
of suffrage" in the State, was invited to a seat on the right of
Speaker Adams, with Governor Hart on the left. A special committee was
appointed to escort her and she took her seat amid loud cheers. She
was asked to address the House and said in part:
I am proud of the Legislature of Washington because of this
patriotic act and I thank you in the name of our forefathers, who
first proclaimed that "taxation without representation is
tyranny" and that government without consent is unjust.... I
thank you in the name of the early suffrage workers who have
passed on to their beautiful reward. I thank you in the name of
the women of the United States of today who will, I trust, use
their new political freedom wisely and well. I thank you in the
name of the children who will come after us; they will have a
better, broader and nobler heritage than was ours. And I
personally thank you from the depths of my heart. God bless you
every one!
Twelve minutes after the resolution reached the Senate it had been
passed by another unanimous vote. During the proceedings Mrs. Homer M.
Hill sat beside President Carlyon and was invited to address the
members. Described as "a tiny figure whose white hair was scarcely on
a level with the top of the Speaker's desk," she expressed the
emotions of the older suffragists as they witnessed the adoption of
the resolution. She thanked them in the name also of the W. C. T. U.,
and thanked the leaders in the cause of labor and of many other
organizations, as well as the leaders of both parties. "Washington has
led the victorious crusade for the Pacific Coast States," she said.
"May we always appreciate what it means to live in a State whose men
themselves gave this right to women!"
* * * * *
[LAWS. A complete digest of the laws relating especially to the
interests of women and children and to moral questions enacted during
the first decade of the present century was prepared for this chapter
by Judge Reah M. Whitehead of Seattle. This was supplemented by an
abstract of fifty-eight statutes of a similar nature enacted during
the last decade, prepared by attorneys Adella M. Parker of Seattle and
Bernice A. Sapp of Olympia. They largely cover the field of modern
liberal legislation but can not be given because of the decision to
omit the laws in all the State chapters for lack of space. The results
on questions related to prohibition submitted to the electors, with
women voting, are significant: Statute for State-wide prohibition
submitted in 1914: ayes, 189,840; noes, 171,208; statute submitted in
1916 permitting hotels to sell liquor: ayes, 48,354; noes, 262,390;
statute authorizing manufacture, sale and export of 4 per cent. beer:
ayes, 98,843; noes, 245,399.]
FOOTNOTES:
[196] The History is indebted for this chapter to Dr. Cora Smith King,
assisted by Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe, Dr. Sarah A. Kendall, Mrs. Homer M.
Hill, and others. Valuable assistance in editing the manuscript was
rendered by Judson King, writer and lecturer, Secretary of the
National Popular Government League, Washington, D. C.
[197] Following is a complete list of the officers of the State
Association who served during the campaign of 1910: President, Mrs.
Emma Smith DeVoe, Melmont; vice-presidents: Mrs. Bessie I. Savage,
Seattle; Mrs. Jennie Jewett, White Salmon; Mrs. John Q. Mason, Tacoma;
Mrs. Alice M. Grover, Spokane; Mrs. Anna E. Goodwin, Columbia (now
Mrs. Yungbluth); treasurer, Dr. Cora Smith Eaton, Seattle (now Dr.
King); corresponding secretary, Mrs. Ellen S. Leckenby, Seattle;
headquarters secretary, Miss Mabel Fontron, Seattle (now Mrs. Paul
Rewman); auditors, Miss Bernice A. Sapp, Olympia, Dr. Anna W. Scott,
West Seattle, Dr. N. Jolidon Croake, Tacoma, Mrs. H. J. McGregor,
Tacoma; trustees, Dr. Sarah A. Kendall, Seattle, Mrs. Georgia B.
Smith, Anacortes, Mrs. B. B. Lord, Olympia; chairmen of standing
committees: Church Work, Mrs. C. M. Miller, Seattle; Letter Writers,
Mrs. Lucie F. Isaacs, Walla Walla; Literature, Mrs. E. M. Wardall,
West Seattle; Labor Unions, Dr. Luema G. Johnson, Tacoma; Publication,
Miss Linda Jennings, LaConner; Finance, Mrs. H. D. Wright, Seattle;
Headquarters, Miss Mary G. O'Meara, Seattle (now Mrs. Otway Pardee);
Advisory, Mrs. Amos Brown, West Seattle; Library, Mrs. Dora W.
Cryderman, Bellingham; Precincts, Mrs. Silvia A. Hunsicker, Seattle;
Petitions, Mrs. Roy Welch, Kelso; Educational, Mrs. Margaret Heyes
Hall, Vancouver; Member of National Executive Committee, Miss Adella
M. Parker, Seattle; Historian, Miss Ida Agnes Baker, Bellingham.
[198] Other officers of the Franchise Society were: Assistants, Mrs.
Edward P. Fick and Mrs. D. L. Carmichael; corresponding secretary,
Mrs. F. S. Bash; recording secretary, Mrs. W. T. Perkins; treasurer,
Mrs. E. M. Rininger; financial secretary, Mrs. Phebe A. Ryan. Others
who worked without pay were: Miss Martha Gruening of New York and Miss
Jeannette Rankin of Montana. Mrs. George A. Smith, president of the
Alki Point Suffrage Club of Seattle, worked independently but
cooperated with the society in many ways. The society employed Mrs.
Rose Aschermann, Mrs. Ethel Stalford, Charles E. Cline, Vaughn Ellis
and John Gray of Washington.
[199] During the year following the winning of the franchise Mrs.
Hanna published her paper under the name of _The New Citizen_. Miss
Parker published twelve numbers of a monthly paper called The _Western
Woman Voter_, from the files of which much valuable data has been
gleaned for this chapter.
[200] The member was Dr. Cora Smith King.--Ed.
[201] Among eastern contributors were Henry B. and Alice Stone
Blackwell, Mass., $250; Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Lesser, California, $100;
Mrs. H. E. Flansburg, New York, $100; Miss Janet Richards, Washington,
D. C., $100; the Rev. Olympia Brown, Wisconsin, $25. The National
American Woman Suffrage Association contributed direct to Mrs. DeVoe
for traveling expenses to June, 1909, inclusive, $900. At this time,
seventeen months before the amendment was submitted, through
differences arising between the national and State organizations, all
national support was withdrawn. Among those contributing from the East
to Mrs. Hill's society through Miss Margaret W. Bayne of Kirkland, who
went there to raise money, her own trip being financed by Mrs. E. M.
Rininger of Seattle, were: Mrs. Henry Villard, New York, $200; Mrs.
Susan Look Avery, Kentucky, $250; Mrs. Elizabeth Smith Miller and Miss
Anne Fitzhugh Miller, New York, $300; Mrs. Kemeys, New York, $100;
Mrs. Alfred Lewis, New York, $50; Mrs. Raymond Robins, Illinois, $50;
Misses Isabel and Emily Howland, New York, $20; Mrs. Sarah L. Willis,
New York, $20; Mrs. Isabella B. Hooker, Conn., $25; Equal Suffrage
Association, Mass., $100; Mrs. H. S. Luscomb, Mass., $100; "A Friend,"
$200.
The net contribution of the National to the State Association during
the campaign, deducting the expense of entertaining the 1909 national
convention, was about $30.
CHAPTER XLVII.
WEST VIRGINIA.[202]
In 1895 when the West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association was
organized through the effort of the National American Association,
with Mrs. Jessie G. Manley president, nine clubs were formed in the
northern part of the State but only those in Fairmont and Wheeling
remained in existence after 1900. The first president of the Fairmont
Club was the mother of Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Margaret J. Grove, who with
her sisters, Mrs. Corilla E. Shearer and Miss Ellen D. Harn, all still
living, aged 89, 90 and 92, led in the early suffrage work in the
State, and Mrs. Mary Reed of Fairmont also was a pioneer. Little
public work was done until an active suffrage movement was inaugurated
in Virginia and in 1912 Miss Mary Johnston came to Charleston and
organized a club. One was formed in Morgantown and these four
constituted the State association until the amendment campaign of
1916.
The following have served as State presidents: Mrs. Beulah Boyd
Ritchie, 1900-1903; Mrs. M. Anna Hall, 1904; Mrs. Anne M. Southern,
1905; Dr. Harriet B. Jones, 1906; Mrs. May Hornbrook, 1907-1910; Mrs.
Allie Haymond, 1911-1912; Miss Margaret McKinney, 1913; Mrs. J. Gale
Ebert, 1914-1915; Mrs. Lenna Lowe Yost, 1916; Mrs. John L. Ruhl,
1917-1920.[203] Annual meetings were held as follows: 1900, December
1, Fairmont; 1904, August 11, Moundsville; 1905, October 27, Fairmont;
1906, October 26, Wheeling; 1907, November 8, Wheeling; 1908, October
29, Fairmont; 1909, October 30, Wheeling; 1911, October 27, Fairmont;
1913, October 24, Wheeling. During these years practically all that
was done was to have speakers of note from time to time and a
resolution for woman suffrage introduced in the Legislature whenever
possible.
In 1904 a new city charter was prepared for Wheeling and an effort was
made to have it provide for a municipal vote for women. Dr. Anna
Howard Shaw, national president, gave a week to speaking in the city
and Miss Kate Gordon, national corresponding secretary, spent three
weeks there, addressing many organizations. The question was submitted
to the voters with the charter but on a separate ballot. Both were
lost, the suffrage amendment by 1,600. More votes were cast on it than
on the charter itself.
In 1910 an amendment to the State constitution permitting women to be
appointed notaries public, clerks of county courts, probation officers
and members of boards of State institutions went to the voters. The
State Bar Association also had an amendment and kindly printed the
literature for the former and sent it out with theirs. It received the
larger number of votes--44,168 ayes, 45,044 noes--and was lost by only
876.
With the submission to the voters by the Legislature of 1915 of an
amendment to the constitution conferring full suffrage activity was
stimulated. Miss Ida Craft of New York, in cooperation with the women
of Charleston, held a suffrage school there January 28-February 3 and
at that time Mrs. J. E. Cannady, vice-president of its Equal Suffrage
League, obtained permission from Governor Henry D. Hatfield to put the
"suffrage map" in the lobby of the Capitol. Mrs. Mary E. Craigie,
chairman of church work for the National Association, addressed the
Woman's Club of Parkersburg April 5 and afterwards spoke in many
cities and towns through arrangement by Dr. Jones, as did Mrs. Harriet
Taylor Upton of Warren and Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser of Girard, Ohio.
In May Mrs. Ebert of Parkersburg, president of the State association,
addressed a letter to the clergymen urging them to use as a text on
Mothers' Day, May 9, The Need of Mothers' Influence in the State, and
Dr. Jones sent a questionnaire to 150 editors, receiving answers
favoring suffrage from 53. Mrs. Desha Breckinridge, president of the
Kentucky Equal Suffrage Association, spent a week in the State
speaking and Miss Craft, who kept her promise to return in May,
organized many new suffrage groups, as did Mrs. Wesley Martin Stoner
of Washington, who campaigned principally in the mining towns. In the
summer a Men's Advisory Committee with Judge J. C. McWhorter as
chairman was appointed by the State board; the State Educational
Association in convention endorsed woman suffrage; and after an
address by Mrs. Deborah Knox Livingston of Maine, who was on a tour of
the State, the Methodist Episcopal Conference passed a favorable
resolution. Later on Governor's Day at Middlebourne with thousands of
people present Mrs. Ebert spoke with Governor Hatfield, both making
appeals for votes for women. At the annual Fall Festival at Huntington
a suffrage float designed by Mrs. E. C. Venable was in the parade. At
Parkersburg suffragists addressed an immense crowd at Barnum and
Bailey's circus.
In October the number of small subscribers was increased by "dollar
day," when many persons sacrificed or earned a dollar and gave it to
the association. Window displays were arranged in many cities with
especially elaborate ones in Wheeling, Parkersburg and Huntington. At
the State convention held in Huntington Nov. 16, 1915, a "budget" of
$25,000 was authorized, $5,000 of which was quickly subscribed by the
delegates, Dr. Irene Bullard of Charleston and Mrs. Helen Brandeburg
of Huntington pledging $1,000 each for their branches. Mrs. Frank
Roessing of Pittsburgh, national first vice-president, who was one of
the speakers, pledged $400 for the Pennsylvania association. For the
first time there was an automobile parade.
In January, 1916, Mrs. Ebert resigned and Mrs. Yost, first
vice-president, succeeded her, soon afterwards opening headquarters in
her own home in Morgantown. These demanded practically every hour of
her time from 6 in the morning until 11 at night throughout the ten
months' campaign. Because of the illness of Dr. Bullard, chairman of
literature, that department was moved to Morgantown and placed in
charge of Mrs. P. C. McBee, with Lillie Hagans assisting. About $2,000
were invested in literature. Over 200,000 congressional speeches were
sent to the voters. In the last days of the campaign personal appeals
were mailed to those in half of the 55 counties and 10,000 posters
were sent out by this bureau to be used on election day. Through a
publicity department opened February 25, with Frank C. Dudley at the
head, the 200 newspapers of the State were served with news bulletins.
He also edited a special edition of the Wheeling _Intelligencer_ in
June. In September the National Association sent Mrs. Rose L. Geyer of
Iowa, who had conducted the publicity in its campaign this year.
During the last month bulletins were supplied to all daily papers; 110
newspapers were provided with free plate service; many anti-suffrage
articles were answered; much copy was given to local newspapers about
public meetings held by the speakers and organizers; newspaper
advertisements were furnished to all rural papers the week before
election; every city organization carried a conspicuous advertisement
in the daily papers; hundreds of two-page supplements were furnished
the last week. The majority of the newspapers were editorially in
favor of the amendment.
In January the State association put two organizers in the field, Miss
Marie Ames and Miss Eudora Ramsey, the salary of the latter paid by
the Allegheny county suffrage society of Pennsylvania, and the
National Association placed two, Miss Lavinia Engle and Miss Katherine
B. Mills. An appeal in March for more help brought Miss Hannah J.
Patterson, its corresponding secretary and chairman of organization.
In making her report to the National Board on April 5 she recommended
that headquarters be established in the business district of
Morgantown; additional office assistance be sent to relieve the
president; ten organizers be secured and so distributed that there
would be one in every group of five or six counties; and a
representative of the National Association visit the State each month
in order to keep in close touch with the work. As the "budget" called
for $16,000 the National Board voted to give $5,000 providing the
State association would raise $11,000. The headquarters were moved at
once and furnished by friends. Later when they became too small the
Board of Trade rooms were placed at the disposal of the suffragists
through the kindness of E. M. Grant. From time to time organizers were
sent to the State until there were twenty-eight and 400 organizations
were formed. To relieve the president, Miss Alice Curtis of Iowa was
sent as executive secretary, remaining until the end of the campaign.
Miss Patterson made three trips to the State. Mrs. Catt made one with
her, meeting with the State board August 3, 4, in Clarksburg, to hold
a workers' conference, which considered publicity, money raising,
organization and election day methods. A "budget" of $14,948 to cover
the last four-and-a-quarter months of the campaign was adopted.
A "flying squadron" of prominent West Virginia men and women speakers
was sent in groups to thirty points. They were Dr. Joseph A. Bennett
of Sistersville; C. Burgess Taylor of Wheeling; the Hon. Charles E.
Carrigan of Moundsville; Judge McWhorter and J. M. N. Downes of
Buckhannon; Howard L. Swisher of Morgantown; the Hon. Tracy L.
Jeffords and the Hon. B. Randolph Bias of Williamson; Mrs. Frank N.
Mann of Huntington; Mrs. Flora Williams of Wheeling, soloist. Mrs.
Pattie Ruffner Jacobs of Alabama and Mrs. Nellie McClung of Canada
joined the squadron and spoke at several points. Among others of
influence who filled many speaking engagements and met their own
expenses were Mrs. Henry M. Russell and Rabbi H. Silver of Wheeling;
Milliard F. Snider and the Hon. Harvey W. Harmar of Clarksburg; Judge
Frank Cox and ex-Governor Glasscock of Morgantown. Judge McWhorter
made about 25 addresses. Uncounted numbers of women throughout the
State freely gave their time and work. About 1,500 meetings were
arranged by the headquarters staff exclusive of those in charge of
local women. Mrs. Catt spoke to mass meetings at Clarksburg,
Morgantown and Fairmont and at the hearing before the Democratic State
convention; Mrs. Antoinette Funk of Chicago before the Republican
State convention. Favorable suffrage planks were placed in the
platforms of both parties and the candidates for Governor declared
publicly for the amendment.
Dr. Shaw made thirteen addresses in cities of over 5,000 inhabitants,
contributing her services and expenses with the condition that the
collections at her meetings go into the State treasury. Miss Katharine
Devereux Blake, principal of a New York City school, addressed
Teachers' Institutes three weeks without charge, the State paying her
expenses. Mrs. Jacobs gave a two weeks' speaking tour and paid her
own expenses. Other speakers from outside the State were Mrs. Forbes
Robertson Hale, Mrs. T. T. Cotnam of Arkansas; Dr. Effie McCollum
Jones of Iowa; Mrs. Anna Ross Weeks and Miss Emma L. McAlarney of New
York; Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham of Texas and Mrs. McClung. Dr.
Harriet B. Jones spoke throughout the campaign.
The National Association paid the salary or expenses or both of the
outside speakers and twenty of the organizers.[204] It paid also for
200,000 Congressional speeches; circularized and sent the _Woman's
Journal_ for four months to 1,600 clergymen; furnished suffrage
posters and a Ford car and paid for election advertising in all the
rural newspapers. It sent Mr. Heaslip, its own chairman of publicity,
for the last days of the campaign. Financial assistance came also from
the Massachusetts association. The State was left with a deficit of
$3,740. During the campaign the National Association had sent in cash
$5,257. Afterwards, to reduce the deficit, it sent money for the
salary of one organizer and expenses of another beside $1,000 in cash.
Later the Leslie Suffrage Commission paid a bill of $540 to the
Publishing Company for literature ordered from June to November by the
State and $2,000 in cash which cleared up the deficit. According to
the State report the campaign cost the State organization about
$9,000. It cost the National Association and Leslie Commission over
$17,000.
The vote on November 7 was 63,540 in favor; 161,607 against; opposing
majority of 98,000, the largest ever given against woman suffrage.
Only two out of the fifty-five counties carried, Brooke and Hancock,
industrial districts situated in the extreme northern part of the
State. Brooke county had the lowest per cent. of illiteracy--two per
cent. while it was eight and three-tenths per cent. in the State at
large. The "wet" vote of Wheeling, Huntington and Charleston proved a
decisive factor in defeating the amendment. Another element working
toward the suffrage defeat was the use made by the opposition of the
negro question. They told the negroes that the white women would take
the vote away from them and also establish a "Jim-Crow" system and
they told the white women that the negro women outnumbered them and
would get the balance of power. There is a large colored vote in the
State. A really big campaign was conducted and while the size of the
opposition vote was appalling, one must consider that it was the first
attempt. The election methods in some places were reprehensible.
The State convention was held at Fairmont, Nov. 20, 1917, and there
was a determination to hold together for future effort. In 1918 there
was no convention, the women being absorbed in war work. By 1919
another great struggle was ahead, as it was evident that the Federal
Suffrage Amendment would soon be sent to the Legislatures by Congress.
Following the plan of the National Association Mrs. Nettie Rogers
Shuler, national corresponding secretary and chairman of organization,
went to Charleston on Jan. 7, 1919, to meet the State board to discuss
plans for ratification. The officers present were Mrs. Ruhl,
president; Mrs. Yost, member of the National Executive Committee, and
Mrs. Edward S. Romine of Wheeling, chairman of the Congressional
Committee. They stated that there was little organization, no funds
and that help must be given by the National Association. Mrs. Shuler
remained two weeks and with these three officers and Miss Edna Annette
Beveridge interviewed and polled members of the Legislature. Acting
for the association Mrs. Shuler divided the State and assigned the
districts to three national organizers, Miss Beveridge, who remained
three-and-a-half months; Mrs. Augusta Hughston and Miss Mary Elizabeth
Pidgeon, six weeks each, the National Association paying salary and
expenses and furnishing literature and printed petitions to members of
the Legislature. Suffrage societies were revived, public officials,
editors and ministers interviewed and much work was done.
On April 2, 3, a large and enthusiastic State convention was held in
Charleston at the Kanawha Hotel. Coming directly from the convention
of the National Association at St. Louis, Mrs. Catt, the president,
who had asked for a "working" conference with the State board, spoke
on the Federal Amendment at the afternoon session and to a mass
meeting in the Young Men's Christian Association Hall in the evening.
She was accompanied by Mrs. Shuler, who spoke at a dinner in the
Ruffner Hotel presided over by Mrs. Woodson T. Wills, vice-president
of the West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs, and addressed by
prominent men and women of the State and by Miss Marjorie Shuler,
national director of field publicity, who had conducted a conference
at the afternoon session.
RATIFICATION. The Federal Amendment was submitted by Congress June 4,
and the pressing work for the State association was to secure its
ratification by the Legislature. Mrs. Ellis A. Yost was made chairman
of the Ratification Committee, whose other members were Mrs. Ruhl,
Mrs. Ebert, Mrs. H. D. Rummel, Miss Mary Wilson, Miss Margaret
McKinney and Mrs. Romine. An Advisory Board was formed of 150 of as
influential men as there were in the State, judges, lawyers, bankers,
officials, presidents and professors of colleges, editors, clergymen,
presidents of the State Federation of Labor and other organizations;
and the most prominent women in educational, civic and club work. This
list was printed on the campaign stationery. The last of December
Governor John J. Cornwell received a letter from Mrs. Catt urging him
to call a special session in January. He was known to favor
ratification and he had been kept informed by the members of the
suffrage association and the W. C. T. U., who had polled the
legislators and found a majority in favor.
The Democratic Governor called the Republican Legislature in special
session for Friday, February 27, 1920. President Wilson telegraphed
members of the Senate: "May I not urge upon you the importance to the
whole country of the prompt ratification of the suffrage amendment and
express the hope that you will find it possible to lend your aid to
this end?" Both the Democratic and Republican National Committees
joined in urging ratification, as did the entire State delegation in
Congress, who had voted for submitting the amendment. The resolution
was introduced and by the rules went over for one day. All looked
promising when suddenly its advocates found themselves in a torrent of
opposition, due to the injection of the fight that was being made for
the governorship and interference from outside the State. The Maryland
Legislature sent a committee to urge its rejection and anti-suffrage
leaders from all over the country made their appearance. The vote was
taken on Wednesday and stood 47 ayes, 40 noes in the House. The vote
was 14 to 14 in the Senate. A motion to reconsider was lost by the
same vote. In the meantime Senator Jesse A. Bloch, who was in
California, telegraphed: "Just received notice of special session. Am
in favor of ratification. Please arrange a pair for me." This was
refused by the opponents with jeers. Secretary of State Houston G.
Young immediately got into communication with him on the long distance
telephone and he agreed to make a race across the continent for
Charleston.
Then came the struggle to hold the lines intact until his arrival. The
situation was most critical because a motion in the Lower House to
reconsider had been laid on the table and could be called up at any
time. Many members were anxious to go home and there was difficulty in
keeping enough present at roll call to defeat hostile attacks. The tie
in the Senate held fast, however, as Senator Bloch sped across the
country. The day he reached Chicago the opposition resorted to its
most desperate expedient by producing a former Senator, A. R.
Montgomery, who about eight months before had resigned his seat,
saying that he was leaving the State, and later had moved to Illinois.
There was documentary evidence that he had given up his residence. He
demanded of Governor Cornwell to return his letter of resignation. The
Governor refused and he then appeared in the Senate that afternoon and
offered to vote. President Sinsel promptly ruled that he was not a
member. On an appeal from this ruling he was sustained by a tie vote
and the case was referred to the Committee on Privileges and
Elections.
When Senator Bloch reached Chicago he found that not only a special
train but also an airship were awaiting him.[205] He chose the train
and made the trip with a speed that was said to have broken all
records. He arrived on March 10 and took his seat in the Senate amid
cheers from crowded galleries. The corridors were thronged and even
the floor of the Senate was crowded with guests, many of them women.
Then followed a most dramatic debate of several hours, as each side
tried to get the advantage. Montgomery was not permitted to take his
seat and at 6 o'clock in the afternoon the vote was taken--16 ayes, 13
noes, one opponent changing his vote when he saw the resolution would
pass.
After the Senate vote a second was secured in the House by the
opponents of the motion to reconsider, which resulted in a larger
favorable majority than the first.
Harvey W. Harmer of Clarksburg, who had charge of the resolution in
the Senate and W. S. John of Morgantown in the House, deserve the
warmest gratitude of the women. It was not an ordinary vote that the
members gave but one which stood the test for days and against the
most determined opposition. Too much praise can not be given to
Governor Cornwell for calling the special session and for unyieldingly
standing by the cause. The Democratic State chairman, C. L. Shaver,
although unable to be present, gave splendid help. The men outside the
Legislature who gave their time unstintedly, and were present,
cooperating with the Ratification Committee of the Equal Suffrage
Association, were State chairman of the Republican Committee, W. E.
Baker; Secretary of State Young, former Minister to Venezuela; Elliott
Northcott, mayor of Charleston; ex-Governor A. B. White; U. S. Senator
Howard Sutherland; Major John Bond; National Republican Committeeman
Virgil L. Highland; Congressman M. M. Neely; Mayor Hall and Jesse B.
Sullivan, a prominent newspaper correspondent. The best legal and
editorial assistance was given generously by the Hon. Fred O. Blue,
the Hon. Clyde B. Johnson and former U. S. Senator W. E. Chilton. Boyd
Jarrell, editor of the Huntington _Herald Dispatch_, was constantly on
the firing line.
The chairman of the Ratification Committee had a herculean task during
these strenuous days and after they were over a letter of appreciation
of her services was sent to Mrs. Catt, the national president, which
closed: "The opposing elements combined tended to create for Mrs.
Yost what at first seemed to be a situation impossible of solution,
but with rare tact and a soundness of judgment that we have seldom
seen equalled her leadership has brought about a complete victory. As
supporters of suffrage we are sending you this without Mrs. Yost's
knowledge and simply that at least some part of the credit due her may
be given." This was signed by Chas. A. Sinsel, president State Senate;
Grant P. Hall, Mayor of Charleston; W. E. Chilton, former U. S.
Senator; Houston C. Young, Secretary of State; Albert B. White, former
Governor; W. E. Baker, chairman Republican State Committee; J. S.
Darst, Auditor of State.
The president of the State Association, Mrs. Ruhl, was present
throughout the sessions, as were members of the State committee, Mrs.
Ebert, Mrs. Rummel, Miss McKinney, Mrs. Romine, Mrs. Thomas Peadro,
Mrs. Mann, Mrs. Allie B. Haymond, Mrs. O. S. McKinney, Mrs. Kemble
White, Mrs. William G. Brown and Mrs. Olandus West. The cost of
organizers and literature in the ratification campaign to the National
Association was about $2,300, in addition to the State association's
expenses.
On Sept. 30, 1920, the State association became the League of Women
Voters and Mrs. John L. Ruhl was elected chairman.
LEGISLATIVE ACTION. 1901. A bill for Presidential suffrage, drawn by
George E. Boyd, Sr., was introduced in the House by Henry C. Hervey
and seconded by S. G. Smith of Wheeling. It was rejected by a vote of
31 to 25, Speaker Wilson voting against it. The bill was introduced in
the Senate by Nelson Whittaker of Wheeling. U. S. Senator Stephen B.
Elkins commanded it to be tabled and this was done.
1903. A bill for Presidential suffrage was defeated.
1905. A resolution introduced in the Senate by Samuel Montgomery to
submit a suffrage amendment to the State Constitution received two
votes.
1907. Dr. A. J. Mitchell introduced a resolution for an amendment in
the house; Z. J. Forman in the Senate. Senator Robert Hazlett arranged
a legislative hearing at which every seat was occupied, with people
sitting on the steps and sides of the platform and the large space in
the back part of the room filled with men standing. Dr. Harriet B.
Jones made a short address and was followed by Dr. Anna Howard Shaw,
president of the National Suffrage Association, in an eloquent plea.
The vote in the Senate was 10 ayes, 13 noes; in the House, 26 ayes, 48
noes.
1913. A resolution to submit a State amendment was introduced in the
House January 28 by M. K. Duty and later at his request Delegate Ellis
A. Yost took charge of it. Through the generosity of the Hon. William
Seymour Edwards, Miss Mary Johnston was brought to Charleston by its
suffrage association and addressed the Legislature, which assembled in
the House Chamber. She also spoke to a large audience in the Burlew
Theater. The resolution came up on February 15; the hall was crowded
with interested spectators and stirring speeches were made by the
members. On the final roll call, to the dismay of its supporters, it
did not poll the necessary two-thirds. On motion of Delegate Yost the
announcement of the vote was postponed till Monday, the 17th, and
every possible effort was made to bring in absent members but as the
final vote was being taken it was seen that it lacked one. At the
request of Governor Hatfield Delegate Hartley changed his vote and it
was carried by the needed 58, Speaker Taylor George voting for it. The
resolution was introduced in the Senate by N. G. Keim of Elkins and
supported by able speakers but it was lost on February 20 by 14 noes,
16 ayes, 20 being necessary.
1915. On January 26 the resolution for a State amendment was submitted
by 26 ayes, 3 noes in the Senate and 76 ayes, 8 noes in the House, to
be voted on in November, 1916.
FOOTNOTES:
[202] The History is indebted for this chapter to Dr. Harriet B.
Jones, officially identified with the movement for woman suffrage in
the State since its beginning about thirty years ago, and to Lenna
Lowe (Mrs. Ellis A.) Yost, chairman of the Ratification Committee;
also to the records of the National American Woman Suffrage
Association.
[203] Women who have been most prominent in the work not already
mentioned are: Miss Jennie Wilson, Mrs. Annie C. Boyd, Mrs. Henry O.
Ott, Miss Elizabeth Cummins, Miss Anne Cummins, Miss Florence Hoge,
Mrs. Virginia Hoge Kendall and Mrs. Edward W. Hazlett of Wheeling;
Mrs. I. N. Smith, Mrs. Harold Ritz and Mrs. A. M. Finney of
Charleston; Miss Harriet Schroeder of Grafton.
[204] The organizers, who often were speakers also, not elsewhere
mentioned, were Misses Adella Potter, Eleanor Furman, Alice Riggs
Hunt, Lola Walker, Josephine Casey, Lola Trax, Grace Cole, Eleanor
Raoul, Mrs. C. E. Martin, Mrs. W. J. Cambron, Mrs. Elizabeth Sullivan,
Dr. Harriet B. Dilla and others. Miss Ramsey and Miss Raoul gave the
use of their cars. Miss Gertrude Watkins and Miss Gertrude Miller of
Arkansas donated their services from July 17, the State paying their
expenses. The Philadelphia County Society sent Miss Mabel Dorr for
two-and-a-half months as its contribution. Miss Alma B. Sasse of
Missouri gave her services for over two months, the State paying her
expenses.
[205] It was kept a secret at the time who was responsible for this
arrangement but later it was found to be Captain Victor Heinze of
Cincinnati, who had charge of the National Republican headquarters in
Chicago.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
WISCONSIN.[206]
Woman suffrage history in Wisconsin from 1900 to 1920 naturally
divides itself into three sections, the first including the ten years
preceding the submission of the referendum measure by the Legislature
in 1911; the second the two years of the referendum campaign and the
third the succeeding seven years to 1920.
The work of the State Woman Suffrage Association, which was organized
in 1869, continued in the 20th century, as in the 19th, through
organization, public meetings, annual conventions, the publication of
the _Wisconsin Citizen_. The conventions of the first decade, which
always took place in the autumn, were held as follows: 1901, Brodhead;
1902, Madison; 1903, Platteville; 1904, Janesville; 1905, Milwaukee;
1906, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, Madison; 1911, Racine. The Rev. Olympia
Brown, who had been elected president in 1883, continued to serve in
that capacity with undiminished vigor and ability, having been elected
every year, until the end of 1912. Besides her other services she gave
hundreds of addresses on woman suffrage, speaking in nearly every city
in the State.[207]
The publication of the _Wisconsin Citizen_, established in 1887, was
continued in spite of limited finances. Its first editor was Martha
Parker Dingee from Boston, a niece of Theodore Parker, who gave her
services for seven years. After that the editors were Mrs. Helen H.
Charlton, Miss Lena V. Newman and Mrs. Youmans. After 1914 it was
published at Waukesha, before that at Brodhead, and was discontinued
in 1917. Notable speakers from outside the State at conventions of the
first decade were Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, the Rev. Florence
Buck, the Rev. Marion Murdock, Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby, Mrs. Belva A.
Lockwood, Miss Jane Addams and Dr. Julia Holmes Smith.
The association for some time supported a State organizer, the Rev.
Alice Ball Loomis, and later Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe for two seasons. In
1902 headquarters were established at Madison, the capital, in a
little room in the State House, for the distribution of literature,
and here was kept a register of men and women who believed in woman
suffrage. In 1907 the Rev. Mrs. Brown prepared a bulletin for the
legislators, giving the statistics of woman suffrage in the United
States and other countries.
In 1908 Mrs. Maud Wood Park came to Wisconsin and spoke to women
students of five colleges, arrangements having been previously made by
Mrs. Brown, who took part in some of the meetings, and College Women's
Suffrage Leagues were organized. Mrs. Brown prepared a pamphlet, Why
the Church Should Demand the Ballot for Women, which was widely
distributed. Near the end of 1909 the State association was asked to
circulate the national petition to Congress for the Federal Suffrage
Amendment. Blanks were sent all over the State to schools, libraries
and other public institutions and to individuals. The members took up
the matter with enthusiasm and worked faithfully. The association did
all that could be done in the six weeks allowed and about 18,000 names
were signed, 5,000 of them in Racine. Mrs. Wentworth, over eighty
years of age, canvassed portions of the city and obtained 1,000 names.
During this whole decade resolutions and petitions were sent to
Congress and at every session of the Legislature suffrage measures
were introduced. Mrs. Jessie M. Luther was chairman of the Legislative
Committee during this period, an unrecognized and unpaid lobbyist, but
by her skilful work, in which at times she was assisted by Mrs. Nellie
Donaldson and others, she kept the Legislature in advance of the
people of the State.
In 1911 the Legislature submitted to the voters a statutory law giving
full suffrage to women, as it had authority to do. Influences from
outside the State led to the organization of the Political Equality
League, of which Miss Ada L. James was president and Mrs. Crystal
Eastman Benedict from New York was made campaign manager. The campaign
of 1911-1912, therefore, was carried on by two organizations, the
State association and this league, working separately, although effort
was made to correlate their activities by forming a cooperative
committee representing both societies, of which Miss Gwendolen Brown
Willis was chairman. The National American Woman Suffrage Association,
through its president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, contributed $100 per
month salary for an organizer and speaker, Miss Harriet Grim, and gave
further assistance to both organizations.[208]
Both associations employed field organizers, arranged meetings,
provided speakers, distributed literature and made active effort to
interest as far as possible organizations and individuals in the
cause. The State association had headquarters in the Majestic Building
and later in the Goldsmith Building in Milwaukee. The League had
offices first in the Wells Building and later in the Colby-Abbott
Building in that city. A bulletin of suffrage news was sent each week
to the 600 newspapers in the State by Mrs. Youmans, who was press
manager.
The campaign opened with a big rally in Racine June 1, 1912. The Rev.
Olympia Brown, State president, continued her speaking tours without
cessation and was assisted by prominent outside speakers, including
Mrs. May Wright Sewall, Mrs. Colby, Dr. and Mrs. William Funck of
Baltimore, Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery and Mrs. Clara V. Laddey, who
addressed the Germans. Miss Willis arranged a course of lectures in
Milwaukee for Miss Jane Addams, Louis F. Post, Dr. Sophonisba
Breckinridge of Chicago University, and Mrs. Catherine Waugh
McCulloch.[209]
The Political Equality League believed enthusiastically in street
meetings and arranged many of them in Milwaukee and other cities.
Under the same auspices several automobile tours swept the State, one
of them having an itinerary through the southwestern counties, Miss
James, Mrs. B. C. Gudden, Miss Grim and Miss Mabel Judd the speakers.
The noted air pilot, Beachy, scattered suffrage fliers from the
airship which he took up into the clouds at the State Fair in
Milwaukee. The State association had a large tent on the grounds, in
front of which there were a platform for speakers, where addresses
were made every day, and a counter covered with literature and books.
The two societies conducted Votes for Women tours up the Wolf and Fox
Rivers, which were important features of the campaign. They traveled
in a little steamer, stopping at landings and speaking and giving out
literature. The association also held outdoor meetings at lunchtime
before the factories and wherever it seemed best. The league formed
two allied societies, the Men's League for Woman Suffrage, of which
the late H. A. J. Upham was president, and a league for colored
people, Miss Carrie Horton, president.
An extended series of mass meetings was held in many cities addressed
by prominent speakers, who came from outside the State to assist,
among whom were Mrs. Elizabeth Lowe Watson, Miss Addams, Mrs. Beatrice
Forbes Robertson, Mrs. Emily Montague Bishop, Professor Charles
Zueblin, Max Eastman, Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery; the Countess of
Warwick and Miss Sylvia Pankhurst of England; Miss Inez Milholland,
Mrs. Maud C. Nathan, Mrs. Glendower Evans, Baroness von Suttner
(Austria), Mrs. Alice Duer Miller, Mrs. Florence Kelley, Rabbi Emil
Hirschberg, Mrs. Grace Wilbur Trout, Mrs. Henrietta C. Lyman, Mrs.
Ella S. Stewart, Dr. Anna E. Blount, the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer,
Mrs. Clara Neymann, who addressed the Germans, and Dr. Shaw.
There is no adequate record of that campaign in existence. Mrs. Luther
was State historian and in the habit of keeping carefully all
programs, calls for meetings, reports and other material necessary for
history, which were preserved at the Capitol and were destroyed when
it was burned. The Political Equality League raised and expended
$10,000 and the State association $5,000, as reported to the Secretary
of State. Nearly as much more was expended by individual members and
by other organizations. Dr. Shaw and Mrs. Benedict arranged a mass
meeting in New York which netted $2,700.
The determined hostility of the liquor interests to woman suffrage was
unmistakably shown during the campaign by the official organ of the
State Retail Liquor Dealers' Protective Association, called
"Progress." For months preceding the election it was filled with
objections, innuendo and abuse in prose, verse and pictures, all
designed to impress the reader with the absurdity and danger of giving
the vote to women. It appealed to the farmers and to every class of
people connected in any way with the manufacture and sale of beer,
saying in headlines: "Give the Ballot to Woman and Industry goes to
Smash." "It means the Loss of Vast Sums to Manufacturer, Dealer and
Workingmen," and this was kept up to the end.
An unprecedented vote was cast on the woman suffrage proposition at
the election November 4, 1912: for, 135,736; against, 227,054; lost by
91,318. Each of the three constitutional amendments voted on at the
time received barely a fifth of the vote cast on this measure. Of the
71 counties but 14 were carried for suffrage, Douglas county in the
extreme northwest on Lake Superior had the best record, a majority of
1,000. Milwaukee county, including the city, gave 20,445 votes for and
40,029 votes against. The referendum was placed on a pink ballot, used
only for this purpose, which unquestionably increased the majority
against it, as even the most illiterate could stamp it with a "no."
The defeat was conceded to have been due to an insufficiency of
general education on woman suffrage and of organization, the large
foreign population and the widespread belief that it would help
largely to bring prohibition.
Three days after the election officers of the Political Equality
League sent to officers of the State association a letter proposing a
union of the two under a new name and on condition that the president
of neither should be made president of the new one. The latter was in
favor of the union but insisted that the old historic name, Wisconsin
Suffrage Association, should be retained, which was done. Miss Lutie
E. Stearns was chosen its president at its annual convention to serve
until the union was effected. There were ultimatums and
counter-ultimatums and finally a call for a joint convention to be
held in Madison Feb. 4, 5, 1913, was issued by Miss Zona Gale,
vice-president of the association, and Miss James, president of the
League. Here the union was duly effected; the Rev. Olympia Brown was
elected honorary president, Mrs. Henry M. Youmans president and the
other officers were divided between the two societies.
The suffrage work henceforth was conducted under the same president
and the same policy. The first year of the new régime, the
organization had no headquarters and paid no salaries, the officers
doing their correspondence with their own hands. The next year an
office was opened in Madison and Miss Alice Curtis was installed as
executive secretary. It was difficult to do effective work so far away
from the president and the office was removed to Waukesha, her
residence, with Miss Curtis and later Mrs. Helen Haight in charge. In
October, 1916, it was removed to Milwaukee, and, with the county
association, headquarters were opened at 428 Jefferson Street, where
they remained, with Mrs. Ruth Hamilton as office secretary.[210]
The great increase of sentiment favorable to woman suffrage throughout
the country was plainly seen in Wisconsin and it was evident that a
wide campaign of education must be undertaken. A "suffrage school"
held in Madison in June, 1914, was very successful. Sixty-six women
enrolled for the full course and hundreds of men and women attended
the special lectures. The "faculty" of the school included the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, members of the faculty of the State
University and other well known men and women. Social Forces, a
topical outline with bibliography, published this year by the
Education Committee, Mrs. A. S. Quackenbush, chairman, was especially
designed for the instruction of women, first, in existing conditions,
and second, in the various movements made to improve them. Copies were
purchased by universities, organizations and individuals all over the
United States. Wisconsin Legislators and the Home was a valuable
pamphlet compiled by Miss James following the legislative session of
1913, giving the records of all members on the bills of especial
interest to women which came up that year. Wisconsin Legislation,
Topics for Discussion, was prepared in 1915 by Mrs. J. W. McMullein
Turner for the use of the legislative and educational committees.
Miss James served as legislative chairman in 1913; Mrs. Ben Hooper in
1915; Mrs. Joseph Jastrow in 1917; Mrs. Hooper again in 1919. She was
also for several years congressional chairman. Regular press service
was continued during the last decade, a weekly letter being sent to
100 newspapers. Mrs. Youmans had charge of all publicity during her
presidency. Mrs. Gudden supplied suffrage letters regularly to several
German papers and due to her ability they were always published.
In March, 1916, a Congressional Conference was held in Milwaukee with
Mrs. Catt, the national president, as the chief speaker. In June at
the time of the Republican National Convention in Chicago the
association sent to the great suffrage parade an impressive
contingent, accompanied by a G. A. R. drum corps. This year it gave
$500 to the Iowa campaign and among its members who assisted there and
in campaigns in other States were Mrs. Hooper, Mrs. Haight, Miss
Curtis, Mrs. Maud McCreery, Miss Edna Wright and Mrs. Youmans.
On Oct. 14, 1917, a branch of the National Woman's Party was formed in
the home of Mrs. Victor Berger and became active. There were two
anti-suffrage societies of women, one in Milwaukee and one in Madison,
and together they formed a so-called State association, of which Mrs.
C. E. Estabrook was president and Mrs. Francis Day an active member.
They provided speakers for legislative hearings and signed their names
to newspaper articles sent them from the East but were of slight
importance. The State petition work was stopped by the epidemic of
influenza in the autumn of 1918 and after the first of the next year
the apparent favorable attitude of the Legislature made it
unnecessary, but already in forty counties the names of 5,800 men and
20,000 women had been obtained. Self-denial Day was originated by Miss
Harriet Bain of Wisconsin and adopted by the National Association. The
fund in this State was over $400.
The State association was prompt to organize for war work and formed
all the committees recommended by the National American Suffrage
Association. Many suffrage leaders served as leaders of the war work
in their communities. The president was on the Woman's Committee of
the State Council of Defense and State chairman for Americanization.
The association sent $1,590 for the Oversea Hospitals financed by the
National Association.
The relations of the State with the National Association have been
very cordial. It has sent a large delegation to each of the national
conventions and paid its quota for the support of national work, about
$1,500 in 1919.
In February, 1919, the Legislature gave Presidential suffrage to women
and the submission of the Federal Amendment was near at hand. The last
meeting of the State association, a Good Citizenship convention, was
held in Milwaukee Oct. 29-Nov. 1. The program was devoted to the
intelligent and patriotic use of the ballot. Mrs. Nancy M. Schoonmaker
came from Connecticut to give six lectures on Citizenship for Women. A
plan was adopted for publishing a Citizenship Manual and engaging a
traveling representative to teach good citizenship to groups of women
throughout the State. The convention provided that the association
should automatically cease to exist as soon as the Federal Amendment
was ratified, in any case not later than March 1, 1920, and should be
replaced by a State League of Women Voters. This took place on
February 20 and Mrs. Ben Hooper was elected chairman.[211]
LEGISLATIVE ACTION. 1901. Provision was made for separate ballot boxes
for women, making fully operative the School Suffrage Law of 1885.
1903. A Municipal suffrage bill received a small vote. A full suffrage
measure introduced in the Assembly by David Evans was lost by only one
and had a large vote in the Senate.
1905. A Municipal suffrage bill was passed by the Assembly; not acted
upon by the Senate.
1909. A bill for a referendum to the voters passed in the Senate;
defeated in the Assembly by a vote of 53 to 34.
1911. The session opened promisingly. David G. James introduced in the
Senate and J. H. Kamper in the Assembly a measure providing full
suffrage for Wisconsin women contingent upon the approval of a
majority of the voters at the general election in November, 1912. Miss
Mary Swain Wagner was the only registered lobbyist but other
suffragists, notably Miss James, Mrs. George W. Peckham, Mrs. Nellie
Donaldson and Mrs. Luther, worked for the measure. At a joint hearing
thirteen speakers, including several from outside the State, spoke in
favor of the bill and one lone Assemblyman, Carl Dorner, spoke in
opposition. It passed the Senate March 31 by a vote of 16 to 4, and
the Assembly April 26 by a vote of 69 to 29, and was signed by
Governor Francis E. McGovern on the ground that it was a problem which
should be solved by the voters. This measure was not, as generally
assumed, an amendment to the constitution but was a law, the
constitution providing that suffrage might be extended by statute but
this must be ratified by a majority of the voters at a general
election. It was defeated in 1912.
1913. Paradoxical as it may seem, legislators now became more
friendly. The Legislature of 1913 passed by a large majority in both
Houses another referendum bill introduced by Senator Robert Glenn but
it was vetoed by Governor McGovern on the ground that the voters
should not be asked so soon to pass upon a measure which they had just
defeated.
1915. Three measures were introduced in 1915, one by Senator Glenn and
Assemblyman W. C. Bradley, providing for full suffrage by State-wide
referendum; one by Senator George E. Scott and Assemblyman H. M.
Laursen, providing for Presidential suffrage by action of the
Legislature, and one by Senator A. Pearce Tompkins and Assemblyman
Axel Johnson to permit to counties local option in the matter of
enfranchising their women. Only the first was seriously considered and
this was defeated in the Assembly by a vote of 49 to 41. A
representative of the German-American Alliance appeared against it at
the hearing and at several later sessions.
1917. A referendum measure was introduced by Senator George B. Skogmo
and Assemblyman James Hanson and was killed in the Assembly by a vote
of 47 to 40.
1918. Meanwhile the tide was perceptibly turning and at the State
political conventions held in September, 1918, all parties adopted
planks favoring the enfranchisement of women. What was known as "the
woman suffrage session" followed.
1919. Resolution urging the U. S. Senate to submit a Federal Suffrage
Amendment: Assembly 75 for, 14 against; Senate 23 for, 4 against.
Presidential suffrage bill granting to women the right to vote for
presidential electors: Assembly 80 for, 8 against; Senate 25 for, one
against. Law extending the right of suffrage to women subject to a
referendum, passed without an aye and no vote in both Houses. It was
repealed after ratification of the Federal Amendment made it
unnecessary.
RATIFICATION. The Federal Suffrage Amendment was submitted by Congress
on June 4, 1919. The Wisconsin Legislature ratified it about 11
o'clock in the morning on June 10, with one negative vote in the
Senate, two in the House. A special messenger, former Senator David G.
James (the father of Ada L. James), started for Washington on the
first train carrying the certificate from the Governor and he brought
back a statement from J. A. Tonner, Chief of the Bureau of Rolls and
Library, Department of State, that "the certified copy of the
ratification resolution by the Legislature of Wisconsin is the first
which has been received." The Illinois Legislature ratified an hour
earlier but owing to a technical error it had to ratify a second time.
The two U. S. Senators LaFollette and Lenroot and eight of the eleven
Representatives from Wisconsin voted for the Federal Amendment on its
final passage through Congress.
FOOTNOTES:
[206] The History is indebted for this chapter to Mrs. Theodora W.
Youmans, president of the State Woman Suffrage Association from 1913
until its work was finished in 1920.
[207] The following were the officers for the first twelve years:
Vice-presidents: Mrs. Jessie M. Luther, Mrs. Madge Waters, Mrs. Laura
James, Vida James, Mrs. E. C. Priddle, Miss Linda Rhodes;
corresponding secretaries: Miss Lucinda Lake, Mrs. Margaret Geddes,
Mrs. Emma Geddes, Miss Lena Newman, Mrs. B. Ostrander, Mrs. Nellie K.
Donaldson; recording secretaries: Miss Marion W. Hamilton, Miss Emma
Graham, Mrs. Ethel Irish, Miss W. von Bruenchenhein; treasurers: Mrs.
Dora Putnam, Mrs. Lydia Woodward, Mrs. F. H. Derrick, Mrs. A. B.
Sprague, Mrs. B. Ostrander, Gwendolen Brown Willis; chairmen Executive
Committee: Ellen A. Rose, Mrs. Etta Gardner, Mrs. Kate Rindlaub.
[208] Near the end of the campaign Miss Mary Swain Wagner from New
York organized the American Suffragettes, a short-lived society, with
Miss Martha Heide as president, and it arranged a mass meeting in
Milwaukee with Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst of England as the principal
speaker.
[209] A unique automobile tour was made by Mrs. McCulloch and her
husband, Frank McCulloch, both prominent lawyers in Chicago, and their
four children, who devoted their annual vacation in the summer of 1912
to a tour through Wisconsin, the eldest son driving a big car, Mr. and
Mrs. McCulloch making suffrage speeches at designated points and the
three younger children enjoying the outing.
[210] After 1913 annual conventions were held as follows: 1914,
Milwaukee, speakers at evening meeting, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence of
England and Rosika Schwimmer of Hungary; 1915, Milwaukee; 1916
(postponed to January, 1917, at the time of the legislative session),
Madison; 1917, Milwaukee, Mrs. Nellie McClung of Canada speaker; 1918,
no convention because of the war.
[211] The officials from 1913, not already mentioned, were as follows:
Vice-presidents: Miss Zona Gale, Dr. Jean M. Cooke, Mrs. Wm. Preston
Leek, Mrs. Victor Berger, Mrs. Isaac Witter, Mrs. Frank Thanhouser,
Miss Harriet F. Bain; corresponding secretaries: Mrs. W. M. Waters,
Mrs. Joseph Jastrow, Mrs. James L. Foley, Mrs. Glen Turner, Mrs.
Charles H. Mott, Mrs. H. F. Shadbolt; recording secretaries: Mrs. H.
M. Holton, Mrs. A. J. Rogers; treasurers, Miss E. E. Robinson, Mrs.
Harvey J. Frame; auditors: Miss Gwendolyn B. Willis, Miss M. V. Brown,
Mrs. Louis Fuller Hobbins, Miss Amy Comstock, Mrs. A. W. Schorger,
Mrs. H. A. J. Upham, Mrs. Sarah H. Van Dusen. Mrs. A. J. Birkhauser.
CHAPTER XLIX.
WYOMING.[212]
Wyoming was the pioneer Territory and the pioneer State to give full
suffrage to women. It is an interesting fact that the women did not
find it necessary to have a Territorial or State Suffrage Association,
or even a convention except the one during the campaign for Statehood
in 1889-90. This rare situation is explained by the fact that
universal suffrage came to the women in the newly organized Territory
in 1869 without any general demand for it but through the efforts of a
very few progressive men and women. [History of Woman Suffrage, Volume
IV, page 994.] When the Constitutional Convention was preparing for
Statehood in 1889, holding its sessions in Cheyenne, the women of the
Territory held a convention there in order to pass resolutions asking
that the constitution should contain an article granting to the women
a continuation of the right of suffrage which they had possessed for
twenty years. This was granted and both men and women voted on the
constitution, which was adopted by a three-fourths majority of the
votes cast. The fact that there was no women's association for
suffrage or for political purposes was at times a serious handicap to
women of other States, who were not able to appeal to an organized
body for an endorsement of woman suffrage or related subjects.
In 1901 and at subsequent dates by joint resolution of both Houses of
the Legislature a strong appeal was sent to Congress to submit the
Federal Suffrage Amendment. On Feb. 14, 1919, a joint resolution was
passed and signed by Governor Robert D. Carey commemorating the
granting of woman suffrage in Wyoming, Dec. 10, 1869, by making this
date each year Wyoming Day, "to be observed by appropriate exercises
commemorative of the history of the Commonwealth and the lives and
work of its pioneers."
At a State convention in Laramie Nov. 9-11, 1919, with Mrs. Carrie
Chapman Catt, the national president, as guest of honor, a branch of
the National League of Women Voters was organized, with Mrs. Cyrus
Beard as State chairman. At Casper, Oct. 2, 1920, it was re-organized
by Mrs. James Paige, regional director, with Mrs. C. W. Crouter as
State chairman.
RATIFICATION. Governor Robert D. Carey called a special session of the
Legislature for Jan. 26, 1920, to ratify the Federal Suffrage
Amendment. The vote was unanimous in each House, and, after it was
finished and had received the Governor's signature, Mrs. Theresa
Jenkins of Cheyenne, a faithful supporter of woman suffrage in Wyoming
for fifty years, thanked the members and the Governor for their action
in behalf of the women of the State, the United States and the world.
* * * * *
The decree that laws must be omitted for lack of space bars out the
many statutes in the interests of women and children which are
Wyoming's especial pride.
The pioneer member of the Legislature was Mrs. Mary Godat Bellamy of
Laramie, elected to the Lower House in 1911. She had been a teacher in
the public schools of the city and county superintendent. She was very
active in her duties and was instrumental in having a number of
excellent bills become laws. Among these were bills for an adequate
appropriation to employ a State humane officer for child and animal
protection; to establish an industrial institution for male convicts
twenty-five years old or under, as at that time 85 per cent. of those
in the penitentiary were under twenty-one; an eight-hour day for women
and children who worked in factories, laundries and industrial places;
a grant to the State University of a permanent annual revenue. She
helped to kill a bill to repeal an existing law which prohibited
liquor being sold in places that were not incorporated, as mining and
lumber camps. Mrs. Bellamy said later: "While the men were courteous
yet no woman must expect that when it comes to gaining a point a man
is going to make an exception because his colleague is a woman."
In the Legislature of 1913 two women Representatives had seats--Mrs.
Anna Miller of Laramie, a mother of six grown children, three of whom
were graduated from the State University, and Miss Nettie Truax of
Sundance, a school teacher and at one time county superintendent. Mrs.
Miller was a successful merchant and at the time of her election was
at the head of a large drygoods establishment. She succeeded her son
in the Legislature. Miss Truax was made chairman of the important
Committee on Education. In 1915 Mrs. Morna Wood, also of Sundance, was
elected to the Lower House. She introduced a bill, which became a law,
for the protection and regulation of child employment. During this
session a bill in the direction of easy divorce came before the House
and Mrs. Wood made a strong speech condemning it and appealing for
loyal support of her protest in the interests of the home and the
children. Nothing further was heard of the bill. While women may not
have taken a large place as lawmakers they have had an active and
effective interest in many excellent laws.
The following women have been elected State Superintendent of Public
Instruction: Miss Estelle Reel, 1894-1898; Miss Rose A. Bird,
1910-1914; Miss Edith K. O. Clark, 1914-1918; Mrs. Katharine A.
Morton, 1918-1922. This is the most highly paid office occupied by a
woman, the salary being the same as that of the Secretary of State,
State Auditor and State Treasurer. By virtue of her office the
Superintendent is a member of the State Boards of Pardons, Charities
and Reforms, Land Commissioners, School Land Commissioners and
Education, with power to appoint all members of the last board, which
elects the State Commissioner of Education. At present all the
counties have women county superintendents of schools, not an unusual
situation. They also hold other county offices and as in all States as
soon as the suffrage is granted are eligible to all official
positions.
The largest woman's organization is the Federation of Clubs, with a
membership of 4,000, a democratic body which has been able to do much
for the State in legislation, education and reform. The women of
Wyoming have been very conservative with the ballot and have never
used radical means to accomplish their aims. No woman's ticket has
ever been offered.
All institutions of learning are co-educational. Since 1891 there has
been but a short interval when women have not been on the Board of
Trustees of the State University. Grace Raymond Hebard was the first,
serving thirteen years. For eighteen years, 1891-1908, a woman was
secretary, acting also as financial agent, buying for the institution
and paying the bills. In February, 1913, Mrs. Mary B. David of Douglas
was appointed trustee by the Governor and displayed such unusual
ability as an executive that later she was unanimously elected by the
Board as its president, serving from September, 1917, to February,
1919, when she removed from the State. During her administration more
important matters than ever before were brought to the Board for its
consideration and solution--questions of land leases and oil grants,
rents and royalties involving millions of dollars. The efficient,
intelligent and impartial way in which Mrs. David handled these
matters, of course in conjunction with the other members, won for her
from the Board and the parties involved the strongest commendation. At
one time a woman was seriously thought of for president of the
university but she refused to consider it. At present (1920) two of
the four most highly paid professors are women at the head of the
combined departments of Psychology and Philosophy and of Political
Economy and Sociology. There are five women on the Faculty, receiving
the same compensation as the men holding equal positions. Women are
full professors in History, English and Home Economics. The professor
of Elementary Education and supervisor of the training school is a
woman and the Dean of Women ranks as a full professor. With the
assistant professors there are fourteen women on the Faculty.
On June 12, 1921, this university gave its first honorary degree and
very appropriately to a woman. With beautiful ceremonies the degree of
Doctor of Laws was conferred on Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of
the National American Woman Suffrage Association and of the
International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
FOOTNOTES:
[212] The History is indebted for this chapter to Dr. Grace Raymond
Hebard, professor of Political Economy and Sociology in the State
University of Wyoming.
CHAPTER L.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN THE TERRITORIES OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE
PHILIPPINES.
ALASKA.[213]
When the bill was before Congress in 1912 to make Alaska a Territory
of the United States an amendment was added on motion of
Representative Frank W. Mondell of Wyoming to give its Legislature
full power to enfranchise women. This was accepted by the House
without objection. Afterwards the official board of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association gladly responded to the request of
Arthur G. Stroup of Sitka, one of the Territorial Representatives, who
intended to introduce a bill for the purpose, to send up some suitable
literature. The board also asked women in Seattle, former residents of
Alaska, to write to the members of the new Legislature.
Woman suffrage in Alaska possesses the unique record of being granted
without any solicitation whatever from the residents. It is not known
that a suffrage club ever existed in the Territory; it is quite
certain that prior to the convening of the first Territorial
Legislature in Juneau in 1913 no suffrage campaigning whatever had
been carried on, yet two members, coming from towns not less than
1,500 miles apart, brought drafts for an equal suffrage bill. House
Bill No. 2, "An Act to extend the elective franchise to the women in
the Territory of Alaska," was the first to pass both Houses--7
Senators and 15 Representatives--and the vote on it was unanimous,
Senator Elwood Brunner of Nome, the only member who had expressed
himself as unfavorable, having had the good sense or caution to absent
himself during roll call. This was also the first bill to be approved
by the Governor, J. F. A. Strong, on March 21, 1913, and the Act
became effective ninety days thereafter. It declared the elective
franchise extended to such women as had the qualifications required of
male electors.
The Alaska Code had permitted women to vote only at School elections.
The new law gave them the privilege of voting for the officers in
incorporated towns and cities; for members of the Territorial
Legislature and for Territorial Delegate to Congress.
It is estimated that there is a white population of 30,000 of whom
between 5,000 and 6,000 are women. Probably not 500 native women are
voters. Indian men have a vote if they have "severed tribal
relations," which is interpreted to mean that if an Indian moves to a
white man's town or lives on a creek or in a camp in such a way that
the missions or the marshals think he has left his tribe, he can vote.
Indian women have a vote if they marry white men who have a vote; if
they are unmarried and have "severed tribal relations"; if they are
married to an Indian who has "severed tribal relations." The original
code said definitely that Juries should be drawn from the male
citizens and it has never been changed. With this exception the rights
of men and women are the same.
Two other bills of importance passed by the first Legislature provided
for the compulsory education of white children and for Juvenile Courts
to look after dependent children and create a Board of Children's
Guardians. This board consists of the District Judge and U. S. Marshal
in each judicial division, together with one woman appointed by the
Governor, thus creating four such boards in the Territory, one for
each division.
The interest of Alaska women in questions affecting local or
Territorial conditions is intense and their efforts effective, as
their work in the prohibition campaign of 1916 proved. This was
essentially a woman's campaign, so well handled that at the plebiscite
held at the time of the general election in November, 1916, the vote
was about two to one in favor of prohibition. As a result, Congress
enacted the Bone Dry Prohibition law for the Territory Feb. 14, 1917.
It is believed that about three-fourths of the qualified women vote
but there is no means of knowing. The percentage of illiteracy among
white women is negligible and the young native women taught at the
Government and mission schools can read and write.
The women of Alaska did their share in all kinds of war work, for
conservation, bond drives, Red Cross and kindred activities. On
account of the vast distances and small means of transportation any
general cooperation is impossible. There are two daily papers in
Fairbanks with a wide circulation over the entire district, which is
larger than Texas. The organizing for Red Cross work had to be largely
done through these papers but in a few months there were about 600
knitters, practically all the women in the district, and thirty
organizations in the mining camps, many of these having only two or
three women. In Fairbanks, by means of dances, card parties, sales,
etc., $8,000 were raised just to buy wool, besides all the funds and
"drives."
The interest of Alaskan women in such public questions as affect women
elsewhere is that of the spectator rather than of the worker. When
legislation on housing and tenement laws, protection of factory
workers, prevention of child labor and like problems becomes necessary
they will not be lacking in interest or energy.
HAWAII.
The Organic Act under which the Territories of the United States were
created said that at the first election persons with specified
qualifications should be entitled to vote and at subsequent elections
such persons as the Territorial Legislature might designate. It was
under this Act that Wyoming and Utah enfranchised their women in 1869
and 1870 and Washington in 1883.
When in 1899 the Congress was preparing to admit Hawaii as a Territory
the commission framed a constitution which specifically refused the
privilege that had been granted to every other Territory of having its
own Legislature decide who should vote after the first election, by
inserting a clause that it "should not grant to ... any individual any
special privilege or franchise without the approval of Congress." This
constitution gave the suffrage to every masculine citizen of whatever
nationality--Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese--who could read and write
English or Hawaiian, and it repeatedly used the word "male" to bar
women from having a vote or holding an office. The members of this
commission were Senators John T. Morgan of Alabama and Shelby M.
Cullom of Illinois; Representative Robert R. Hitt of Illinois;
President Sanford B. Dole and Associate Justice Frear of Hawaii.
Justice Frear said over his own signature that he and President Dole
desired that the Legislature should have power to authorize woman
suffrage but the rest of the commission would not permit it. Miss
Susan B. Anthony president, and the Official Board of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association, made vigorous objection to this
abuse of power, sent a protest to every member of Congress and
followed this with petitions officially signed by large associations
but to no avail. The Act was approved by President William McKinley
April 30, 1900.[214]
The women had always exercised great influence in political affairs
and the people of Hawaii resented this discrimination but the U. S.
Congress then and for years afterwards was adamant in its opposition
to woman suffrage anywhere. After the women of Washington, California
and Oregon were enfranchised in 1910-11-12 this resentment found
expression among the women of Honolulu in 1912, when they called on
Mrs. John W. Dorsett to help them organize a suffrage club. They
learned in October that by good fortune Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt,
president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, would stop
there on her way home from a trip around the world and they arranged
by wireless messages for her to address a mass meeting at the opera
house the one evening she would be there. The audience was large and
sympathetic and she learned that every legislative candidate at the
approaching election had announced himself in favor of getting the
vote for women. She met with the suffrage club and found its
constitution modeled on the one recommended by the National American
Woman Suffrage Association. She was in touch with the women afterwards
and the interest was kept alive.
By 1915 the more thoughtful men of the Territory were beginning to
feel that its women must be enfranchised. Both political parties
declared in favor of asking the U. S. Congress for an Act giving the
Hawaiian Legislature authority in this matter and that body itself
passed a bill to this effect. This was taken to Washington by the
Delegate from the Territory, J. K. Kalanianaole, who presented it but
it received no attention. He presented it again in 1916, with a like
result. Soon afterwards Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin F. Pitman of Brookline,
Mass., visited the Islands. Mr. Pitman was the son of a Hawaiian
Chiefess and although he had not been there since childhood he was the
person of the highest rank. Mrs. Pitman was prominent among the
suffrage leaders in Massachusetts and was deeply interested in the
situation in Hawaii. She attended the opening of the Legislature and
conversed with nearly all the members, finding them to a man in favor
of the bill, and the Legislature adopted strong resolutions calling
upon Congress to sanction it. In answer to a request for her
experience to use in this chapter she wrote:
It was on Jan. 30, 1917, that we arrived in Honolulu and on the
31st Madame Nakiuna, who was known as the Court historian, gave
us a large reception at Laniakea. At this fête were all the women
of the highest social circles in the Islands. Among them were
Mrs. John W. Dorsett, Mrs. A. P. Taylor, Mrs. Castle-Coleman,
Miss Mary Ermine Cross and others who had heard of my activities
in "the cause" and importuned me to hold meetings to try to
arouse a keener interest. I would have consented at once but for
the fact that almost the first person I saw in this beautiful
land was the field-secretary of the Massachusetts Association
Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women. I had a feeling
that if there was not already an anti-association here there
would be one the moment I began any serious work and so I advised
waiting, promising to do my best for them as soon as it seemed
wise, and so, while I was indeed sorry that the serious illness
of a relative obliged her to depart for home at a very early
date, it was amusing to say the least that while she was sailing
out of the harbor I was holding my first suffrage meeting in the
home of Mrs. Dorsett. I held meetings on two successive days, one
attended mostly by the middle class and the other by high caste
Hawaiians and the "missionary set," which, perhaps, we might
style their "400." My talk was in the form of a discussion and I
was surprised and delighted at the fluency of all who spoke,
their wide knowledge of world affairs and desire for the
franchise. Many months had passed since the departure of Prince
Kalanianaole and so they begged me to investigate as soon as I
returned home. This I promised to do and wrote at once to Mrs.
Catt all that I heard.
Mrs. Catt sent Mrs. Pitman's letter to Mrs. Maud Wood Park, chairman
of the Congressional Committee of the National Suffrage Association
and she took up the question with Senator John F. Shafroth, chairman
of the Committee on Pacific Islands and Porto Rico. The Delegate from
Hawaii, who was deeply interested, welcomed this new force to assist
in pushing the bill, which had simply been neglected. On May 21, 1917,
he presented still another resolution from the Territorial Legislature
asking for it and on June I Senator Shafroth introduced the following
bill:
_Be it enacted_ ... that the Legislature of the Territory of
Hawaii be, and it is hereby, vested with the power to provide
that in all elections ... female citizens possessing the same
qualifications as male citizens shall be entitled to vote.
SEC. 2. That the said Legislature is further hereby vested with
the power to have submitted to the voters of the Territory the
question of whether or not the female citizens shall be empowered
to vote....
The bill was reported favorably by the committee and passed by the
Senate without objection or even discussion on September 15. In the
House it was referred to the Committee on Woman Suffrage, which set
April 29, 1918, for a hearing. Delegate Kalanianaole had been called
back to Honolulu by business but was represented by his secretary and
there were present Mrs. Park, who presided, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw,
honorary president of the National Suffrage Association, and Mrs.
Pitman, the principal speaker. Judge John E. Raker was chairman of the
committee, which did not need any argument but was interested in
asking many questions of Mrs. Pitman. At the close of the hearing the
committee voted unanimously to make a favorable report. The bill was
passed June 3 without a roll call. It was signed by President Wilson
on the 13th.
The matter was now in the control of the Hawaiian Legislature, which
received petitions from a number of organizations of women to exercise
its power to confer the suffrage without a referendum to the voters.
This was recommended by Governor C. J. McCarthy and early in the
session of 1919 the Senate took this action and sent the bill to the
House. This body under outside influence refused to endorse it but
substituted a bill to send the question to the voters. The Senate
would not accept it and both bills were deadlocked.
The women were then spurred to action; old suffrage clubs were
revived; one was formed in Honolulu of the native high class women and
what is known as the "missionary set," a very brilliant group. Mrs.
Dorsett made a tour of all the Islands to arouse interest and on
Mani, under the leadership of Mrs. Harry Baldwin, clubs were formed
all over the island. A Hawaiian Suffrage Association was organized. At
the next convention of the National Association a resolution was
adopted that it be invited to become auxiliary without the payment of
dues and the invitation was officially accepted with thanks.
The Federal Suffrage Amendment proclaimed by Secretary of State Colby
Aug. 26, 1920, included the women of the Territories and it was thus
that Hawaiian women became enfranchised. They voted in large numbers
at the November elections that year.
THE PHILIPPINES.
The Philippine Islands came under the jurisdiction of the United
States as a consequence of the Spanish-American war in 1898 and their
government soon became an active question in Congress. There was a
desire to permit their own people to participate in this to some
extent and the National American Woman Suffrage Association, always on
the watch tower, took immediate action toward having women included in
any scheme of self-government. With the recent example before it of
the most unjust discrimination against them in the admission of Hawaii
as a Territory, the association under the presidency of Miss Susan B.
Anthony petitioned the members of Congress to recognize the rights of
women in whatever form of government was adopted. At its annual
convention in 1899 impassioned speeches were made against taking away
from Filipino women the position of superiority which they always had
held under Spanish rule by giving the men political authority over
them.
In 1900 Military Governor-General Otis ordered a re-organization of
the municipalities. To decide who should have a vote in local affairs
the Philippine Commission of the U. S. Senate summoned well informed
persons and among them, in the spring of 1902, were Judge William H.
Taft, Governor-General of the islands, and Archbishop Nozaleda, who
had been connected with the Catholic church there for twenty-six years
and archbishop since 1889. Both declared that the suffrage should be
given to the women rather than to the men, the former saying: "The
fact is that, not only among the Tagalogs but also among the
Christian Filipinos, the woman is the active manager of the family, so
if you expect to confer political power on the Filipinos it ought to
be given to the women. Following is part of the Archbishop's
statement. (Senate Document, p. 109.):
The woman is better than the man in every way--in intelligence,
in virtue and in labor--and a great deal more economical. She is
very much given to trade and trafficking. If any rights and
privileges are to be granted to the natives, do not give them to
the men but to the women.
Q. Then you think it would be much better to give the women the
right to vote than the men?
A. O, much better. Why, even in the fields it is the women who do
the work; the men go to the cock fights and gamble. The woman is
the one who supports the man there, so every law of justice
demands that in political life they should have the privilege
over the men.
Notwithstanding this and other testimony of a similar nature the
Commission framed a Code giving a Municipal or local franchise to
certain classes of men and excluding all women, taking away from them
the privileges they always had possessed. The men soon began demanding
their own lawmaking body and in response Congress passed an Act to
take effect Jan. 15, 1907, to provide for the holding of elections in
the Islands for a Legislative Assembly. The Act limited the voters to
"male persons 23 years of age or over," thus again putting up the
barriers against women and including them in the list of the
disqualified as listed--"insane, feeble-minded, rebels and traitors."
The U. S. Government did, however, give women to the same extent as
men all educational advantages, which heretofore had been denied them
and their progress was very rapid. In 1912 Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt,
president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, visited Manila
on her trip around the world and was warmly received. A meeting was
called at the Manila Hotel for August 15 and twelve women responded.
After making an address she helped them form a club which they called
Society for the Advancement of Women. Thirty attended the next meeting
two weeks later and they took up active philanthropic work. In a
little while most of the women of influence were members of it and it
was re-organized as the Woman's Club of Manila. Its work extended in
many directions and it became one of the city's leading institutions.
Other clubs were formed and they joined the General Federation of
Clubs in 1915. There are between 300 and 400 clubs in the Islands
(1920).
Meanwhile the men were not satisfied with their one-house Legislative
Assembly largely under American control, but wanted more power. In
response Congress provided for a Legislature of a Senate of 24 members
and a Lower House of 90, all to be elected except two of the former
and nine of the latter, who would be appointed by the American
Governor-General to represent districts where elections were not held,
the Act to go into effect in 1918. The suffrage was still confined
exclusively to males, although in 1916 the Women's Club had organized
fifty-seven Mothers' Clubs for the welfare of infants; had secured
through women lawyers legal aid for over thirty poor women; had been
instrumental in having 15,000 people make gardens to give variety to
their fish and rice diet and done a vast amount of other valuable
public work. The Act passed by large majorities, members voting for it
who had persistently voted against the Federal Amendment to
enfranchise the women of the United States.
The Philippines were from 1917 represented in Congress by an able and
progressive Commissioner, Jaime C. De Veyra, an advocate of woman
suffrage. His wife, a native of Iloilo, who had been prominent in
civic work in the Islands, shared his views, and was a frequent
visitor at the suffrage headquarters in Washington. In 1919, assisted
by Miss Bessie Dwyer, vice-president of the Manila Women's Club, she
gave beautifully illustrated addresses in Washington and New York, on
the position of women in the Islands. In these and in interviews she
said:
Philippine women have always been free and have always been held
as equals of the men. In the little rural "barrios" you will
always find some sort of woman leader. All over the islands they
are highly considered. Even when old they exercise full sway over
the family and have the last word in all financial matters. The
married children still cling to the mother as adviser. The young
women who marry go into partnership with their husbands and while
the men handle the workers it is the women who do the paying and
oversee things generally. They are engaged in all kinds of
business for themselves and are employed by scores of thousands.
Many thousands carry work home where they can take care of their
children, do the housework and be earning money.
They have the same opportunities in the professions as men, are
successful physicians and lawyers and members of the Bar
Association. Laws made for them have combined the best of Spanish
and American precedents. They are guardians of their own
children; married women may hold property; of that which accrues
to a married couple, the wife is half administrator. These are
vested rights and cannot be taken away.
A short time ago the question of woman suffrage was introduced
into the Legislature, not by the initiative of American women but
urged by Madame Apacibile, wife of one of the government
secretaries. A petition signed by 18,000 women asking for a joint
legislative hearing was sent to the law makers who granted it.
Three Filipina women spoke, one the widow of the eminent
Concepcion Calderon, a successful business woman, owning a fish
farm and an embroidery enterprise. Others were Mrs. Feodore
Kalon, Miss Almeda and Miss Pazlegaspi, the last two practicing
lawyers. Only one man appeared in the negative. The president of
the Senate, the Hon. Manuel L. Quezon, is in favor of woman
suffrage.
Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison recommended to the
Legislature to give the suffrage to women, as it has the power to do.
A bill was introduced and passed the Senate almost unanimously Dec. 7,
1919, but it was not acted upon by the House. As the Constitution of
the United States is not in force in the Philippines the women were
not enfranchised by the Federal Suffrage Amendment in 1920 but must
await the action of their own Legislature.
PORTO RICO.
After Porto Rico came under the control of the United States as a
result of the Spanish-American war in 1898 its political status was
undetermined for a long time. Shortly before that war Spain had
granted universal suffrage to all its men over 21. Congress confirmed
this privilege as to the affairs of the island but they had no voting
rights in those of the United States. After a few years the more
progressive of the people began asking for the status of a Territory
with their own Legislature. This agitation was continued for sixteen
years before Congress took action and agreed on a bill which would
admit the islanders to citizenship. As usual the chief difficulty was
over the suffrage. There was a desire to have a slight educational and
a small property qualification but as a large majority of the men
were illiterate and without property this aroused a protest, which was
supported by the American Federation of Labor. On May 22, 1916, while
the Porto Rican bill was under consideration in Committee of the Whole
in the Lower House of Congress, the Republican floor leader, James R.
Mann (Ills.), discovered that a majority of those present were
Republicans and suffragists. He therefore proposed a clause giving the
franchise to the women, which was passed by 60 to 37. He expected to
put the Democrats in the position of voting it down the next day in
regular session but when it came up Republicans joined with Democrats
in defeating it by 80 noes to 59 ayes.
Finally when, under pressure, the committee was obliged to put in
universal suffrage for the great mass of illiterate men, even the most
ardent advocates of woman suffrage among the members felt that it
would be unwise to add universal suffrage for women. In answer to the
urgent request of the Congressional Committee of the National American
Woman Suffrage Association that this injustice should not be done to
women, Senator John F. Shafroth, chairman of the Committee on the
Pacific Islands and Porto Rico, wrote: "I would have been very glad to
incorporate a provision including women but it would have killed the
bill. I was notified by Senator Martine of New Jersey and others that
they would not permit a provision of that kind to go into it and the
parliamentary stage of the bill was such that any one Senator could
have defeated it. As it was, it took two years to get the bill before
Congress and fully twenty motions to have it considered and if either
prohibition or woman suffrage had gone into it there would have been
no bill for Porto Rico. We avoided the word 'male' in prescribing the
qualifications of electors."
The Act, which received the approval of President Wilson March 2,
1917, provided that at the first election for the Legislature and
other officers the electors should be those qualified under the
present law, and thereafter voters should be citizens of the United
States 21 years of age and have such additional qualifications as
might be prescribed by the Legislature of Porto Rico. The election
took place on July 16. While this Act was an improvement on the one
which admitted Hawaii as a Territory it left the many educated, tax
paying women, the woman in business, the teachers in government and
mission schools, the nurses in the hospitals, the social workers,
wholly in the power of men.
About 1916 there was incorporated in Porto Rico an organization called
La Liga Feminea de Puerto Rico, which worked energetically for the
social uplift of the people and for the political enfranchisement of
women. The official organ was _La Mujer del Siglo Veinte_--_The
Twentieth Century Woman_. Early in the spring of 1917 Mrs. Geraldine
Maud Froscher, an American living in Porto Rico, appealed to the
National Suffrage Association for financial assistance for a campaign
preparatory to the introduction of the woman suffrage bill in the
Legislature that year. Literature was sent immediately and the
association agreed to pay the expenses of Mrs. Froscher, who organized
suffrage leagues in all towns of any considerable size, addressed
women's clubs, interviewed legislators and distributed literature. In
this work she had the able assistance of Mrs. Ana Roqué Duprey, the
first president of the San Juan Suffrage League, editor of the above
paper and later of _El Heraldo de la Mujer_--_The Woman's Herald_,
with Mrs. Froscher as the American editor.
In August, 1917, at the first session of the new Legislature, a bill
was introduced in the Lower House to give women the right to hold
office but without the right to vote and one to give them equal
rights. Later two more bills were introduced but none was passed. As
Porto Rico is an unincorporated Territory of the United States, its
women were not enfranchised by the Federal Suffrage Amendment in 1920.
At three consecutive sessions of the Legislative Assembly a petition
for woman suffrage has been presented.
FOOTNOTES:
[213] The History is indebted for this chapter to Mrs. Jeannette Drury
Clark, a graduate of the University of California, who with her
husband, John A. Clark, an attorney, has made her home in Fairbanks
for the past fifteen years.
[214] History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV, pages 325, 343, 346, 446.
CHAPTER LI.
PROGRESS OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
1900 - 1920.[215]
I consider it an honor to have been asked to take up the pen from the
date 1900, when my dear friend and colleague, the late Helen
Blackburn, laid it down after writing the chapter on Great Britain for
Volume IV of the History of Woman Suffrage. I am particularly
fortunate in that it falls to my lot to include the year 1918, when
Victory crowned our fifty years' struggle in these islands to obtain
the Parliamentary franchise for women.
Several circumstances entirely outside our power of control combined
to promote the rapid growth of the movement at the beginning of the
XXth Century. The chief of these were the South African war,
1899-1902, and the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. The war with the
Transvaal was caused by the refusal of President Kruger and his
advisers to recognize the principle that taxation and representation
should go together. The so-called Uitlanders, who formed a large
proportion of the population of the Transvaal and provided by taxation
a still larger proportion of its revenue, were practically excluded
from representation. This led to intense irritation and ultimately to
war. It was, therefore, inevitable that articles in the press and the
speeches of British statesmen dealing with the war used arguments
which might have been transferred without the alteration of a single
word to women's suffrage speeches.
I have described on pages 29 and 30 of Women's Suffrage, a Short
History of a Great Movement, the strong impulse which had been given
to the electorial activity of British women by the Corrupt Practices
Act of 1883, which made paid canvassing illegal and otherwise reduced
electorial expenses. Very soon after it came into operation both the
chief political parties organized bands of educated women to act as
canvassers, election agents, etc., in contested elections. The war
stimulated this electorial activity of women. A general election was
held in 1900 and in the absence of husbands, sons and brothers in
South Africa, many wives, mothers and sisters ran the whole election
on their behalf. Several of these were well known anti-suffragists.
Even Mrs. Humphry Ward herself, on the occasion of an important
anti-suffrage meeting in London, excused her absence on the ground
that her presence was required by the exigencies of the pending
election in West Herts, where her son was a candidate. Suffragists
again were not slow to point the moral--if women were fit (and they
obviously were fit) not only to advise, persuade and instruct voters
how to vote but also to conduct election campaigns from start to
finish, they were surely fit to vote themselves.
The death of Queen Victoria in January, 1901, called forth a
spontaneous burst of loyal gratitude, devotion and appreciation from
all parties and all sections of the country. Every leading statesman
among her councillors dwelt on the extraordinary penetration of her
mind, her wide political knowledge, her great practical sagacity, her
grasp of principle, and they combined to acclaim her as the most
trusted of all the constitutional monarchs whom the world had then
seen. How could she be all that they justly claimed for her, if the
whole female sex laboured under the disabilities which, according to
Mrs. Humphry Ward, were imposed by nature and therefore irremediable?
Nevertheless, it must not be supposed, genuine as were these tributes
to Queen Victoria's political sagacity, that her example immediately
cleared out of the minds of the opponents the notion that women were
fitly classed with aliens, felons, idiots and lunatics, as persons who
for reasons of public safety were debarred from the exercise of the
Parliamentary franchise.
The Parliament returned in 1906 had an immense Liberal majority. There
were only 157 Unionist members in the House of Commons against 513
Liberals, Labour men and Nationalists, all of whom were for Home Rule
and therefore prepared to support in all critical divisions the new
administration which was formed under the Premiership of Sir Henry
Campbell Bannerman. The new House contained 426 members pledged to
Women's Suffrage. The Premier was himself a suffragist but his Cabinet
contained several determined anti-suffragists, notable among whom were
Mr. Herbert H. Asquith, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. James
Bryce, chief secretary for Ireland (now Lord Bryce), who became
British Ambassador to the United States in 1907. The new Prime
Minister received a large, representative suffrage deputation in May,
1906, in which all sections of suffragist opinion were represented,
and their case was laid before him with force and clearness. In reply
he told them that they had made out "a conclusive and irrefutable
case" but that he was not prepared to take any steps to realize their
hopes. When asked what he would advise ardent suffragists to do he
told them to "go on pestering." This advice was taken to heart by the
group (a small minority of the whole) who had lately formed in
Manchester the organization known as The Women's Social and Political
Union, led by Mrs. Pankhurst.
An unforeseen misfortune was the death in 1908 of Sir H. C. Bannerman
and the fact that his successor was our principal opponent in the
Government, Mr. Asquith. It was not very long before he revealed the
line of his attack upon the enfranchisement of women. He informed his
party in May, 1908, that his intention was to introduce before the
expiration of the existing Parliament a Reform Bill giving a wide
extension of the franchise to men and no franchise at all to women. In
the previous February a Women's Suffrage Bill which removed all sex
disability from existing franchises had passed its second reading in
the House of Commons but this apparently had no effect on Mr. Asquith.
There were, however, some cracks in his armour. He admitted that about
two-thirds of his Cabinet and a majority of his party were favourable
to Women's Suffrage and he promised that when his own exclusively male
Reform Bill was before the House and had got into committee, if an
amendment to include women were moved on democratic lines, his
Government, as a Government, would not oppose it. This was at all
events an advance on the position taken by Mr. Gladstone upon his
Reform Bill of 1884, when he vehemently opposed a women's suffrage
amendment and caused it to be defeated.
The emergence of what was afterwards known as "militancy" belongs to
this period, dating from the General Election of 1906 and very much
stimulated by Premier Bannerman's reply to the deputation in that year
and by the attitude of Mr. Asquith. It will ever be an open question
on which different people, with equal opportunities of forming a
judgment, will pronounce different verdicts, whether "militancy" did
more harm or good to the suffrage cause. It certainly broke down the
"conspiracy of silence" on the subject up to then observed by the
press. Every extravagance, every folly, every violent expression, and
of course when the "militants" after 1908 proceeded to acts of
violence, every outrage against person or property were given the
widest possible publicity not only in Great Britain but all over the
world. There was soon not an intelligent human being in any country
who was not discussing Women's Suffrage and arguing either for or
against it. This was an immense advantage to the movement, for we had,
as Sir H. Campbell Bannerman had said, "a conclusive and irrefutable
case." Our difficulty had been to get it heard and considered and this
"militancy" secured. The anti-suffrage press believed that it would
kill the movement and it was this belief which encouraged them to give
it the widest possible publicity. The wilder and more extravagant the
"militants" became the more they were quoted, described and advertised
in every way. The sort of "copy" which anti-suffrage papers demanded
was supplied by them in cartloads and not at all by law-abiding
suffragists, who were an immense majority of the whole. This can be
illustrated by an anecdote. The Constitutional suffragists had
organized a big meeting in Trafalgar Square and had secured a strong
team of first-rate speakers. The square was well filled and on the
fringe of the crowd the following conversation was overheard between
two press men who had come to report the proceedings. One said he was
going away, the second asked why and the first answered: "It's no good
stopping, there's no copy in this; these women are only talking
sense!"
The earlier years of militant activity were in my opinion helpful to
the whole movement, for up to 1908 the "militants" had only adopted
sensational and unusual methods, such as waving flags and making
speeches in the lobby of the House and asking inconvenient questions
at public meetings. They had suffered a great deal of violence but had
used none. From 1908 onwards, however, they began to use violence,
stone throwing, personal attacks, sometimes with whips, on obnoxious
members of the Government, window smashing, the destruction of the
contents of letter-boxes--in one instance the destruction of ballot
papers cast in an election. Later arson practised for the destruction
or attempted destruction of churches and houses became more and more
frequent. All this had an intensely irritating effect on public
opinion. "Suffragist" as far as the general public was concerned
became almost synonymous with "Harpy." This cause which had not been
defeated on a straight vote in the House of Commons since 1886 was now
twice defeated; once in 1912 and once in 1913. The whole spirit
engendered by attempting to gain by violence or threats of violence
what was not conceded to justice and reason was intensely inimical to
the spirit of our movement. We believed with profound conviction that
whatever might be gained in that way did not and could not rest on a
sure foundation. The women's movement was an appeal against government
by physical force and those who used physical violence in order to
promote it were denying their faith to make their faith prevail.
The difference made a deep rift in the suffrage movement. The
constitutional societies felt bound to exclude "militants" from their
membership and on several occasions issued strongly-worded protests
against the use of violence as political propaganda. The fact that men
under similar circumstances had been much more violent and
destructive, especially in earlier days when they were less civilized,
did not inspire us with the wish to imitate them. We considered that
they had been wrong and that "direct action," as it is now the fashion
to call coercion by means of physical force, had always reacted
unfavorably on those who employed it. While the constitutional
societies freely and repeatedly expressed their views on these points,
the "militants" not unnaturally retorted by attempting to break up our
meetings, shouting down our speakers and provoking every sort of
disorder at them. It was an exceptionally difficult situation and
that we won through as well as we did was due to the solid loyalty to
constitutional and law-abiding methods of propaganda of the great mass
of suffragists throughout the country. We quoted the American proverb,
"Three hornets can upset a camp meeting," and we determined to hold
steadily on our way and not let our hornets upset us. Our societies
multiplied rapidly both in numbers and in membership. For instance,
the number forming the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
increased from 64 in 1909 to 130 in 1910 and went on increasing
rapidly until just before the war in 1914 they numbered more than 600,
with a revenue of over 42,000 pounds a year.
More important in many ways than the "militant" movement was the
emergence at the General Election in 1906 of the Labour Party. Mr.
Keir Hardie, Mr. Philip Snowden and others of its leaders were very
strong supporters of women's suffrage and it was not long before the
party definitely made the enfranchisement of women on the same terms
as men a plank in its platform. In anticipation of the first General
Election of 1910, the N.U.W.S.S. addressed the leaders of the three
British parties, Conservative, Liberal, and Labour, asking them what
they were prepared to do for Women's Suffrage. Mr. Asquith gave his
answer at an Albert Hall meeting in December, 1909. He reiterated his
intention, if returned to power, of bringing in a Reform Bill, and he
promised to make the insertion of a Women's Suffrage amendment an open
question for the House of Commons to decide. He added: "The Government
... has no disposition or desire to burke the question; it is clearly
an issue on which the new House ought to be given an opportunity to
express its views." This meant that the Government whips would not be
put on to oppose the enfranchisement of women. Mr. Balfour replied to
our memorial that it was a non-party question on which members of the
Unionist Party could exercise individual freedom of action. Mr. Arthur
Henderson, for the Labour Party, told us that it had already placed
the enfranchisement of women on its programme. The Labour Party was
not large but it was an important advantage to us to have even a small
party definitely pledged to our support. There were two General
Elections in 1910, in January and December. The Liberal, Labour and
Nationalist group lost heavily in the second of these elections, their
majority being reduced from 334 to 124.
The Labour Party between these two elections had lost six seats but
they were still forty strong, all definitely pledged to Women's
Suffrage in the new Parliament which assembled in January, 1911. Our
Bill had been carried on its second reading in 1910 by a majority of
110 but after the second General Election of 1910 it secured on May 5,
1911, a majority of 167; there were 55 pairs, only 88 members of
Parliament going into the Lobby against us. The Bill on each of these
occasions was of a very limited character; it proposed to enfranchise
women-householders, widows and spinsters and would only have added
about a million women to the Parliamentary register. It was called the
Conciliation Bill, because it sought to conciliate the differences
between different types of suffragists in the House of Commons, from
the extreme Conservative who only cared for the representation of
women of property, to the extreme Radical who demanded the
enfranchisement of every woman. A committee was formed to promote the
success of this bill in Parliament of which the Earl of Lytton was
Chairman and Mr. H. N. Brailsford Hon. Sec. It was believed that the
bill represented the greatest common measure of the House of Commons'
belief in women's votes. The Labour Party were strongly in favour of a
much wider enfranchisement of women but generously waived their own
preferences in order, as they believed, to get some sort of
representation for women on the Statute Book. Almost immediately after
this large majority for the second reading of the Conciliation Bill in
May, 1911, an official announcement was made by the Government that
Mr. Asquith's promise of the previous November that an opportunity
should be afforded for proceeding with the bill in all its stages
would be fulfilled in the session of 1912.
We were then in the most favourable position we had ever occupied; the
passing of the Women's Suffrage Bill in the near future seemed a
certainty. The "militants" had suspended all their methods of violence
in order to give the Conciliation Bill a chance, and, as just
described, it had passed its second reading debate with a majority of
167 and time for "proceeding effectively" with a similar Bill in all
its stages had been promised. All the suffrage societies were working
harmoniously for the same Bill and the Women's Liberal Federation were
cooperating with the suffrage societies, when suddenly, like a bolt
from the blue, Mr. Asquith dealt us a characteristic blow. In reply to
a deputation from the People's Suffrage Federation early in November
he announced his intention of introducing during the coming session of
1912 the Electoral Reform Bill which he had foreshadowed in 1908; he
said that in this Bill all existing franchises would be swept away,
plural voting abolished and the period of residence reduced. The new
franchise to be created was, he added, to be based on citizenship and
votes were to be given to "citizens of full age and competent
understanding," but no mention was made of the enfranchisement of
women. On being asked what he intended to do about women's votes, he
dismissed the subject with the remark that his opinions on the subject
were well known and had suffered no change, but he reiterated the
promise of "facilities" for the Conciliation Bill in the 1912 Session.
The situation, therefore, was briefly this: An agitation of
ever-growing intensity and determination had for some years been
carried on by women for their own enfranchisement and no agitation at
all had been manifested by men for more votes for themselves; the
Prime Minister's response to this situation was to promise legislation
giving far larger and wider representation to men and none at all to
women. No wonder that he provoked an immediate outburst of militancy!
Stones were thrown and windows smashed all along the Strand,
Piccadilly, Whitehall and Bond Street, and members of the Government
went about in perpetual apprehension of personal assault.
The indignation of the Constitutional suffragists and of the Women's
Liberal Federation with Mr. Asquith was quite as real as that of the
"suffragettes" but it sought a different method of expression. Some
knowledge of this probably reached him, as for the first time in our
experience all the suffrage societies and the W.L.F. were invited by
the Prime Minister to form a deputation to him on the subject. What we
were accustomed to was sending an urgent demand to him to receive us
in a deputation and to get his reply that he believed "no useful
purpose would be served" by yielding to our request; but now, in
November, 1911, he was inviting us to come and see him! Of course we
went. His whole demeanor was much more conciliatory than it had ever
been before. He acknowledged the strength and intensity of the demand
of women for representation and admitted that in opposing it he was in
a minority both in his Cabinet and in his party; finally he added
that, although his personal opinions on the subject prevented him from
initiating and proposing the change which women were pressing for, he
was prepared to bow to and acquiesce in the considered judgment of the
House of Commons, and he stated that this course was quite in
accordance with the best traditions of English public life. The
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, of which I was the
mouthpiece, then put the following questions:
(1) Is it the intention of the Government that the Reform Bill shall
go through all its stages in 1912?
(2) Will the Bill be drafted in such a way as to admit of amendments
introducing women on other terms than men?
(3) Will the Government undertake not to oppose such amendments?
(4) Will the Government regard any amendment enfranchising women,
which is carried, as an integral part of the Bill be defended by the
Government in all its later stages?
To all these questions, as they were put severally, Mr. Asquith
replied "Yes, certainly."
Mr. Lloyd George, who was present, was pressed by the deputation to
speak but did so only very briefly. He was known as an opponent of the
Conciliation Bill but had voted for it in 1911 because it was so
drafted as to admit of free amendment. He made no secret of his
conviction that the wider enfranchisement afforded by amendment of the
Government measure would, to use his own expression, "torpedo" the
Conciliation Bill. Almost immediately after the deputation thus
described he sent the following message to the N.U.W.S.S.: "The Prime
Minister's pronouncement as to the attitude to be adopted by the
Government towards the question seems to make the carrying of a
Women's Suffrage Amendment to next year's Franchise Bill a certainty.
I am willing to do all in my power to help those who are labouring to
reach a successful issue in the coming session. Next year provides the
supreme opportunity and nothing but unwise handling of that chance can
compass failure."