When we go to the voters of a campaign State to ask them to vote "yes" on a woman suffrage amendment, we go as pet.i.tioners with smiles and arguments and unwearied patience. We tell them over and over again the same well established truths; that it is the essence of democracy that all cla.s.ses of people should have the power of protection in their own hands; that women are people and that they have special interests which need representation in politics; that where women have the right to vote they vote in the same proportion as men; that on the whole their influence in government has been decidedly good and absolutely no evils can be traced to that influence. In short, we reason and plead with them, try to touch their sense of honor, their sense of justice, their reason, whatever n.o.ble human quality they possess.
That is one way of getting woman suffrage in the United States, a long, laborious and very costly way. We have now achieved it in nine States and are a political power, and the time has come for us to compel this great reform by the simple, direct, American method of amending the Federal Const.i.tution. Our argument is not one of justice or democracy or fair play--it is one of political expediency. Our plea is simply that you look at the little suffrage map. That triumphant, threatening army of white States crowding rapidly eastward toward the center of population is the sum and substance of our argument. It represents 4,000,000 women voters. Do you want to put yourselves in the very delicate position of going to those women next fall for endors.e.m.e.nt and re-election after having refused even to report a woman suffrage amendment out of committee for discussion on the floor of the House?
You might say, "Why do you select this Democratic administration for your demand? This is the first time in eighteen years that this party has been in control of the Government. We are doing our best to give the people what they want; we are trying to live up to our platform pledges; we think we are doing pretty well.
Why persist in embarra.s.sing us with this very troublesome question?" ... I answer that if this Congress adjourns without taking action on the woman suffrage amendment it will be because the party deliberately dodged the issue. Every woman voter will know this and we have faith that the woman voter will stand by us. You will go to her and say: "We have lowered the tariff; we have made new banking laws; we have avoided war with Mexico," and she will say: "It is true you have done these things, but you have done a great injustice to my sister in this nearby State.
She asked for a fundamental democratic right, a right which I possess and which you are asking me to exercise in your favor.
It was in your power to extend this right to her and you refused, and after this you come to me and ask me for my vote, but I shall show you that we stand together on this question, my sister and I."
Several of the committee made caustic remarks about trying to hold the Democrats responsible after the Republicans had ignored them during all the past years. Mrs. Evans then introduced Mary (Mrs. Charles R.) Beard, wife of the well-known professor in Columbia University. Her address in the stenographic report of the hearing filled seven closely printed pages, an able review of the Democratic party"s record in regard to Federal legislation. It was the most complete expose of the fallacy of the Democratic contention that this party stood for State"s rights as opposed to Federal rights ever made at a hearing in behalf of woman suffrage and is most inadequately represented by quotations.
In the course of it she said:
Did Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, founders of the Democratic party, rend the air with cries of State"s rights against Federal usurpation when the Federalists chartered the first United States bank in 1791, and when the Federalist Court, under the leadership of John Marshall, rendered one ringing nationalist decision after another upholding the rights of the nation against the claims of the States? Jefferson, as President, acquired the Louisiana Territory in what he admitted was an open violation of the Federal Const.i.tution; and the same James Madison who opposed the Federalist bank in 1790 as a violation of the Const.i.tution and State rights, cheerfully signed the bill rechartering that bank when it became useful to the fiscal interests of the Democratic party. Jefferson was ready to nullify the alien and sedition laws and the Const.i.tution of the United States in the Kentucky resolutions of 1798. The very Federalists who fought him in that day and denounced him as a traitor and nullifier lived to proclaim and practice doctrines of nullification in behalf of State"s rights during the War of 1812.
In the administration of Jefferson the Federal Government began the construction of the great national road without any express authority from the Const.i.tution and notwithstanding the fact that the construction of highways was admittedly a State matter.... On August 24, 1912, the Congress of the United States, then controlled by the Democratic party, voted $5,000,000 for the construction of experimental and rural-delivery routes and to aid the States in highway construction. From high in the councils of that party we now have the advocacy of national ownership of railways, telegraph and telephone lines.
In the early days of the republic the Democratic party protested even in armed insurrection in Pennsylvania against the inquisitorial excise tax, which, to use the language of that day, "penetrated a sphere of taxation reserved to the State."
Today this party has placed upon the statute books the most inquisitorial tax ever laid in the history of our country by the act of April 9, 1912--a tax on white phosphorus matches, not for the purpose of raising revenues, for which the taxing power is conferred, but admittedly for the purpose of destroying an industry which it could not touch otherwise. The match industry was found to be injurious to a few hundred workingmen, women and children. The Democratic party wisely and justly cast to the four winds all talk about the rights of States, made the match business a national affair and destroyed its dangerous features.
Men and women all over the country rose up and p.r.o.nounced it a n.o.ble achievement. Republicans joined with the Democrats in claiming the honor of that great humane service.
I have not yet finished with this tattered shibboleth. The State had the right to nullify Federal law in 1798, so Jefferson taught and Kentucky practiced. Half a century elapsed; the State of Wisconsin, rock-ribbed Republican, nullified the fugitive slave law and in its p.r.o.nunciamento of nullification quoted the very words which Jefferson used in 1798. A Democratic Supreme Court at Washington, presided over by Chief Justice Taney, the arch apostle of State rights, answered Wisconsin in the very language of the Federalists of 1798, whom Jefferson despised and condemned: "The Const.i.tution and laws of the United States are supreme, and the Supreme Court is the only and final arbiter of disputes between the State and National Governments."
A few more years elapsed. South Carolina declared the right of the State to nullify and Wisconsin answered on the field of battle: "The Const.i.tution and laws of the National Government are supreme, so help us G.o.d!" ... At the close of that ever to be regretted war the nation wrote into the Const.i.tution the 14th and 15th Amendments, their fundamental principle that the suffrage is a national matter. Those amendments were intended to establish forever adult male suffrage....
Mrs. Beard then presented for the record a thorough synopsis of the proceedings in relation to the franchise of the convention that framed the U. S. Const.i.tution, which showed, she declared, that it would have made a national suffrage qualification if the members could have agreed on one. "In all the great federations of the world," she said, "Germany, Canada, Australia, suffrage is regarded as a national question," and continued: "If respect for the great and wise who have viewed suffrage as a national matter did not compel us so to regard it, the plain dictates of common sense would do so. We are all ruled by the laws made by Congress, from Maine to California; we must all obey them equally whether we like them or not. We are taxed under them; we travel according to rules laid down by the Interstate Commerce Commission under the Interstate Commerce law; the remaining national resources are to be conserved by Congress; whether we have peace or war depends upon Congress. Is it of no concern who compose Congress, who vote for members of Congress and for the President?"
It was shown by Mrs. Beard how closely national and State policies were interwoven; that the submission of this amendment would take it to the State Legislatures for a final decision; how with woman suffrage in nine States there was a much greater demand for it than there was for the one changing the method of electing U. S. Senators; how the plank in the national platform adopted in Baltimore exempting American ships in coastwise trade from Panama ca.n.a.l tolls was now before the Democrats in Congress for repudiation; how another plank demanded State action on presidential primaries and President Wilson called for a national law. Now a Democratic Congress refused to submit a national suffrage amendment because the platform did not ask for it!
She concluded: "No, gentlemen, you can not answer us by shaking in our faces that tatterdemalion of a State"s rights scarecrow.... It is a travesty upon our reasoning faculties to suppose that we can not put two and two together. It is underestimating our strength and our financial resources to suppose that we can not place these plain facts in the hands of 15,000,000 voters, including over 3,000,000 women. To take away from the States the right to determine how Presidential electors shall be chosen is upholding the Const.i.tution and the previous rights of the States; but to submit to the States an amendment permitting them to decide for themselves whether they want woman suffrage for the nation is a violent usurpation of State"s rights! We can not follow your logic."
Dr. Cora Smith King of Seattle, who had so large a part in obtaining equal suffrage in Washington, said:
I am a voter like yourselves; I am eligible to become a member of Congress, like any one of you. However, I do not stand before you as one voter only but to remind you that there are nearly 4,000,000 women voters in the United States today. I represent an organization called the National Council of Women Voters, organized in every one of the States where women vote on equal terms with men. These States, as you know, are Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, California, Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona.
There are three objects of the Council: One is to educate ourselves in the exercise of our citizenship; the second is to aid in our own States where we vote in putting upon the statute books laws beneficial to men and women, children and the home; and our third object is the one which brings me here this morning--to aid in the further extension of suffrage to women.
The members of your committee from the latest equal suffrage States will bear me out in saying that there are thousands of women voters who have not yet made their party alignment. I desire to call attention to these many thousands who have only recently won the battle which they have fought so earnestly--as I have done from the time that I attained my majority and have not yet forgotten what it cost--and who have their ears attuned to the plea of their sisters in the other States. I remind you, gentlemen, that they may not prove unheeding when requested to vote for the men who are favorable to the further extension of suffrage. I trust that this present committee will not justify the charge of being a graveyard for many suffrage bills. I warn you that ghosts may walk.
Mrs. William Kent, wife of Representative Kent of California, spoke briefly, telling how the suffrage societies there became civic leagues after the vote was won and stood solidly back of seventeen bills relating to the welfare of the State and the home and the influence they were able to exert because of having the franchise. She urged the committee to submit the amendment and spare women the further drudgery of State campaigns and a.s.sured them that the women would not stop until the last one was enfranchised. Representative Joseph R. Knowland of California gave earnest testimony in favor of the practical working of woman suffrage in that State saying: "For years we heard the same arguments against equal rights for women as we hear today but we have tried it and many who were most bitterly opposed are now glad that California has given the franchise to women. It has proved an unqualified success. What I desire to impress upon this committee is that even though you may oppose the amendment it is your duty to report it in order that every member of the House may have an opportunity to register his vote for or against it."
Mrs. Donald Hooker of Baltimore pointed out the injustice of permitting women to vote in California, for instance, and holding them disfranchised when they crossed the State boundary line, and asked the committee to put themselves in the place of citizens so discriminated against. Mrs. Evans closed the hearing in an interesting speech but as she could not resist eulogizing President Wilson she was a.s.sailed by a storm of questions and remarks from the Republican members of the committee as to his att.i.tude on woman suffrage, while her support of the Democratic party brought protests from the members of the Congressional Union.
Mrs. McCormick closed for her side by saying: "Mr. Chairman, I simply want to clear up what may be a little confused in your mind in regard to the difference in the policy in the two organizations represented here today. I represent the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, and, as we have stated over and over again, it has enrolled more than 462,000 women, organized in every non-suffrage State in the country. Our policy, which is adopted by our annual convention, is strictly non-partisan. We do not hold any party responsible for the pa.s.sage of this amendment. We are organizing all over the country, using the congressional district as our limit, in order to educate the const.i.tuents of you gentlemen in regard to the great need to enfranchise women and we do not hold the policy which is adopted by the smaller organization, the Congressional Union."
This brought the members of the Judiciary Committee into action again and they persisted in knowing the size of the Congressional Union until Mrs. Benedict answered: "Our immediate membership is not our strong point." Mr. Webb of North Carolina repeated the question why the Republican party, which was in power sixteen years, was not held responsible for not reporting the amendment and she replied that it was not until after the elections of 1912 that the women were in a position to hold any party responsible.
Mrs. Frances Dilopoulo spoke for a moment. Miss Janet Richards (D. C.) called the attention of the committee to the etymology of the word democracy--_demos_, people; _kratein_, to rule--rule of the people--and asked: "If women must pay taxes and must abide by the law, how can the suffrage be denied to them in a true democracy?" She spoke of her personal study of the question in Finland and the Scandinavian countries where women are enfranchised. Dr. Clara W.
McNaughton (D. C.), vice-president of the Federal Women"s Equality a.s.sociation, in closing stated that they had a tent on the field of Gettysburg during its 50th anniversary and found the old soldiers almost to a man in favor of woman suffrage. Mrs. Evans filed a carefully prepared paper, State versus Federal Action on Woman Suffrage. Mrs. Helen H. Gardener (D. C.), officially connected with the National American a.s.sociation, submitted to the committees a comprehensive "brief" on the case which said in part:
In a published statement yesterday the Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, used these simple, direct, easily understood words: "All believers in a republic accept the doctrine that the government must derive its just powers from the consent of the governed and the President gives every legitimate encouragement to those who represent this idea while he discourages those who attempt to overthrow or ignore the principles of popular government."
I am sure that all of us hope and want to believe that this latest p.r.o.nouncement given out officially as from the leading Cabinet officer was intended to be accepted at home as well as abroad as literally and absolutely true and not a mere bit of spectacular oratory. But if it is true, then not one of you gentlemen who has it in his heart to oppose woman suffrage is a believer in our form of government; not one of you is loyal to the flag; not one of you is a true American. You do not allow us women to give our consent, yet we are governed. You are not sitting in Congress justly and Mr. Bryan and the President do not believe that you are--none of you except those who are from woman suffrage States--or else that official statement is mere oratory for foreign consumption. He says that the President discourages those who attempt to overthrow or even to "ignore" this principle of popular government. We are more than glad to believe that Mr.
Bryan is correct in this plain statement, for then we will know that a number of you will receive a good deal of "discouragement"
at the hands of the President, and that those of you who stand with us and vote for us will receive your sure reward from him, in that "every legitimate encouragement" will be yours, and also, incidentally, ours. We need it, we think it is overdue. Up to the present time we have not felt that either the President or the Secretary of State quite fully realized that there is a good deal of belated encouragement due us and quite a limitless supply of discouragement due those who try "to overthrow or ignore" all semblance of a belief in the right of women to give their consent to their own government. I am glad to have so high an authority that the good time is not only coming but that it has at last arrived--and through the Democratic party!
Again, in this simple, plain, seemingly frank statement of the Secretary of State, he says: ... "Nothing will be encouraged away from home that is forbidden here." Yet, away from home, he says, the fixed foreign policy is that "the people shall have such officers as they desire," and that these officers must have "the consent of the governed." That is precisely what we women demand.
Are the Mexican peons more to our Government than are the women of America? If the Mexican officials must be disciplined, unless they are ready to admit that "the consent of the governed must be obtained" before there can be a legitimate government which we can recognize, how it is possible for you and for the President and for the State Department absolutely to ignore or refuse the same ethical and political principle here at home for one-half of all the people, who form what you call and hold up to the world as a republic?
No one who lives, who ever lived, who ever will live understands or really accepts and believes in a republic which denies to women the right of consent by their ballots to that government.
Such a position is unthinkable and the time has come when an aristocracy of s.e.x must give place to a real republic or the absurdity of the position, as it exists, will make us the laughing stock of the world. Let us either stop our pretence before the nations of the earth of being a republic and having "equality before the law" or else let us become the republic that we pretend to be.
This concluded the hearing for the suffrage a.s.sociations and as the "antis" also had asked for one they occupied the afternoon. Mrs.
Arthur M. Dodge, the president of the National a.s.sociation Opposed to Woman Suffrage, said in opening the discussion: "We begin to hear from all over the country a very decided demand for help. The women are beginning to be frightened. They are frightened at exactly the same sort of thing by which the suffragists try to frighten you men--noise--so that in many States women are beginning to organize for the first time against suffrage. We are here today rather against our wishes. We did not want to bother you men again because the matter has been pretty well settled for this session of Congress at least. But the suffragists had demanded a hearing of you gentlemen, and so we asked you to hear us, and you have very courteously extended to us that privilege. We are here to represent the majority of women still quiet but not going to be quiet very much longer...." Mrs. Dodge made an a.n.a.lysis of the number of enfranchised women to show that the parties had nothing to fear and said in closing: "I wish to say that the suffragists who make these threats are not representing the women of the country. It is the women of the country whom we try to represent and we have tried for several years against the noisy, insistent and persistent demands of a group."
The other women speakers were Mrs. Henry White, member of the executive committee of the Ma.s.sachusetts a.s.sociation; Miss Alice Hill Chittenden, president of the New York a.s.sociation; Miss Marjorie Dorman, secretary of the Women Wage-earners" Anti-Suffrage League of New York City[97]; Mrs. O. D. Oliphant of New Jersey, who was not able to reach Washington but whose paper on Feminism was put into the report; Miss Minnie Bronson, secretary of the National a.s.sociation.
Miss Bronson"s address, which was largely statistical, called out many questions from the suffrage members of the committee. She said the a.s.sociation had approximately 100,000 members.[98]
The first of the men speakers against the amendment was J.N. Matthews (N. J.) who began by saying it would be difficult for him to put aside his Democratic partisanship even for a moment. He was soon involved in a wrangle with the committee which occupied over half of the s.p.a.ce filled by his speech in the report. This was true also of the speech of Representative Thomas J. Heflin (Ala.), which ended with a long poem ent.i.tled The Only Regeneration, beginning: "There"s no earthly use in prating of eugenics" saving grace." Mrs. Dodge had scored the suffragists for having more than one a.s.sociation but delegates from three of the "antis" were present at this hearing, the Guidon Society of New York City, represented by a New York lawyer, John R. Don Pa.s.sos, who stated that he represented also the Man Suffrage a.s.sociation. He filed a "brief" of its president, Everett P. Wheeler, a Democratic New York lawyer, ent.i.tled Home Rule. As was the case with the other men speakers most of his time was taken up by the "heckling"
of the committee and his answers. In the latter he said that woman suffrage sooner or later would have a tendency to destroy the home, hurt the social and moral standard of women and "convert them into beasts."
Dr. Mary Walker spoke ten minutes at her own request, scoring the suffragists and saying that women already had the right to vote under the National Const.i.tution. Mrs. Evans closed the hearing.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] Part of Call: Our task will be to formulate judgment on those great issues of the day which nearly concern women; to choose the leaders who during the coming year are to guide the fortunes of our cause; and finally, to deliberate how the whole national body may on the one hand best give aid and succor to the States working for their own enfranchis.e.m.e.nt and on the other press for federal action in behalf of the women of the nation at large....
Since the last convention met all the horror of a great war has fallen upon the civilized world. The hearts of thousands of women have been torn by the death and wounds of those they bore, of those they love, yet never has their will and power to help been greater, never man"s need of such help been more clearly seen. We, who are spared the anguish of war, well understand that as weight is given in the world"s affairs to the voice of women, moved as men are not by all the tragic waste of battles, the chances of such slaughter must perpetually diminish. Now is the time when all things point to the violence that rules the world, now is the very time to press our claim to a share in the guidance of our country"s fortunes, to urge that woman"s vision must second and ratify that of man. Let us then in convention a.s.sembled kindle with the thought that, as we consider methods for the political enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of our s.e.x, our wider purpose is to free women and to enable their conception of life in all its aspects to find expression.... Let us set a fresh seal upon the great new loyalty of woman to woman; let our response be felt in the deep tide of fellowship and understanding among all women which today is rising around the world.
ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President.
JANE ADDAMS, First Vice-President.
MADELINE BRECKINRIDGE, Second Vice-President.
CAROLINE RUUTZ-REES, Third Vice-President.
SUSAN WALKER FITZGERALD, Recording Secretary.
KATHARINE DEXTER MCCORMICK, Treasurer.
HARRIET BURTON LAIDLAW,} LOUISE DEKOVEN BOWEN, } Auditors.
[83] Complete, universal suffrage was conferred by the Parliament in 1917.
[84] For a number of years Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw of Boston gave Dr. Shaw a fund for campaign work.
[85] A portion of this report is in the chapter on the Federal Suffrage Amendment.
[86] The Federal Suffrage Amendment had been thoroughly debated and voted on in the Senate in 1887; the question of woman suffrage itself discussed in 1866, 1881-3-4-5-6 in the Senate; at great length in the Lower House in 1883 and 1890 and briefly in both houses at other times.
[87] Instead of seven or eight amendments there was only one and never had been but one--the old, original amendment introduced by Senator A.
A. Sargent (Calif.) in 1878. There was and long had been one "bill"
advocated, the one to give women so-called "federal" suffrage, the right to vote for Senators and Representatives, but it had never been reported out of committee. There was no bill before Congress to give women the right to vote for Presidential electors and there was no other bill proposed. It was of course the "State"s rights argument"
that had been the continuous barrier to the Federal Suffrage Amendment ever since it was first introduced but the favorable att.i.tude of a majority of the Senators showed how much progress had been made in meeting that argument.
[88] On the contrary at a public hearing before the Judiciary Committee of the Lower House on March 3, Mrs. Funk referred several times to such an amendment and stated that she represented an a.s.sociation of 462,000 women. She intimated that she knew the old amendment could not pa.s.s and that another might be introduced, which, it was hoped, would be more acceptable. The vote was not taken in the Senate till March 19. Meanwhile the newspapers gave to the suffragists of the country their first knowledge of the new amendment and vigorous protests soon followed, especially from the older leaders of the movement. _The Woman"s Journal_ of March 28 said editorially: "It is felt by many that before the Congressional Committee introduced a wholly new measure, which had never been sanctioned or even considered by the National a.s.sociation, it ought to have been submitted to the National Executive Council."