Volume V Part 47 (1/2)

Bouimistrow, a member of the Russian Relief Council, spoke of the warm feeling of that country for the United States and the bond between them created by the war in which they had a common enemy. Mrs. Nellie McClung, a leader of the Canadian suffragists, described what the war had meant to the women of the Dominion, and, as the _Woman Citizen_ said in its account, ”kept her hearers wavering between laughter and tears as she hid her own emotion behind a veil of stoicism and humor.”

The convention ended with a ma.s.s meeting at the theater on Sunday afternoon at three o'clock with a notable audience such as can a.s.semble only in Was.h.i.+ngton. Mrs. Catt presided. Mrs. McClung told enthusiastically the story of How Suffrage Came to the Women of Canada in 1916 and 1917, and Miss Fraser related how the work of women during the war had made it impossible for the British Government longer to deny them the franchise, that now only awaited the a.s.sent of the House of Lords, which was near at hand. It was always left to Dr. Shaw to finish the program. One who had attended many suffrage conventions said of her at this time: ”As ever, Dr. Shaw's oratory was a marked feature of the week's proceedings. Sometimes she was the able advocate of loyalty to the country; sometimes she rose to heights of supplication for an applied democracy which shall include women; sometimes the mischief that is in her bubbled and sparkled to the surface.”

Mrs. Catt closed the meeting with ringing words of inspiration, with a call for more and better work than had ever been done before and with a prophecy that the long-awaited victory was almost won. This convention, which had been held under such unfavorable auspices, proved to have been one of the best in way of accomplishment, and, although the papers were overflowing with news of the war, they came to the national suffrage press bureau from 44 States with excellent accounts of the convention; there were over 300 ill.u.s.trated ”stories”

and it was estimated that it had received half a million words of ”publicity.”

It had been customary to have a hearing on the Federal Suffrage Amendment before the committees of every new Congress and this year an extra session had been called in the spring. As the question of a special Committee on Woman Suffrage in the Lower House was under consideration no hearing before its Judiciary Committee was asked for but a hearing took place before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage April 20. This was largely a matter of routine as the entire committee was ready to report favorably the resolution for the amendment.

Chairman Jones announced that the entire forenoon had been set apart for the hearing, which would be in charge of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation. Mrs.

Catt said: ”The Senate Committee of Woman Suffrage was established in 1883. Thirty-four years have pa.s.sed since then and seventeen Congresses. We confidently believe that we are appearing before the last of these committees and that it will be your immortal fame, Mr.

Chairman, to present the last report for woman suffrage to the United States Senate.” With words of highest praise she introduced Senator John F. Shafroth of Colorado, ”who has been our staunch and unfailing friend through trial and adversity.”

Senator Shafroth answered conclusively from the twenty-four years'

experience of his State the stock objections to woman suffrage, which he declared to be ”simply another step in the evolution of government which has been going on since the dawn of civilization.” He asked to have printed as part of his speech two chapters of Mrs. Catt's new book Woman Suffrage by Const.i.tutional Amendment, which was so ordered.

Senator Kendrick of Wyoming, former Governor, gave his experience of woman suffrage in that State for thirty-eight years. He declared that the early settlers were of the type of the Revolutionary Fathers and gladly gave to woman any right they claimed. He testified to the help he had received from them ”in the promotion of every piece of progressive legislation” and said: ”If for no other reason than the forces that are fighting woman suffrage, every decent man ought to line up in favor of it.” He closed as follows: ”Here and now I want to give this Const.i.tutional Amendment my unqualified endors.e.m.e.nt. No State that has adopted woman suffrage has ever even considered a plan to get along without it. It is soon realized that the votes of women are not for sale at any price, and, while they align themselves with the different parties, one thing is always and preeminently true--they never fail to put principle above partisans.h.i.+p and patriotism above patronage.” Senator William Howard Thompson of Kansas sketched the steady progress of woman suffrage in his State, told of its beneficent results and submitted a comprehensive address which he had made before the Senate in 1914.

The committee listened with much interest to the first woman member of Congress, Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who reviewed the almost insurmountable difficulties of amending many State const.i.tutions for woman suffrage and made an earnest plea for the Federal Amendment. Senator Charles S. Thomas of Colorado, who for the past twenty-five years had been a consistent and never failing friend of woman suffrage, said in beginning: ”I learned this lesson in my early manhood by reading the addresses of and listening to such advocates as Susan B. Anthony,” and he summed up his strong speech by saying: ”The matter is simply one of abstract and of concrete justice.

We cannot preach universal suffrage unless we practice it and we can never practice it while fifty per cent. of our population is disfranchised.” Senator Reed Smoot of Utah, to whom the women of his State could always look for help in this and every other good cause, said in his brief remarks: ”I have for many years watched the work and the sacrifices by many of the best women of this country to bring this question before the people and convince them of its justice and righteousness and I have gloried with them in every victory they have won. Nothing on earth will stop it. The country will not much longer tolerate it that a woman shall have the privilege of voting in one State and upon moving into another be disfranchised.”

Mrs. Catt stated that Senators Chamberlain of Oregon and Johnson of California, were not able to be present and asked that the favorable speeches they would have made be put in the Congressional Record, which was granted. Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana made a thorough a.n.a.lysis of the att.i.tude of the Federal Const.i.tution toward suffrage and its gradual extension and declared that it was now ”the duty of the government to see that every one of its citizens was a.s.sured of this fundamental right.” The hearing was closed by Mrs. Catt with a comprehensive review of the status of woman suffrage throughout the world and the naming of the many countries where it prevailed. She pointed out that Great Britain and her colonies had recognized the political rights of women as the United States had never done, and, now that they were to be called on for the supreme sacrifices of the war, the British Government was granting them the franchise, which our own Government was still withholding. ”This fact,” she said, ”has saddened the lives of women, it has dimmed their vision of American ideals and lowered their respect for our Government. The tremendous capacity of women for constructive work, for upbuilding the best in civilization and for enthusiastic patriotism has been crushed. In consequence this greatest force for good has been minimized and the entire nation is the loser.” Senator Walsh's and Mrs. Catt's speeches were printed in a separate pamphlet and circulated by the thousands.

On April 26 the Senate Committee granted a hearing to that branch of the suffrage movement called the National Woman's Party. Miss Anne Martin, its vice-chairman, presided and able speeches were made by Mrs. Mary Ritter Beard and Mrs. Rheta Childe Dorr of New York; Mrs.

Richard F. Wainwright of the District; Miss Madeline Z. Doty and Miss Ernestine Evans, war correspondents; Miss Alice Carpenter, chairman of the New York Women's Navy League; Miss Rankin and Dudley Field Malone, collector of the port of New York. On May 3 the National Anti-Suffrage a.s.sociation claimed a hearing. Its president, Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, introduced the president of the New York branch, the wife of U. S.

Senator James W. Wadsworth, Jr., who presided. The speakers were Miss Minnie Bronson, national secretary; Miss Lucy Price of Ohio; Judge Oscar Leser of Maryland and Mrs. A. J. George of Ma.s.sachusetts. Their speeches, which fill twenty pages of the printed report, comprise a full resume of the arguments against the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women and will be read with curiosity by future students of this question. On May 15, at the request of the National Woman's Party, the committee granted a supplementary hearing at which the speakers were J. A. H.

Hopkins of New Jersey, representing the new Progressive party being organized; John Spargo of Vermont, representing the Socialist Party; Virgil Henshaw, national chairman of the Prohibition party and Miss Mabel Vernon. They gave to the committee copies of a ”memorial” which they had presented to President Wilson urging immediate action by Congress. It was signed also by former Governor David I. Walsh of Ma.s.sachusetts for the Progressive Democrats and Edward A. Rumely for the Progressive Republicans. The pamphlet of these four hearings, of which the Senate Committee furnished 10,000 copies, was widely used for propaganda.

A hearing was held on May 18 before the Committee on Rules of the Lower House, with the entire members.h.i.+p present: Representatives Edward W. Pou, N. C.; chairman; James C. Cantrill, Ky.; Martin D.

Foster, Ills.; Finis J. Garrett, Tenn.; ”Pat” Harrison, Miss.; M.

Clyde Kelly, Penn.; Irvine L. Lenroot, Wis.; Daniel J. Riordan, N. Y.; Thomas D. Schall, Minn.; Bertrand H. Snell, N. Y.; William R. Wood, Ind. Its purpose was to urge favorable report for a Committee on Woman Suffrage. The speakers for the National American Suffrage a.s.sociation were Judge Raker, Representatives Jeannette Rankin of Montana; Edward T. Taylor of Colorado; Frank W. Mondell of Wyoming and Edward Keating of Colorado; Mrs. Maud Wood Park, chairman, and Mrs. Helen H.

Gardener, member of the a.s.sociation's Congressional Committee. The speakers for the National Woman's Party were Miss Martin, Miss Maud Younger, Mrs. Wainwright, Miss Vernon, Representatives George F.

O'Shaughnessy of Rhode Island; C. N. McArthur of Oregon; Carl Hayden of Arizona. On December 13 a Committee on Woman Suffrage was appointed.

FOOTNOTES:

[107] Signed: Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, honorary president; Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president; Mrs. Walter McNab Miller, Mrs. Stanley McCormick and Miss Esther G. Ogden, vice-presidents; Mrs. Frank J.

Shuler, corresponding secretary; Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Smith, recording secretary; Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers, treasurer; Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs, auditor; Mrs. Maud Wood Park, chairman Congressional Committee; Miss Rose Young, chairman of Press; Mrs. Arthur L.

Livermore, chairman of Literature.

[108] On the list were: All the members of the Cabinet except Secretary of State Lansing; nineteen U.S. Senators and fourteen prominent Representatives; Speaker Champ Clark; U.S. Commissioner of Education Philander P. Claxton; a.s.sistant Secretary of Agriculture Carl Vrooman; Justices of the Supreme Court of the District Wendell P.

Stafford and Frederick L. Siddons; Secretary to the President Joseph P. Tumulty; Commissioners of the District Louis Brownlow and W. Gwynn Gardiner; former Commissioners Henry F. MacFarland and Simon Wolf; Major Raymond S. Pullman, Chief of Police; Resident Commissioner and Mme. Jaime De Veyra (Philippine Islands); Resident Commissioner Felix C. Davila (Porto Rico); John Barrett, director of the Pan-American Union; Major-General W. C. Gorgas; the Reverends U. G. B. Pierce, Henry N. Couden, chaplain of the House of Representatives; James Shera Montgomery, Rabbi Abram Simon, John Van Schaick, president of the School Board; Theodore Noyes, editor of the _Evening Star_; Arthur Brisbane, the _Times_; C. T. Brainerd, the Was.h.i.+ngton _Herald_; W. P.

Spurgeon, the Was.h.i.+ngton _Post_; Gilbert Grosvenor, editor of the _National Geographic Magazine_; J. Leftwich Sinclair, president, and Thomas Grant, secretary of the Was.h.i.+ngton Chamber of Commerce; Dr.

Harry A. Garfield, president Williams College and director Fuel Administration for the United States; Edward P. Costigan, U. S. Tariff Commission; Frank A. Vanderlip, V. Everit Macy, on War Boards; Samuel Gompers, president American Federation of Labor; Alexander Graham Bell; Gifford Pinchot; Dr. Ryan Devereux; General Julian S. Carr, commander-in-chief United Confederate Veterans.