Volume VI Part 26 (1/2)

League, the Players' League, etc. Local branches were built up rapidly under the leaders.h.i.+p of Mrs. Pinkham, State organization chairman, and by the spring of 1914 there were 138 leagues and committees. Just before the vote in November, 1915, these had grown to 200. Monthly conferences of the district leaders were held at State headquarters. A systematic effort was made to build up strong suffrage organizations in the cities outside of Boston. Workers and speakers were sent through the State to help the local workers. In 1914 a series of two-day conferences was held in eleven of the sixteen counties, the first day devoted to discussion of work with local leaders and the second to holding often as many as twenty meetings by a corps of speakers, at factories, stores, men's clubs, labor unions, church organizations, on the street, etc.

To educate the men who were to vote upon the question, a State-wide canva.s.s of voters was begun by Mrs. Crowley, which was carried on up to election day. A body of from five to seven intelligent women, informed on the question, re-enforced by local volunteers, called from house to house, talking to the voter or his wife, leaving suffrage literature and if possible getting the voter's signature to a card pledge to vote yes. These canva.s.sers moved from city to city and from town to town, reaching from one-half to two-thirds of the registered voters, averaging about 1,500 calls per week and leaving the rest of the work to be carried on by local women. By election day over 250,000 voters had been interviewed, 100,000 had signed pledge cards and more than 50,000 others had expressed themselves as favorable.

Much of this work was made possible by the activities of the Ways and Means Committee of the State a.s.sociation, under the chairmans.h.i.+p of Mrs. B. F. Pitman, who, during the many years that she served in that capacity, repeatedly rescued the a.s.sociation from the verge of debt and filled up its treasury. Her committee accomplished this by a Bay State Bazaar held every year at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston; by b.a.l.l.s, theatrical performances, outdoor fetes, pageants and other entertainments.

As an extra provision for the campaign of 1915, the Bay State Finance Committee was formed in 1914 by Mrs. Park, chairman, which with the State a.s.sociation raised and spent about $54,000 in the campaign. This was exclusive of the money spent by the various leagues and branches throughout the State, including $10,820 by the Boston a.s.sociation for Good Government.

For two years educational work was pushed in every way. It was carried into the country districts by systematic trolley and automobile trips, parties of workers carrying out well planned itineraries in different parts of the State, involving usually from two to four open-air meetings per day. Audiences were secured in all the small and scattered places, even the most remote, by postal notices mailed from State headquarters several days in advance to every registered voter.

Among the means employed to draw attention were huge ”Votes for Women” kites, voiceless speeches (a series of placards held up to view in a store window or other public place), distribution of literature in the baseball parks; a suffrage automobile or a section in the parades on Labor Day, Columbus Day, etc.; a pilgrimage to Worcester on the anniversary of the First National Woman's Rights Convention, led by Miss Florence Lus...o...b..in old-fas.h.i.+oned costume, in Lucy Stone's carriage; the running of propaganda films in the moving pictures and the placing of 100,000 brightly painted tin Blue Birds in conspicuous places throughout the State, each bird bearing the words ”Votes for Women, Nov. 2, 1919.” There were speakers and debates at men's clubs, church organizations, labor unions, in factories, granges, at cattle shows and at conventions of all sorts.

Large indoor meetings were held, addressed by distinguished visitors to the State, among them Philip Snowden and Mrs. Snowden, Senator Helen Ring Robinson of Colorado, U. S. Senators Clapp of Minnesota, Kenyon of Iowa and Thomas of Colorado. Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughter Sylvia spoke in Boston and Cambridge with great success. Louis D.

Brandeis, afterwards Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, came out for woman suffrage. In Boston, under the direction of Miss Mabel Caldwell Willard, innumerable street meetings were held for a year before the vote, with ma.s.s meetings every Sunday in the Tremont Theater and on the historic Common.

Press material was supplied to city and country papers. The newspapers as a whole grew more favorable as time went by but their editorial pages were much more friendly than the news columns, which frequently carried stories that were unfair or wholly untrue. The Boston _Sunday Herald_ printed regular suffrage notes for some months before the vote and once the daily edition gave the suffragists a full page. The Boston _American_ let them issue a special supplement, in charge of Mrs. Jennette A. S. Jeffrey and Mrs. Leonard, and this example was followed by other papers in the State. As always, the _Woman's Journal_ did much to hold together, encourage and stimulate the workers. A special committee distributed more than 100,000 copies of suffrage speeches made in Congress and more than 300,000 pieces of other literature within the last few months before the election.

The most impressive publicity put forth by the State a.s.sociation was the two parades in Boston; the first held May 2, 1914, and the second, Oct. 16, 1915, just before the election. The first one caused a sensation. It contained about 12,000 women, with a small section of men, and was conducted under the chairmans.h.i.+p of Mrs. Leonard, with Mrs. Page, Mrs. Johnson and nine sub-committee chairmen. It was extremely well organized and the large ma.s.s of totally untrained marchers was handled so efficiently as to surprise all who saw it.

Delegations from all over New England took part and one from Australia; women in national costumes; nurses in uniform; delegations from all the women's colleges in the State and men and women from the universities; also a singing chorus trained by Dr. Archibald Davidson, Jr., of Appleton Chapel, Harvard. In the procession were a son, three grandsons, a granddaughter and two granddaughters-in-law of William Lloyd Garrison; the daughter of Abby Kelley Foster, the daughter-in-law of Angelina Grimke and Theodore Weld and the daughter of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell. The Concord banner was carried by the grandniece of Louisa M. Alcott. Arrangements had been made for a delegation from the Boston Central Labor Union but when the time came the sole marcher to appear was the president, who courageously marched alone carrying the banner of the union.

The second, called the Victory Parade, was even more successful. It included about 15,000 marchers with a substantial men's section and was viewed by 500,000 people. It was reviewed by Governor David I.

Walsh in front of the State House and Mayor James Michael Curley in front of the City Hall and was followed by a tremendous ma.s.s meeting in Mechanics' Building, addressed by the Mayor and others. Parades were held also in other large cities.

The State Federation of Women's Clubs at its annual meeting in 1915 endorsed woman suffrage, on motion of Mrs. Herbert J. Gurney, by a vote of 203 to 99. The extreme to which bitter feeling ran was shown by a widely advertised attempt to organize a Non-partisan League among the club women in consequence but only a few hundred joined out of a federation members.h.i.+p of 65,000. It had been endorsed by the General Federation and by 28 State federations but in no other had the defeated minority undertaken to organize another society.

Thirty county fairs out of thirty-seven were covered systematically.

Special help in the campaign work was given by Ohio, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The question of woman suffrage was presented before 621 organizations of men through the efforts of a committee formed for that purpose, under Mrs. Evelyn Peverly Coe's chairmans.h.i.+p. Women attended nearly all the primaries and town meetings, distributing literature and urging the men to vote yes.

As the election approached the work along all lines grew more intensive. Well-organized victory automobile tours ran steadily throughout the summer and fall, in the eastern part of the State under the direction of Mrs. Walter G. Morey and in the western under Miss Lus...o...b.. Meetings were held at the fas.h.i.+onable hotels on the north and south sh.o.r.es and outdoor meetings at the popular beach resorts.

Comparatively few were held indoors but 1,675 were supplied with speakers. Big meetings were addressed in Boston and other large cities by U. S. Senator William E. Borah and Dr. Anna Howard Shaw. An elaborate luncheon was given by the Men's League and the State a.s.sociation at the Hotel Bellevue to the Governors' conference held in Boston. Valuable help at this time was rendered by Governor Walsh and the favorable opinions of the Governors of equal suffrage States were published at length in the Boston papers by the Men's League. At the last moment ma.s.s meetings were held in Boston at Symphony Hall and in the largest halls of many other cities. A symbolical and picturesque flag-raising took place on Boston Common. A last-minute circular was sent to each of the State's 600,000 registered voters. The day before the vote the railroad stations in Boston were visited morning and evening and thousands of pieces of literature were given to the commuters.

On election day, Nov. 2, 1915, practically all the polling places in the State were covered by 8,000 women, who stood for hours holding aloft placards reading, ”Show your Faith in the Women of Ma.s.sachusetts; vote 'Yes' on Woman Suffrage.” And yet after all this strenuous effort and self-sacrificing devotion the amendment was defeated by a vote of 295,489 to 163,406, a majority of 132,000. The vote in Boston was: Noes, 53,654; ayes, 31,428; opposing majority, 22,226.

Louis D. Brandeis said in an address on Columbus Day: ”I doubt if there has been carried on ever in Ma.s.sachusetts--certainly not in my lifetime--a campaign which for intelligence, devotion and intensity surpa.s.sed the campaign of the women for suffrage. It should silence any doubt as to their fitness for enfranchis.e.m.e.nt.” The suffragists, however, had to contend with serious and insuperable difficulties. The population of the State had changed radically since the early days when Ma.s.sachusetts had been the starting point of liberal movements.

For more than half a century its most progressive citizens had been going west and their places had been filled by wave after wave of immigration from Europe, largely ignorant and imbued with the Old World ideas as to the subjection of women. The religious question also entered in, and, while the Catholic Church took no stand as to woman suffrage, many Catholics believed that it would be a step toward Socialism, against which the church was making a vigorous contest. On the other hand, many Protestants believed that the Catholic women's votes would be unduly influenced by the priests.

Ma.s.sachusetts was the home of the oldest and most influential anti-suffrage organization of women in the United States under the leaders.h.i.+p of Mrs. Charles Eliot Guild, Miss Mary Ames, Mrs. James Codman, Mrs. Charles P. Strong and others. Few of its members did any active work but they were connected through the men of their families with the richest, most powerful and best organized groups of men in the State, who worked openly or behind the scenes against woman suffrage. They had an influence out of all proportion to their numbers. Most of the literature, most of the money and a liberal supply of speakers for anti-suffrage campaigns all over the country had emanated from this a.s.sociation. While always posing as a woman's protest, the real strength of the movement was in the men.

In May, 1912, a Man's Anti-Suffrage a.s.sociation had been organized, its Executive Committee consisting of ten lawyers, one cotton broker, one Technology Professor, the treasurer of Harvard College and the treasurer of the Copley Society. Other societies were organized later. All through the summer and fall of 1915 the women's and the men's organizations and various groups and combinations of men, who for one reason or another did not want equal suffrage, worked publicly and privately in every conceivable way against the amendment. They held meetings, mostly indoor, sent out speakers, advertised in street cars, prepared and mailed to every voter at great expense an elaborate pamphlet, The Case Against Woman Suffrage, full of misrepresentations, and did all an active opposition could do, and they had an efficient and highly paid Publicity Committee. The liquor interests fought the amendment from start to finish. Pink slips were pa.s.sed out in saloons on election day, saying, ”Good for two drinks if woman suffrage is defeated.”

The vote was curiously uniform. Every part of the State gave an adverse majority; so did every city and town except Tewksbury and Carver; and generally in about the same proportion--places with strong suffrage organizations and places with none; whether the work done in them had been much or little; even towns where a majority of the voters had signed pledge cards promising to vote for the amendment voted adversely and in about the same ratio. The vote was the largest ever cast on any amendment in the State. By appealing adroitly to all kinds of prejudices, as on the religious question, the opposition got out an enormous number of men who generally did not vote at all.

Both sides were required by law to file at the State House a record of their campaign expenses. An a.n.a.lysis of the lists showed that the bulk of the anti-suffrage campaign fund was made up of personal contributions, four-fifths of them from men, and more than three-fifths of the total from 135 men, whose average donation was $235. The slogan of their campaign had been that women did not want to vote. The official figures showed that those who claimed to speak for ”80 per cent. of the women” received 80 per cent. of their contributions from men, and not from the rank and file of men but chiefly from bankers, brokers and powerful directors of the monied section of Boston. The bulk of the suffrage campaign fund came from fairs, sales and entertainments and of the personal contributions more than four-fifths were from women, their average donation being $17.

After the election in 1915 there was started a State branch of the Congressional Union, later called the National Woman's Party, formed some years before to push the Federal Amendment. It was under the leaders.h.i.+p of Mrs. Morey, chairman, and other women most of whom had been active with the State a.s.sociation during the campaign. The defeat of the State amendment caused the work of all organizations to be directed toward the submission of the Federal Amendment.

At the annual meeting of the State a.s.sociation in May, 1916, a budget of $30,000 was adopted and $20,000 toward it was pledged on the spot.

Through the preceding winter the a.s.sociation had five paid organizers, two of them working in Boston, and a large number of volunteer field workers, at least 230 in Boston alone. Besides the chairmen for the sixteen congressional districts, each of the forty senatorial districts had its chairman, all working under the State Chairman of Organization, Mrs. Sara S. Gilson. She was followed by Mrs. Mary P.

Sleeper and by Mrs. Elizabeth Tilton, who formed an Advisory Council of 100 influential men in preparation for the campaign to ratify the Federal Amendment.

After the United States entered the World War in 1917 the suffrage organizations, State and local, devoted their efforts largely to various forms of war work, called for by the Government. They served on all committees, took part in all ”drives,” sold Liberty Bonds and continued their service till the last demand had been met.

LEGISLATIVE ACTION. The Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature began in 1869 to grant hearings to women asking for the franchise and it continued to do so every year thereafter. These hearings usually crowded the largest committee room at the State House, the throng often extending far out into the hall. Able arguments were presented by eminent men and women but it was impossible to obtain favorable action. There was at least one hearing every year and often several on different measures. In later years they were generally conducted by Mrs. Maud Wood Park, Miss Amy F. Acton, a young woman lawyer, or Miss Alice Stone Blackwell for the pet.i.tioners; and by Thomas Russell, Aaron H.