APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIX.
PRESENT STATUS OF THE NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, ORGANIZED IN 1869.
Acting on the plan adopted at the last convention of the National American Association at Chicago in February, 1920, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president, issued a call for a meeting of the Executive Council in Hotel Statler at the time of the second annual convention of the National League of Women Voters in Cleveland, Ohio. The meeting took place at 10 a. m., April 13, 1921, Mrs. Catt in the chair. She made a report of the receipts and disbursements of the Leslie Fund, saying that as soon as the estate was finally settled she would render a detailed statement. She said there were reasons why the association should not at this time be dissolved and gave them as follows:
(1) Legal attacks on the Federal Amendment are still pending and there are attempts to secure submission of a repeal to the voters. The association must remain till no further efforts are made to invalidate the amendment.
(2) The necessity of some authority to give advice and to help our dependencies where suffrage campaigns are pending.
(3) Several bequests, delayed because estates are not settled, also require the continuation of the association.
The Chair stated that the incorporation does not expire till 1940. Conventions of elected delegates are no longer feasible and, therefore, continuation without conventions should be provided for in an amended constitution, such amendments to be confirmed by the Executive Council.
It was unanimously agreed that the association be continued and on motion of Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, attorney, of Chicago, it was voted that the Chair appoint two other members of the Council to co-operate with her in revising the constitution in accordance with the new arrangement. She appointed Mrs. McCulloch and Mrs. Nettie Rogers Shuler, the corresponding secretary of the association.
The report of the national treasurer from Jan. 1, 1920, to March 31, 1921, showed that $12,451 had been used for the expenses connected with the ratification in eleven difficult States; the headquarters had been maintained; legal fees paid; the expenses of the Chicago convention met; deficit of the National Woman Suffrage Publishing Co. paid; printing and other bills settled, and a balance of $3,534 remained in the treasury.
The General Officers had been re-elected in Chicago to serve until the end. At the present meeting the Directors, whose term of office had expired, were re-elected to serve continuously, except Mrs. Arthur L. Livermore, whose resignation was accepted and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton was chosen to fill the vacancy. It was voted that the League of Women Voters be asked to take the place of the National Suffrage Association as auxiliary to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance; also that the association no longer continue as auxiliary of the National Council of Women of the United States.
Brief remarks were made by delegates present and enthusiastic appreciation was expressed of the action of the Tennessee Legislature in giving the 36th ratification of the Federal Suffrage Amendment. Mrs. Catt closed the meeting with advice to the delegates to put their State records, literature, etc., into libraries for preservation and she urged the necessity of the best training for their new responsibilities, reminding them that the duty would always rest on women to conserve civilization.
The committee, consisting of Mrs. Catt, Mrs. Shuler and Mrs. McCulloch, recommended the adoption of an abridged constitution with the elimination of all the by-laws and articles of the old one which were now unnecessary. The Board could incur no financial obligations beyond the assets in their hands; they could fill vacancies caused by death or resignation as heretofore; adopt such rules for their meetings as they deemed proper and amend the constitution by a two-thirds vote. The Board should continue to consist of nine officers and eight directors, with the power to summon the Executive Council. This Council should comprise the Board and the presidents and executive members of State auxiliaries as they existed in 1920. The name of the association would be retained.
The abridged constitution was sent to every member of the Council to be voted on.
The Executive Council was called to meet at the headquarters of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in New York at 10:30 a.m., June 22, 1921, for final action on the new constitution. Mrs. Catt presided and Mrs. Lewis J. Cox, State executive member from Indiana, acted as secretary. It was voted that the following sentence be added to the objects of the association: "To remove as far as it is possible all discriminations against women on account of sex." Sixty-six of the eighty-two members of the Council having voted in the affirmative and none in the negative the constitution was declared to be legally adopted.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIX.
DEATH OF DR. ANNA HOWARD SHAW.
It is literally true that a nation mourned the death of Anna Howard Shaw. Having lectured from ocean to ocean for several decades she was universally known and there were few newspapers which did not contain a sympathetic editorial on her public and personal life. Telegrams were received at her home from all parts of the world and the letters were almost beyond counting. Friend and foe alike yielded to the unsurpassed charm of her personality and the rare qualities of her mind and heart.
In February, 1919, the Woman's Council of National Defense, of which Dr. Shaw had been chairman since its beginning in April, 1917, dissolved with its duties ended. For the past two years she had practically given up her platform work for woman suffrage, then at its most critical stage with the Federal Amendment pending. Now she had made a large number of speaking engagements for the spring in its behalf and had accepted the invitation of Dr. M. Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College, to be her guest on a trip to Spain afterwards. Everything was put aside when in May came an urgent request from former President Taft and President Lowell, of Harvard University, to join them in a speaking tour of fourteen States from New Hampshire to Kansas to arouse sentiment in favor of the League of Nations as a means of assuring peace forevermore. She was to speak but once a day but she could not resist the appeals in the different cities and it became four or five times a day. At Indianapolis she made speeches, gave interviews, etc., eight times. The next day at Springfield, Ill., she was stricken with pneumonia and was in the hospital two weeks. By June 12 she was able to leave for her home in Moylan, a residence suburb of Philadelphia, with her beloved friend and companion, Lucy Anthony, who had gone to her and who wrote to anxious friends: "She made the journey without even a rise of temperature, found the house all bright with sunshine and flowers and was the happiest person in the world to be at home again." She seemed to recover entirely but on June 30 had a sudden relapse and died at 7 o'clock on the evening of July 2.
DR. SHAW'S TRIBUTE TO THE AMERICAN FLAG, GIVEN MANY TIMES.
"This is the American flag. It is a piece of bunting and why is it that, when it is surrounded by the flags of all other nations, your eyes and mine turn first toward it and there is a warmth at our hearts such as we do not feel when we gaze on any other flag? It is not because of the beauty of its colors, for the flags of England and France which hang beside it have the same colors. It is not because of its artistic beauty, for other flags are as artistic. It is because you and I see in that piece of bunting what we see in no other. It is not visible to the human eye but it is to the human soul.
"We see in every stripe of red the blood which has been shed through the centuries by men and women who have sacrificed their lives for the idea of democracy; we see in every stripe of white the purity of the democratic ideal toward which all the world is tending, and in every star in its field of blue we see the hope of mankind that some day the democracy which that bit of bunting symbolizes shall permeate the lives of men and nations, and we love it because it enfolds our ideals of human freedom and justice."
In 1917. "It is because we love our country so much and because we are so anxious to give ourselves entirely to the great service of winning the war, that we want the freedom of American women now. We suffragists would be thrice traitors if at this time of the great struggle of the world for democracy we should fail to ask for the fundamental principles here which America is trying to help bring to other countries."
When Dr. Shaw received the Distinguished Service Medal from Secretary of War Baker she said: "I realize that in conferring upon me the Distinguished Service Medal, the President and the Secretary of War are not expressing their appreciation of what I as an individual have done but of the collective service of the women of the county. As it is impossible to decorate all women who have served equally with the Chairman of the Woman's Committee, I have been chosen, and while I appreciate the honor and am prouder to wear this decoration than to receive any other recognition save my political freedom, which is the first desire of a loyal American, I nevertheless look upon this as the beginning of the recognition by the country of the service and loyalty of women, and above all that the part women are called upon to take in times of war is recognized as equally necessary in times of peace. This departure on the part of the national government through the President and Secretary of War gives the greater promise of the time near at hand when every citizen of the United States will be esteemed a government asset because of his or her loyalty and service rather than because of sex."
Dr. Shaw was a valued member of the executive committee of the League to Enforce Peace, under whose auspices she was making the tour with former President Taft and President Lowell of Harvard University, and it sent her a transcript of her speech to revise for publication. This she did on the last Sunday of her life and the committee prepared tens of thousands of copies of it for circulation. It was entitled What the War Meant to Women and mere extracts can give little idea of its strength and beauty. After speaking of the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense, the Peace Treaty and President Wilson's declaration that the United States did not want any material advantage out of the war, she ended:
While Mr. Wilson declared we want nothing out of the war, I said in my own heart: "It may be that we want nothing material out of the war, but, oh, we want the biggest thing that has ever come to the world—we want Peace now and Peace forever." If we cannot get that peace out of this war what hope is there that it will ever come to humanity? Was there ever such a chance offered to the world before? Was there ever a time when the peoples of all nations looked towards America as they are looking to-day because of our unselfishness in our dealings with them during the war? We have not always been unselfish but we have been in this war.
The war is over as far as the fighting is concerned but it is only begun as far as the life of the people is concerned. What would there be of inspiration to them to come back to their ruined homes and build up again their cities if within a few years the same thing could be repeated and homes destroyed and cities devastated, the people outraged and made slaves as they have been?
Men and women, they are looking to us as the hope of the world and whenever I gaze on our flag, whenever I look on those stars on their field of blue and those stripes of red and white, I say to myself: "I do not wonder that when that flag went over the trenches and surmounted the barriers, the people of the world took heart of hope. It was then that they began to feel they could unite with us in some sort of security for the future. And that flag means so much to me. I never look on its stars but that I see in every star the hope that must stir the peoples of the old world when they think of us and the power we have of helping to lead them up to a place where they may hope for their children and for their children's children the things that have not come to them." ...
We women, the mothers of the race, have given everything, have suffered everything, have sacrificed everything and we say to you now: "The time is come when we will no longer sit quietly by and bear and rear sons to die at the will of a few men. We will not endure it. We demand either that you shall do something to prevent war or that we shall be permitted to try to do something ourselves." Could there be any cowardice, could there be any injustice, could there be any wrong, greater than for men to refuse to hear the voice of a woman expressing the will of women at the peace table of the world and then not provide a way by which the women of the future shall not be robbed of their sons as the women of the past have been?
To you men we look for support. We look for your support back of your Senators and from this day until the day when the League of Nations is accepted and ratified by the Senate of the United States, it should be the duty of every man and every woman to see that the Senators from their State know the will of the people; know that the people will that something shall be done, even though not perfect; that there shall be a beginning from which we shall construct something more perfect by and by; that the will of the people is that this League shall be accepted and that if, in the Senate of the United States, there are men so blinded by partisan desire for present advantage, so blinded by personal pique and narrowness of vision, that they cannot see the large problems which involve the nations of the world, then the people of the States must see to it that other men sit in the seats of the highest.
In the beautiful Memorial issued by the Board of Directors of the National American Woman Suffrage Association were affectionate tributes from those who were officially associated with her for many years. Among the many from eminent men and women which were reproduced in the Memorial were the following:
It was not my privilege to know Dr. Shaw until the later years of her life but I had the advantage then of seeing her in many lights. I saw her acting with such vigor and intelligence in the service of the Government, and, through the Government, of mankind, as to win my warmest admiration. I had already had occasion to see the extraordinary quality of her clear and effective mind and to know how powerful and persuasive an advocate she was. When the war came I saw her in action and she won my sincere admiration and homage.
Woodrow Wilson,
President of the United States.
(President and Mrs. Wilson, who were on the way home from France, sent a wireless message of sympathy and a handsome floral tribute from the White House.)
The world is infinitely poorer by the death of so great and good a woman.
Thomas R. Marshall,
Vice-President of the United States.
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw was a member of the Executive Committee of the League to Enforce Peace. She was constant in her attendance, full of suggestion and earnest in support of the cause. It was my great pleasure to speak with her from many a platform in favor of the League and to enjoy the very great privilege of listening to her persuasive eloquence and her genial wit and humor, which she always used to enforce her arguments. She thought nothing of the sacrifice she had to make and was only intent upon the consummation of our purpose. She was a remarkable woman. I deeply regret her death. There were many avenues of great usefulness which a continuance of her life would have enabled her to pursue. Her going is a great loss to the community.
William Howard Taft,
President of the League to Enforce Peace.
I desire officially to pay tribute to the passing of Dr. Shaw. Aside from her epic contribution to the cause of progressive American womanhood it is in no sense perfunctory to say that whether in war time Washington, organizing and directing the eighteen thousand units of the Woman's Committee of National Defense, or with indomitable courage and power going up and down the country pleading great public causes relating to the war, this woman of seventy years was an inspiration to all of us. There was no one in American life who epitomized more finely Roosevelt's philosophy that in the public arena one must to the uttermost spend and be spent. It was a magnificent and enduring trail that Dr. Shaw blazed. Everywhere her endeavors had the impersonal and unselfish touch that marks the great protagonist of new ideals. She was a gallant and stirring figure in the history of this country and leaves the government of the United States distinctly in her debt.
Grosvenor B. Clarkson,
Director United States Council National Defense.
As a member of the Council of National Defense I wish to express my very sincere appreciation of the patriotic service that Dr. Shaw rendered during the past two years, the magnitude of which cannot be appreciated except by those intimately familiar with it. Her distinguished service medal was well earned.
Franklin K. Lane,
Secretary of the Interior.
I hardly know how to write you about the death of our dear Anna Howard Shaw. She has been such a tower of strength to our cause everywhere and now her place knows her no more! There is one comfort in that she lived long enough to know of the triumph of your cause in the passage of the Federal Amendment. She will be sorely missed and deeply mourned, first and foremost in America and Great Britain, but really all over the world, in every country where woman's cause is a living issue.
Millicent Garrett Fawcett,
Honorary President,
National Union of Societies for
Equal Citizenship of Great Britain.
My deepest sorrow and sympathy go out to the family of Dr. Shaw, to the National Council of Women of the United States and to the International Council and the Woman Suffrage Alliance. Her passing is indeed a great loss to the women of the whole world.
Ishbel Aberdeen and Temair,
President International Council of Women.
Truly all womanhood has lost a faithful friend.
Elizabeth C. Carter,
President Northeastern Federation
of Women's Clubs (colored).
Loving and appreciative tributes were sent from the officers of National and International Associations in all parts of the world.
APPENDIX FOR CHAPTER XX.
APPEAL OF PRESIDENT WILSON TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES TO SUBMIT THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE DELIVERED IN PERSON SEPT. 30, 1918.
Gentlemen of the Senate: The unusual circumstances of a World War in which we stand and are judged in the view not only of our own people and our own consciences but also in the view of all nations and peoples, will, I hope, justify in your thought, as it does in mine, the message I have come to bring you.
I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the constitutional amendment proposing the extension of the suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged. I have come to urge upon you the considerations which have led me to that conclusion. It is not only my privilege, it is also my duty to apprise you of every circumstance and element involved in this momentous struggle which seems to me to affect its very processes and its outcome. It is my duty to win the war and to ask you to remove every obstacle that stands in the way of winning it.
I had assumed that the Senate would concur in the amendment, because no disputable principle is involved but only a question of the method by which the suffrage is to be now extended to women. There is and can be no party issue involved in it. Both of our great national parties are pledged, explicitly pledged, to equality of suffrage for the women of the country.
Neither party, therefore, it seems to me, can justify hesitation as to the method of obtaining it, can rightfully hesitate to substitute Federal initiative for State initiative if the early adoption of this measure is necessary to the successful prosecution of the war, and if the method of State action proposed in the party platforms of 1916 is impracticable within any reasonable length of time, if practical at all. And its adoption is, in my judgment, clearly necessary to the successful prosecution of the war and the successful realization of the objects for which the war is being fought.
That judgment I take the liberty of urging upon you with solemn earnestness for reasons which I shall state very frankly and which I shall hope will seem as conclusive to you as they seem to me.
This is a people's war and the people's thinking constitutes its atmosphere and morale, not the predilections of the drawing room or the political considerations of the caucus. If we be indeed democrats and wish to lead the world to democracy, we can ask other peoples to accept in proof of our sincerity and our ability to lead them whither they wish to be led, nothing less persuasive and convincing than our actions.
Our professions will not suffice. Verification must be forthcoming when verification is asked for. And in this case verification is asked for—asked for in this particular matter. You ask by whom? Not through diplomatic channels; not by foreign ministers; not by the intimations of parliaments. It is asked for by the anxious, expectant, suffering peoples with whom we are dealing and who are willing to put their destinies in some measure in our hands, if they are sure that we wish the same things that they do.
I do not speak by conjecture. It is not alone that the voices of statesmen and of newspapers reach me, and that the voices of foolish and intemperate agitators do not reach me at all. Through many, many channels I have been made aware what the plain, struggling, workaday folk are thinking, upon whom the chief terror and suffering of this tragic war fall. They are looking to the great, powerful, famous democracy of the West to lead them to the new day for which they have so long waited; and they think, in their logical simplicity, that democracy means that women shall play their part in affairs alongside men and upon an equal footing with them.
If we reject measures like this, in ignorant defiance of what a new age has brought forth, of what they have seen but we have not, they will cease to believe in us; they will cease to follow or to trust us. They have seen their own governments accept this interpretation of democracy—seen old governments like that of Great Britain, which did not profess to be democratic, promise readily and as of course this justice to women, though they had before refused it; the strange revelations of this war having made many things new and plain to governments as well as to peoples.
Are we alone to refuse to learn the lesson? Are we alone to ask and take the utmost that our women can give—service and sacrifice of every kind—and still say we do not see what title that gives them to stand by our side in the guidance of the affairs of their nation and ours? We have made partners of the women in this war. Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right? This war could not have been fought, either by the other nations engaged or by America, if it had not been for the services of the women—services rendered in every sphere—not merely in the fields of efforts in which we have been accustomed to see them work but wherever men have worked and upon the very skirts and edges of the battle itself.
We shall not only be distrusted, but shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not enfranchise women with the fullest possible enfranchisement, as it is now certain that the other great free nations will enfranchise them. We cannot isolate our thought or action in such a matter from the thought of the rest of the world. We must either conform or deliberately reject what they approve and resign the leadership of liberal minds to others.
The women of America are too intelligent and too devoted to be slackers whether you give or withhold this thing that is mere justice; but I know the magic it will work in their thoughts and spirits if you give it to them. I propose it as I would propose to admit soldiers to the suffrage—the men fighting in the field of our liberties of the world—were they excluded.
The tasks of the women lie at the very heart of the war and I know how much stronger that heart will beat if you do this just thing and show our women that you trust them as much as you in fact and of necessity depend upon them.
I have said that the passage of this amendment is a vitally necessary war measure and do you need further proof? Do you stand in need of the trust of other peoples and of the trust of our own women? Is that trust an asset or is it not? I tell you plainly, as the commander-in-chief of our armies and of the gallant men in our fleets; as the present spokesman of this people in our dealings with the men and women throughout the world who are now our partners; as the responsible head of a great government which stands and is questioned day by day as to its purpose, its principles, its hope.... I tell you plainly that this measure which I urge upon you is vital to the winning of the war and to the energies alike of preparation and of battle.
And not to the winning of the war only. It is vital to the right solution of the great problems which we must settle, and settle immediately, when the war is over. We shall need in our vision of affairs, as we have never needed them before, the sympathy and insight and clear moral instinct of the women of the world. The problems of that time will strike to the roots of many things that we have hitherto questioned, and I for one believe that our safety in those questioning days, as well as our comprehension of matters that touch society to the quick, will depend upon the direct and authoritative participation of women in our counsels. We shall need their moral sense to preserve what is right and fine and worthy in our system of life as well as to discover just what it is that ought to be purified and reformed. Without their counsellings we shall be only half wise.
That is my case. This is my appeal. Many may deny its validity, if they choose, but no one can brush aside or answer the arguments upon which it is based. The executive tasks of this war rest upon me. I ask that you lighten them and place in my hands instruments, spiritual instruments, which I have daily to apologize for not being able to employ.