Old Times in Dixie Land: A Southern Matron's Memories

by Caroline E. Merrick

Committees from the Portia and Era Clubs met in November, 1896, in the parlors of the Woman’s Club, and organized a State Woman Suffrage Association, with Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, president; Mrs. Eveleyn Ordway, vice-president; Miss Matilda P. Hero, corresponding secretary; Miss Belle Van Horn, recording secretary; Mrs. Boseley, treasurer; Mrs. Helen Behrens, an ardent and able pioneer and present worker in the cause, being made our first delegate to a National Convention.

In 1898, the Era Club, in the name of Louisiana women, presented to the Suffrage Committee of the Constitutional Convention, then in session in New Orleans, the following petition: “In view of the fact that one of the purposes of this Convention is to provide an educational qualification for the exercise of the franchise by which to guard more carefully the welfare of the State, we, the undersigned, believing that still another change would likewise conduce greatly to the welfare of our people, pray that your honorable body will, after deciding upon the qualifications deemed necessary, extend the franchise with the same qualifications to the women of this State.”

Mrs. Evelyn Ordway, one of the most efficient and public-spirited women of New Orleans, as president of the Era Club, wisely and bravely led the women’s campaign. Owing to a rain which flooded the city, the most of the woman’s contingent were prisoners in their homes on the day the petition was procured. Mrs. Lewis S. Graham, and Misses Katharine Nobles, Kate and Jennie Gordon alone were able to cross the submerged streets to the Committee room. Mrs. Graham made the leading address, and was ably supported by her colleagues. Mrs. Carrie Chapman-Catt, aided by Misses Laura Clay, Mary Hay and Frances Griffin, had been busy creating public sentiment by means of brilliant addresses both in and out of the Convention. Dr. Dickson Bruns should be ever held in grateful memory for his constant and unflinching efforts in behalf of the woman’s petition, which was presented in Convention by the Hon. Anthony W. Faulkner of Monroe.

There were many women and a few noble men who were deeply stirred over the fate of our memorial. I wrote to Miss Belle Kearney just after this hearing: “You are needed right here, this very day, to speak what the women want said for them now that the other speakers are gone away. I am so dead tired and heart-sore that I almost wish I were lying quiet in my grave waiting for the resurrection! God help all women, young and old! They are a man-neglected, God-forgotten lot, here in Louisiana, when they ask simply for a reasonable recognition, and justice under the Constitution now being constructed, and under which they must be governed and pay taxes. We pray in vain, work always in vain. How that grand old martyr, Susan Anthony, can still hold out is a marvel. The Convention has apparently forgotten the women. They discuss the needs of every man and his qualification for the ballot. Yet, good women brought such men into the world to keep other women in subjection and minority forever!—still, they love that sinner, man, better than their own souls—and I know they will continue that way to the end. But it is hard lines to be kept waiting. The dead can wait, but we cannot! Oh, Lord, how long!”

Once again, however, it was proven that nothing is ever quite so bad as it seems, for the convention did give the right to vote to all taxpaying women—a mere crumb—but a prophetic-crumb. This much being gained led, in 1899, to the organization, through the initiative of the Era Club, of the “Woman’s League for Sewerage and Drainage.” That variable and imponderable quantity, “influence,” now had added to its much invoked “womanly sweetness”—power—a power which could not only be felt but which would have to be counted.

Mrs. Ordway tells in a little review of the movement, that several months previous to the election many of those who voted would have scouted the idea that they should do so unwomanly a deed;—voting belonged to men. Many did not even know that they had a right to vote. The question proposed to them was one affecting the health and prosperity of New Orleans—whether or not they were willing to be additionally taxed in order to secure pure water and an effective system of drainage. There were about 10,000 taxpaying women in the city, many of them small householders, owning the little homes in which they dwelt. Owing to New Orleans being peculiarly situated below the level of the Mississippi river, and to the fact that there is no underground drainage, many parts of the city are inundated during heavy rains. There was much at stake. No wonder the women were interested, and that parlor and mass meetings were held, in which women were not only invited but urged—even by the mayor and other prominent men—to come forward with their votes. When election day arrived, women found that they did want the franchise, one-third of the votes cast being contributed by them. After months of hard work and a house-to-house canvass for signatures of taxpaying women, who would vote personally or by proxy, the battle was won, as was universally conceded, by the energy of the woman’s ballot.

Very many men and women soon realized the need of full suffrage for women, in a quickly succeeding campaign for the election of municipal officers who would properly carry out the people’s intent for sewerage and drainage. Though they could not vote every courtesy and respect was accorded the women, and their influence was appealed to by the respective sides. The day has dawned for woman’s full enfranchisement in Louisiana.

In her farewell address after the victory the president of the Woman’s League, Miss Kate M. Gordon,—president of the Era Club,—who had led the women’s forces with an intelligent courage and dignity that won universal admiration, stated as follows: “At one time the success of this great work was seriously threatened by an element of conservatism raising the cry, ‘It is simply suffrage movement!’ While it is hard to disassociate suffrage from any work which depends on a vote for success, and while the word, defined by Worcester, means ‘a vote, the act of voting,’ yet it seems a poor commentary on the intelligence, patriotism and even sagacity of that conservatism to raise the question when the life of a city was trembling in the balance, and that city their home.

“In justice to women holding suffrage views, I ask are they to be treated as a class apart because they believe intelligence and not sex should be the determining power in government? Is there any wrong in believing that power added to influence would be a factor in creating and enforcing laws for a higher moral standard? Where is the woman, who, holding the power, would not use it to enforce the laws for the protection of minors, and to give to character at least the same protection given to property? Where is the woman who would withhold her power from creating and enforcing a law to read; ‘Equal pay for equal work’? Is it unwomanly to believe the wife’s wages should belong to the wife who earned them? Is it unnatural to resent being classed with idiots, insane, criminal and minors—and so on, ad infinitum?

“The Woman’s League contributed with no sacrifice of womanliness, but with a sacrifice of personal comfort, to an education against apathy and indifference, to the Godlike charity of helping men to help themselves—the keynote of physical as well as moral regeneration. As women throw the power of your influence against the dangers of proxies. The proxy vote is not a personal expression; it is giving manifold power into the hands of one individual, and therefore un-American.”