In 1913 the Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association, of which the Countess of Selborne had become President, had the happy thought of instituting through the medium of a joint committee of suffragists and antisuffragists a systematic and careful enquiry into the results of women's suffrage in those States of the U.S.A. where it had been put into operation. A questionnaire was drawn up and sent to men and women occupying positions of authority and influence in these States. Of the sixty-three replies received, forty-six were wholly favourable, eight neutral, five vaguely unfavourable, and only four wholly adverse.
The late Hon. Robert Palmer, Lady Selborne's son, tabulated the replies, and published an explanatory comment on them from the suffrage point of view, while the same task on behalf of the antisuffragists was performed by Mr. MacCallum Scott, M.P.
Both reports appeared in the form of articles in the Nineteenth Century and After of February, 1914. Mr. Palmer's article was later published as a small volume, and formed a valuable handbook for suffrage speakers. The supporters of suffrage in the U.S.A. frequently expressed themselves as convinced by experience that the women voters strengthened the forces which made for good government, using such expressions as this: "I do not think we could have cleaned up the city without the women's vote"; or, "At that time I was opposed to woman suffrage ... but since I have had experience of it I have become favourable." Mr. MacCallum Scott did not, of course, deny that by an immense majority the replies had supported the women's vote, or that it had been followed, in California, for example, by the immediate passing of much long-sought-for social legislation; but he concluded his article with the words: "I have tried to sum up the evidence as impartially as possible, but I have not tried to conceal my own views, and I have found nothing in the evidence to modify them."
Another very significant breach in the antisuffragist Press stronghold was revealed when on the last day of 1913 The Times published one of its American Supplements "On the Pacific Coast," and, to the amazement and joy of suffragists, wrote most warmly in praise of the complete success of women's suffrage on the whole Pacific seaboard. Suffragists had won the State of Washington in 1910, California in 1911, Oregon and Arizona in 1912. We had expected nothing from The Times but flouts, and gibes, and sneers, and lo! it blessed us altogether. The concluding paragraph sufficiently indicates the general character of the article. It ran thus:
"One-fifth of the United States Senate, one-seventh of the House of Representatives, and one-sixth of the Presidential electoral vote of the United States comes now from States where women exercise suffrage just as men do. Homes have not been disrupted, marriages have not lessened, children have not failed because of the political enfranchisement of women. Instead, there has come a more solemn feeling of obligation, a greater feeling of responsibility on the part of men and women, a higher moral tone in candidates and in measures, and an effort to make the city streets and the country at large a safer place for children when they leave the precincts where maternal love reigns supreme. The women of the suffrage States care not only for their own children, but for the children of women not so fortunately placed."
What a change this represented from the time, three years earlier, when every day for nearly a fortnight The Times in its leading articles and correspondence columns fulminated on the unmeasured national misfortunes which must necessarily result from the enfranchisement of women.
Immediately all our group wrote for as many copies of this blessed supplement as our newsagents could supply. The stock from this source was quickly exhausted; then I wrote officially to The Times office, asking for more, only to receive the reply that no more copies could be obtained. Then we applied for leave to reprint, but the request was declined on the ground that it was the intention of the management to publish the whole supplement in book form. On enquiring the probable date and price, the first question was unanswered, and the reply to the second mentioned what we considered a prohibitive sum.
But we never saw that book. Of course, I carefully preserved my own copy, and quoted it continually when I was speaking. The evidence it gave coincided entirely with what we had learned from our American friends at the Congress of the International Women's Suffrage Alliance held the previous June at Buda Pest, when ladies from the newly enfranchised State of California had told us that, after winning the vote, they had gained in six months legislative reforms for which (without the vote) they had been labouring in vain for twenty years. Twenty months of suffrage, our American friends told us, were worth more than twenty years of "influence."
Another of the signs of the great progress of our cause was the continual increase of the support given to it in modern drama. At this time nearly all the really telling plays by up-to-date writers were practically suffrage plays. Some—like How the Vote was Won, by Miss Cecily Hamilton; Votes for Women, by Miss Elizabeth Robins; and Press Cuttings, by Mr. Bernard Shaw—were propaganda plays pure and simple, and very good propaganda, too, extremely witty and amusing. Others, even more telling because a good deal more subtle in method, were by Sir James Barrie, Mr. Arnold Bennett, and many by Mr. Bernard Shaw. These were of very great service to our cause, as well as a sign of its progress; while the plays on the moral aspects of our movement, such as Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont and Les Avariés, by M. Brieux, brought our message to thousands whom we could not have reached unaided.
No wonder that, with all the influences enumerated in this chapter working in our favour, we felt we were on the eve of victory. We quoted, with an application to ourselves, Cavour's prophetic saying, "La cosa va." Seldom has a political movement had such a various army of allies: the Trades Union Congress, the Labour Party, the Church Congress, the annual meeting of the Society of Friends, the Ulster Unionist Council, the Press, the Pulpit, and the Theatre. But a great catastrophe was at hand, which for four and a half years concentrated all thoughts on national safety, and, above all, on the preservation of the principles of free representative government, not merely in our own country, but throughout the world.