In the House, the Rules Committee on a vote of 4 to 4 refused to create a suffrage committee. We appealed to the Democratic caucus to see if tie party sustained this action. We wished to establish their party responsibility, one way or another, and by securing the necessary signatures to a petition, we compelled the caucus to meet. By a vote of 128 to 57 the caucus declared “ . . . that the question of woman suffrage is a state and not a federal question,” as a substitute for the milder resolution offered, providing for the creation of a committee on woman suffrage. If this had left any doubt as to how the Democratic Party, as a party, stood, this doubt was conveniently removed by Representative Underwood, the Majority Leader of the House, when he said on the floor of the House the following day: “The Democratic Party last night took the distinctive position that it was not in favor of this legislation because it was in favor of the states controlling the question of suffrage . . . . I not only said I was opposed to it, but I said the Party on this side of the Chamber was opposed to it, and the Party that has control of the legislation in Congress certainly has the right to say that it will not support a measure if it is not in accordance with its principles.”
Meanwhile the President had said to a deputation of workingwomen who waited upon him in February, “Until the Party, as such, has considered a matter of this very supreme importance, and taken its position, I am not at liberty to speak for it; and yet I am not at liberty to speak for it as an individual, for I am not an individual.”
“But we ask you to speak to your party, not for it,” answered Mrs. Glendower Evans, Chairman of the deputation, amid evident presidential embarrassment.
Those women who had been inclined perhaps to accept the President’s words as true to fact, entertained doubts when a .few days later he demanded of his party in Congress the repeal of the free tolls provision in the Panama Canal tolls act. In so doing, he not only recommended action not endorsed by his party, but he demanded action which his party had specifically declared against.
It was necessary to appeal again to the nation. We called for demonstrations. of public approval of the amendment in every state on May 2. Thousands of resolutions were passed calling for action in Congress. These resolutions were made the center of another great demonstration in Washington, May 9, when thousands of women in, procession carried them to the Capitol where beautiful and impressive ceremonies were held on the Capitol steps. The resolutions were formally received by members of Congress and the demonstration ended dramatically with a great chorus of women massed on the steps singing “The March of the Women” to the thousands of spectators packed closely together on the Capitol grounds.
And still the President withheld his support.
Under our auspices five hundred representative club women of the country waited upon him in another appeal for help.[1] To them he explained his “passion for local self-government,” which led to his conviction “that this is a matter for settlement by the states[2] and not by the federal government . . . .”
Women had to face the fact that the 63rd Congress had made a distinctly hostile record on suffrage. The President, as leader of his party, had seven times refused all aid; the Democratic Party had recorded its opposition through an adverse vote in the Senate and a caucus vote in the House forbidding even consideration of the measure.
It became clear that some form of political action would have to be adopted which would act as an accelerator to the Administration. This feeling was growing momentarily among many women, but it was conspicuously strong in the mind of Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, recognized as one of the ablest suffrage leaders in the country. Anticipating the unfriendly record made by the Democrats in the 63rd Congress, Mrs. Belmont had come to Miss Paul and to her vice-chairman, Miss Lucy Burns, to urge the formulation of a plan whereby we could strike at Administration opposition through the women voters of the West. Miss Paul had the same idea and welcomed the support of this plan by so able a leader.
[1] 7th deputation to the President, June 30, 1914.