“But . . . you may ask why should she be relieved from the scars and wounds of political contest? Because they do not affect her alone but are transmitted through her to generations yet to come . . . . “
The faithful story of the sinking ship was invoked by the Senator from North Dakota. One might almost imagine after listening to Congressional debates for some years that traveling on sinking ships formed a large part of human experience. “Fathers, sons, and brothers,” said the Senator in tearful voice, “guarding the lifeboats until every woman from the highest to the lowest has been made safe, waving adieu with a smile of cheer on their lips, while the wounded vessel slowly bears them to a strangling death and a watery tomb, belie the charge . . “ that woman needs her citizenship as a form of protection.
In spite of these opinions, however, the Senator was obliged to vote for the amendment because his state had so ordered.
Senator Hardwick of Georgia, Democrat, felt somewhat betrayed that the suffrage plank in the platform of his party in 1916, recommending state action, should be so carelessly set aside. “There is not a Democratic Senator present,” said Mr. Hardwick, “who does not know the history that lies back of the adoption of that plank. There is not a Democratic Senator who does not know that the plank was written here in Washington and sent to the convention and represented the deliberate voice of the administration and of the party on this question, which was to remit this question to the several States for action . . . .
“The President of the United States . . . was reported to have sent this particular plank . . .from Washington, supposedly by the hands of one of his Cabinet officers.” The fact that his own party and the Republican party were both advancing on suffrage irritated him into denouncing the alacrity with which “politicians and senators are trying to get on the band wagon first.”
Senator McKellar of Tennessee, Democrat, reduced the male superiority argument to simple terms when he said: “ . . . Taking them by and large, there are brainy men and brainy women, and that is about all there is to the proposition.”
Our armies were sweeping victorious toward Germany. There was round on round of eloquence about the glories of war. Rivers of blood flowed. And always the role of woman was depicted as a contented binding of wounds. There were those who thought woman should be rewarded for such service. Others thought she ought to do it without asking anything in return. But all agreed that this was her role. There was no woman’s voice in that body to protest against the perpetuity of such a rôle.
The remarks of Senator Reed of Missouri, anti-suffrage Democrat, typify this attitude. “. . . Women in my state believe in the old-fashioned doctrine that men should fight the battles on the red line; that men should stand and bare their bosoms to the iron hail; and that back of them, if need be, there shall be women who may bind up the wounds and whose tender hands may rest upon the brow of the valiant soldier who has gone down in the fight.
“But, sir, that is woman’s work, and it has been woman’s work always . . . . The woman who gave her first born a final kiss and blessed him on his way to battle,” had, according to the Senator from Missouri, earned a “crown of glory . . . gemmed with the love of the world.”
And with Senator Walsh of Montana, Democrat, “The women of America have already written a glorious page in the history of the greatest of wars that have vexed the world. They, like Cornelia, have given, and freely given, their jewels to their country.”