And still a third:
GERMANY HAS ESTABLISHED “EQUAL, UNIVERSAL, SECRET, DIRECT FRANCHISE.”
THE SENATE HAS DENIED EQUAL, UNIVERSAL, SECRET SUFFRAGE TO AMERICA.
WHICH IS MORE OF A DEMOCRACY, GERMANY OR AMERICA?
As the women approached the Senate, Colonel Higgins, the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate, ordered a squad of Capitol policemen to rush upon them. They wrenched their banners from them, twisting their wrists and manhandling them as they took them up the steps, through the door, and down into the guardroom,—their banners confiscated and they themselves detained for varying periods of time. When the women insisted on knowing upon what charges they were held, they were merely told that “peace and order must be maintained on the Capitol grounds,” and further, “It don’t make no difference about the law, Colonel Higgins is boss here, and he has taken the law in his own hands.”
Day after day this performance went on. Small detachments of women attempted to hold banners outside the United States Senate, as the women of Holland had done outside the Parliament in the Hague. It was difficult to believe that American politicians could be so devoid of humor as they showed themselves. The panic that overwhelms our official mind in the face of the slightest irregularity is appalling! Instead of maintaining peace and order, the squads of police managed to keep the Capitol grounds in a state of confusion. They were assisted from time to time by Senate pages, small errand boys who would run out and attack mature women with impunity. The women would be held under the most rigid detention each day until the Senate had safely adjourned. Then on the morrow the whole spectacle would be repeated.
While the United States Senate was standing still under our protest world events rushed on. German autocracy had collapsed. The Allies had won a military victory. The Kaiser had that very week fled for his life because of the uprising of his people.
“We are all free voters of a free republic now,” was the message sent by the women of Germany to the women of the United States through Miss Jane Addams. We were at that moment heartily ashamed of our government. German women voting! American women going to jail and spending long hours in the Senate guardhouse without arrests or, charges. The war came to an end. Congress adjourned November 21st.
When the 65th Congress reconvened for its short and final session, December 2nd, 1918 [less than a month after our election campaign], President Wilson, for the first time, included suffrage in his regular message to Congress, the thing that we had asked of him at the opening of every session of Congress since March, 1918.
There were now fewer than a hundred days in which to get action from the Senate and so avoid losing the benefit of our victory in the House.