Scrub women were still at work with brushes and buckets of soapsuds when I reached the Capitol that fateful morning. From the front row of the gallery we looked down on the floor of the House, with its seven rows of empty seats rising in semi-circular rows like an amphitheatre. A few people scurried here and there, the galleries were rapidly filling. We watched the Congressmen come in, sit down, walk about, or stand in groups talking and looking up at the galleries.
At the stroke of eleven all eyes turned toward the door of the Speaker’s lobby. Chattering ceased. The door opened, and a Roman mace appeared and advanced, supported by the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms, who held it in his two hands before him. Very solemn, very mindful of his step, he ascended the three steps to the Speaker’s stand, followed by the Speaker, Champ Clark, dignified and magnificent in a tan frock coat, with a white flower in the buttonhole. Having ascended, the Sergeant-at-Arms laid the mace against the wall where all the Congressmen could look at it, and came down again with a little skip on the last step, while the Speaker impressively faced the House.
Prayer and routine business finished, the speeches began. Most of them were prosy and dull, delivered not for those who heard them, but for constituents hundreds of miles away. In the galleries we listened wearily. We had brought luncheon with us, which we ate as unobtrusively as possible. We would lose our seats if we left them, for through the ground-glass doors we dimly saw waiting multitudes trying to come in. All day the largest crowds the doorkeepers had ever known pressed against the doors. Inside the speeches droned on.
“What a dull ending for such a dramatic struggle,” said a newspaper man, leaning over from the press gallery. I could have wished it had been duller, for we never for an instant forgot we still lacked votes. We did not know how far the President’s message had carried since our last possible poll.
Suddenly a wave of applause and cheers swept over the floor. Every head turned toward the Speaker’s door, and there, on the threshold, we saw Mr. Mann, pale and trembling. For six months he had lain in a hospital—his only visitors his wife and secretary. It had been said that he would never come back to the House. Yet he had come to vote for our Amendment.
Now, through the skylight, we could see that the afternoon had gone, and evening had come. At last the time for speech-making ended and the vote was taken. Forty years to a day from the first introduction of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in Congress, one year exactly from the time the first picket line went to stand before the White House, the Federal Suffrage Amendment passed the House of Representatives. It passed with just one vote to spare. Six votes came to us through the President. He had saved the day!
Outside the doors of the gallery a woman began to sing, Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Others took it up, more and more voices joined, and through the halls of the Capitol there swelled our song of gratitude. Louder and louder it rose and soared to the high arches, and was carried out into the night to die away at last in the far distances. And still in our hearts we sang, Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
But our minds were not at rest, nor our thoughts quiet. Our victory was worth nothing unless we could consolidate it quickly. To do this we had to win the Senate. And the Senate is farther from the people than the House, and much, much harder to move.