In her Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist, Maud Younger describes very delightfully how the first nine votes were obtained:
“We should get Senator Phelan now,” said Miss Paul. “He opposed Federal Suffrage because the President did. Now that the President has come out for it, Senator Phelan should do so. Send for him.”
I sent in my card and he came at once, very neat in a cut-away coat, his eyes smiling above his trimmed sandy beard. “Of course I’ll vote for the Amendment,” he said, as though he had never thought of anything else. He was plainly glad to have an excuse for changing his position.
“That leaves ten to get,” said Miss Paul. “Let’s go and see Senator McCumber.” The Senator from North Dakota is sandy and Scotch and cautious, and, like many other Senators, thinks it would be weak and vacillating to change his opinion.
“I voted against it in 1914. I cannot vote for it in 1918,” he said. “I cannot change my principles.”
“But you can change your mind?”
“No, I could not do that.”
“Then you might change your vote,” said I, urging progress. He, too, saw progress, but was wary of it. Looking cautiously around the room and back of us, he said slowly, “If the legislature of my State should ask me to vote for it, I would feel obliged to do so.”
That same night Beulah Amidon telegraphed to North Dakota,—her own State—to the Chairman of the Republican Party and the Non-Partisan League that controls the Legislature; to her father, Judge Amidon, and to others. The Legislature immediately passed a resolution calling on Senator McCumber to vote for our Amendment. Miss Amidon went to see him at once, with the news.
“But I haven’t seen how the resolution is worded yet,” said Senator McCumber cannily.