Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. Congress shall have power by appropriate legislation to enforce the provisions of this article.
The National American Woman Suffrage Association immediately rallied to the support of the Shafroth-Palmer Amendment; they continued to give to it their undivided work for two years.
But the Congressional Union—I quote the vigorous words of the Report of the Congressional Union for the year 1914:
The Congressional Union immediately announced its determination to support only the original Amendment, known popularly as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, and in Congress as the Bristow-Mondell Amendment. It maintained that to work at the same time for two Suffrage amendments to the National Constitution would enable the enemies of the bill to play one against the other. Believing that one amendment only must be supported, it felt that it was wise to support the amendment which would give Suffrage itself rather than an amendment which, after the same expenditure of effort would give only another method of obtaining Suffrage—that is, would merely establish the initiative on the Suffrage question. The Union, moreover, feeling that the bane of the Suffrage cause at present was too many and not too few referendums, held that to pass a Federal Amendment—which would inaugurate thirty-nine referendum campaigns would involve the movement in a dissipation of resources such as its enemies would most deeply desire. Finally, it held that the passage of one Suffrage amendment to the National Constitution would make it extremely difficult to pass another; so that if the Shafroth Bill became a law, it would probably indefinitely postpone the passage of the Anthony Amendment, and doom the movement to years of referendum campaigns.
Not at all daunted by the action of the Senate in defeating the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, nor by the introduction there of the Shafroth-Palmer Amendment, the Congressional Union at once secured the re-introduction in the Senate of the defeated Amendment. The measure was out of the Senate only twenty-two hours. The following day, Senator Bristow introduced a resolution identical with the one which had been lost. On April 7, it was again reported from the Woman Suffrage Committee, and took its place on the Calendar of the Senate. This was just a year from the date of its original introduction to this Senate. It was the second favorable report of the Senate Committee in one Congress.
Here we leave the work with Congress for a while, and take up the matter of the education of the President. We must go back a few months.
VII
PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT
Although five different deputations—Congressional Union members; college women; women voters; New Jersey women; women from all the States—had called on the President, it was apparent that he had undergone no change in his attitude toward the Suffrage question. On February 2, 1914, therefore, another deputation, the sixth—and an exceedingly interesting one—marched to the White House. This deputation included women from the industrial world and they represented more than fifty trades in which women are engaged. They carried banners which bore quotations from the President’s New Freedom: “We Have Got to Humanize Industry,” and “I Absolutely Protest Against Being Put into the Hands of Trustees.”