As a climax to all this, the President himself, realizing that one Democratic vote could save the situation, sent every opposed Democratic member of the Senate a telegram urging him to cast the deciding vote. If we could not obtain one vote from this pressure, there was only one chance left to us.
Senator Bloch, who was wintering in California, had asked to be paired for Suffrage. The opposition refused to consider his request and no pressure could obtain from the opposed Senators this ordinary Senatorial courtesy. A long-distance call was put in for Senator Bloch in San Francisco. That night he started east.
Now came the test of all our resources and of the loyalty of our friends, and I do not believe that any stauncher loyalty has been displayed by any group of men in the whole ratification campaign than by the fourteen Suffrage senators of the West Virginia Legislature.
For five days these fourteen men had to wait in Charleston while the fifteenth vote crossed the continent. Every day they held conferences and buoyed one another up, while Betty Gram, who had been sent from Washington to help in the campaign, and I hovered round about trying, with radiant cheerfulness, to instill into every one the feeling: “Senator Block is on his way and all is well with the world.” Telegraphic despatches constantly arrived saying Senator Block was in New Mexico or Omaha or some other remote place that gradually grew nearer.
Our enemies once more began their attack in the House. The opposition tried to reconsider and were beaten; tried a referendum and were beaten; tried to prevent consideration from being tabled and were beaten. Nevertheless, all of the delegates of the lower House had to be held in Charleston as well as the Senators. One man got as far as his comfortable seat in the train, but we heard that he had bought a ticket. I took a taxicab, Miss Gram and Mrs. Puffenbarger, Chairman of the Woman’s Committee of West Virginia, took another. We arrived simultaneously and that bewildered delegate was rushed off the train and back to his less comfortable seat in the Capitol.
At one time it looked as if we could not get enough votes to recess from day to day until Senator Bloch arrived, and our friends prepared for continuous session. They carried pillows in their hands and playing-cards in their pockets, and we on the outside had our arrangements made for relaying them sandwiches and coffee. It was the opposition that weakened in the face of this ordeal.
Then came Monday, the day set for Mr. Bloch’s arrival and suddenly a senator disappeared. We thought that he had been abducted. His thirteen Suffrage colleagues rushed about searching for him. Miss Gram and I walked the streets, even daring to peer into barber-shop windows.
At last the mystery was solved. He had gone home and was delayed by a blizzard.
The Senate did not convene until he reappeared at 2:50 and saved the situation.
And then Senator Bloch arrived—one man alone in two coaches bouncing behind an engine that broke the world record for speed. He had chosen the special train rather than the airplane that was put at his disposal by the Republicans, but, as he said himself, he was traveling in the air most of the way to Charleston. As he got off the train, pale but smiling, he was grasping his golf sticks desperately in one hand and a thermos bottle of coffee in the other. And at 2:40 A.M., when his private train pulled in, the town was out to meet him.