The secretary considered and decreed, “A message might be sent in by telephone.” Mrs. Gardner accepted the use of Mr. Henry’s desk telephone, called up Representative Kelly who was attending the meeting in the adjoining Committee room, and asked if he would bring the Suffrage Resolution to the attention of the Committee. Mr. Kelly promptly promised to call up the Suffrage Resolution if it were possible to do so. This colloquy effectively brought the matter before the Committee.
The Suffrage Resolution was brought up, but a substitute motion that the Committee adjourn was immediately made and carried. It was a tie vote, but Mr. Henry, as chairman, cast the deciding vote. The Committee accordingly adjourned without having taken action on the Suffrage Resolution.
The Congressional Union, undaunted, maintained its siege of the Rules Committee until Congress adjourned in October. Throughout the remaining months of that Congressional Session, however, the Rules Committee continued its policy of evasion. No action was taken before adjournment.
Of course, all this blocking of their efforts on the part of the Democrats made inevitable the election policy which the Congressional Union was about to adopt—that of holding them “responsible.”
IX
THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE WOMEN VOTERS
In the meantime, the Congressional Union had been forming an Advisory Council which continued to Support the Congressional Union—and later the Woman’s Party—with advice and work during the rest of its history. The personnel of the Advisory Council has changed from time to time; but always it has been a large body and an able one.
The list of membership has included many famous names; women political leaders; women trades-unionists; women of wealth and position; women active in their communities. It included professional women of every sort; doctors, lawyers, clergymen. It included artists of every description; actors, singers, painters, sculptors. It included publicists of every kind; fictionists, poets, dramatists, essayists. It included social workers of every class. And these women have represented all parts of the Union.
On August 29 and 30, this newly-formed Advisory Council met at Newport. Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont did everything to make the occasion a success. She threw open Marble House which, hung with the great purple, white, and gold banners of the Congressional Union and flooded with golden light, made an extraordinary background for the deliberations of the Conference. In every way possible for her she used the beauty and social prestige of Newport to give the occasion dignity, prominence, and publicity. Her daughter, the Duchess of Marlborough, had joined the Congressional Union just previous to this Conference. Little she thought and little the Congressional Union thought that as an English woman, she would be a voter, would be elected to the London City Council before her mother, an American woman, was enfranchised.
Here, for the first time, the plan of holding the Democratic Party—the Party in power—responsible for the slowness with which the Suffrage work was progressing, and, in consequence, of working against it, was adopted as a program actually to be carried out.