One of the illuminating features of the campaign was the aid given to the Union in its election work by prominent Democratic women. This support came from the Democratic women of the East as well as of the West. For example, Mrs. George A. Armes, President of the District of Columbia Branch of the National Wilson and Marshall League, wrote to the Chairman of the Union during the election days: “I have come to the conclusion that the greatest service I can render to the National Democratic Party is to help to bring it to realize that true democracy involves Suffrage for women as well as for men. I know that it will come to a realization of the truth if it sees that it can no longer count upon the women’s vote in the West if it opposes the Suffrage Amendment. I am, therefore, heartily with the election campaign of the Congressional Union in its appeal to the women voters to cast their votes against all Democratic candidates for Congress.”
Women voted in the election for forty-five members of Congress. The Democratic Party ran candidates for forty-three members in these States. The Congressional Union opposed all these candidates. Out of the forty-three Democratic candidates, only twenty were elected. In some of these districts undoubtedly the women affected these results.
I quote the same report:
Basing our estimate on the charges made by friends of the candidates whom we were forced, by reason of the action of their Party, to oppose, the Congressional Union campaign defeated Representative Neely of Kansas, Mr. Flegel of Oregon, and Representative Seldomridge of Colorado; and contributed in large measure to the defeat of Mr. Hawley of Idaho, Mr. James H. Moyle of Utah, and Mr. Roscoe Drumheller of Washington, and greatly lessened the majorities of Senator Smith of Arizona, Senator Thomas, and Mr. Keating of Colorado.
The campaign of the Congressional Union accomplished exactly what its members hoped and expected that it would accomplish. If their purpose had been merely to unseat Democrats, they would, of course, have taken the districts in the United States where the Democrats had won by very slight majorities. When they went into such strongly Democratic States as Arizona and Colorado, they did not expect to unseat any of the Democratic candidates in those States. Their purpose was to make Woman Suffrage an ever-present political issue in the States where women have political power until all the women of the United States shall be enfranchised, and to lay in those States the foundations for permanent and constantly-growing support of the franchise work at Washington. They succeeded in making the record of the Democratic Party on Woman Suffrage (an issue which would not otherwise have been heard of) widely known and hotly discussed in the Suffrage States.
In the meantime, Suffrage had come up again and again in Congress. On October 10, 1914, during discussion of the Philippine Bill, conferring a greater measure of self-government on Filipino men, Representative Mann of Illinois proposed on that date that the franchise measure in the Bill be so amended as to give the vote to women on the Islands. This Amendment was lost by a vote of fifty-eight to eighty-four. On October 12, Representative J. W. Bryan of Washington, Progressive, proposed three other Amendments: One, making women eligible to vote in school elections, which was lost by a vote of eleven to twenty-seven; one giving the vote to women property-owners, which was lost by a vote of nine to twenty-seven, and one giving the Philippine legislature power to extend the right of Suffrage to women at any future time, which was lost by a vote of eleven to twenty-seven. The Amendments were defeated by strictly Party votes, the Democrats voting almost solidly against them, while the Progressives and Republicans supported them.
This Session of Congress adjourned on October 4, 1914. At its close, the Suffrage Amendment was upon the calendar of the Senate and the House, ready for a vote. In the House, however, the Rules Committee must apportion time for the vote. Mr. Mondell’s Resolution providing for this—and for which successive deputations had besieged the Rules Committee—was still before the Rules Committee.
The short Session—the last Session of the Sixty-third Congress—opened on December 7. President Wilson’s message, read to Congress on December 8, made no mention of the Woman Suffrage question, though it expressly recommended the Bill granting further independence to the men of the Philippines.
In December, therefore, Anne Martin, who had brought to brilliant victory the campaign in Nevada, came to the Congressional Union’s Headquarters in Washington. She called on the President to ask his assistance in furthering the passage of the Bristow-Mondell Amendment.
In referring to the victory in Nevada, the President said: “That is the way I believe it should come, by States.”