Switzerland, with the European spread of woman suffrage all around, may be expected to soon respond to the wave of democratic sentiment. On January 22, 1919, the delegates of the Swiss Union of Women’s Clubs adopted a resolution to request the Federal Council to order a radical revision of the Constitution, and grant to women equal political rights with men. On March 17th, the Grand Council of the Canton of Neuchâtel declared for the principle of Woman Suffrage, and likewise instructed the Government to prepare a suffrage bill. If passed this bill will probably be decided by referendum.
The Belgian Chamber of Deputies, by unanimous vote, adopted on April 11th, 1919, an Electoral Reform Bill, under the terms of which the right to vote is limited to widows who have not remarried, to the mothers of soldiers killed in battle and to the mothers of civilians shot by the enemy.
In Holland the first Chamber of the Dutch Parliament adopted on July 12th, 1919, a motion to introduce woman suffrage by a vote of 34 to 5.
In the United States of America the Western States have, as pointed out in a former chapter, never hesitated to acknowledge the rights of women to vote. But the Southern and Eastern States had remained reluctant in granting this privilege. And so the suffragists were compelled to conquer these regions step by step. The women of New York won full suffrage in 1917, those of South Dakota, Michigan and Oklahoma in 1918. Presidential suffrage was secured in 1917 in North Dakota, Nebraska, and Rhode Island, and in 1919 in Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri and Maine.
For many years efforts had also been made by the friends of Woman Suffrage to induce Congress to act on the so-called “Susan Anthony Amendments to the Constitution,” reading as follows:
“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. The Congress shall have power by appropriate legislation to enforce the provisions of this article.”
In 1914 the Senate again voted these amendments down by 11 votes. Again, in September, 1918, it was rejected by two votes, and again in February, 1919, by one vote. The House voted upon the resolution three times, rejecting it in 1915 by 78 votes, passing it in 1918 by a margin of one vote, and again, on May 21st, 1919, by a vote of 304 to 89. The fight ended on June 4, 1919, when the Senate adopted the resolution by a vote of 56 to 25.
“The credit of having won this victory,” so the “New York American” said in an editorial, “belongs chiefly to the resourceful women of the land who have, for generations, been pushing this issue to the front in spite of stupid opposition and almost as stupid indifference.
“Liberal-minded men, a few in the early days, many more recently, have helped. But, primarily, it is a woman’s victory, and no man will begrudge the acknowledment. Equal partners in the economic and social life of the nation, American women will now be equal sharers in its political life and in the responsibilities which this will involve.