The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

Several who had addressed the Senate Committee came over to the House office building and spoke to the Judiciary Committee. Mrs. William Kent, wife of a Representative from California, was introduced by Miss Addams as one who was not a member of the House but was eligible. In the course of a winning speech she said: "The United States is committed to a democratic form of government, a government by the people. Those who do not believe in the ideals of democracy are the only ones who can consistently oppose woman suffrage. The hope of democracy is in education. There is food for thought in the fact that the early education of all the citizens is now administered by a class who have no vote.... Our recent California Legislature when it submitted the amendments which were to be referred to the voters on October 10 did a very sensible and intelligent thing. Speeches for and against each one of these amendments were published in a little pamphlet which was sent to every voter. One man—and he was a good man, too—who argued against woman suffrage said that women should not descend into the dirty mire of politics, that the vote would be of no value to them. In the same speech he said that the women should teach their sons the sacred duties of citizens and to hold the ballot as the most precious inheritance of every American boy. Can we really bring up our sons with a clear sense of the civic responsibility which we ourselves have not? We believe that our children need what we shall learn in becoming voters and that the State needs what we have learned in being mothers and home makers."

"May I present next," said Miss Addams, "Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, of New York? She has been before other Congressional committees with Miss Susan B. Anthony, who for so many years came here to present this cause. Mrs. Harper has written a history of the equal suffrage movement and a very fine biography of Miss Anthony and it is with special pleasure that I present her. She will make the constitutional argument."

Mrs. Harper said in beginning: "This argument shall be based entirely on the Federal Constitution and the only authorities cited will be the utterances of two Presidents of the United States within the past month." She then quoted from speeches of President Taft and former President Roosevelt extolling the Constitution as guaranteeing self-government to all the people with the right to change it when this seems necessary, and she showed the utter fallacy of this statement when applied to women. In closing she said: "Forty-three years in asking Congress for this amendment of the Federal Constitution to enfranchise women they have followed an entirely legal and constitutional method of procedure, which has been so absolutely barren of results that in the past nineteen years the committees have made no report whatever, either favorable or unfavorable. How much longer do you expect women to treat with respect National and State constitutions and legislative bodies that stand thus an impenetrable barrier between them and their rights as citizens of the United States?" A long colloquy followed which began:

The Chairman: The committee will be very glad to have you extend your remarks to answer a question propounded by Mr. Littleton awhile ago. I wish to say that this committee, during my service on it, has always been met with this proposition when this amendment was proposed, that the States already have the authority to confer suffrage upon women, and, therefore, why is it necessary for women to wait for an amendment to the Federal Constitution when they can now go to the States and obtain this right to vote, just as the women of California did last year?

Mrs. Harper: Mr. Chairman, the women are not waiting; they are keeping right on with their efforts to get the suffrage from the States. They began in 1867 with their State campaigns and have continued them ever since, but in sending the women to the States you require them to make forty-eight campaigns and to go to the individual electors to get permission to vote. After the Civil War the Republican party with all its power and with only the northern States voting, was never able to get the suffrage for the negroes. The leaders went to State after State, even to Kansas, with its record for freeing the negroes, and every State turned down the proposition to give them suffrage. I doubt if the individual voters of many States would give the suffrage to any new class, even of men. The capitalists would not let the working people vote if they could help it, and the working people would not let the capitalists vote; Catholics would not enfranchise the Protestants and the Protestants would not give the vote to Catholics. You impose upon us an intolerable condition when you send us to the individual voters. What man on this committee would like to submit his electoral rights to the voters of New York City, for instance, representing as they do every nationality in the world? If we could secure this amendment to the Federal Constitution, then we could deal with the Legislatures, with the selected men in each State, instead of the great conglomerate of voters that we have in this country, such as does not exist in any other.

The Chairman: But if one of these suffrage resolutions should be favorably reported and both Houses of Congress should pass it of course it would be referred to the States and then before it became a law it would have to have their approval.

Mrs. Harper: Only of the Legislatures, not the individual voters.

The Chairman: You use an expression which a member of the committee has asked me to have you explain—"conglomerate of voters," which you said does not exist elsewhere. The desire is to know to whom you refer.

Mrs. Harper: I mean no disrespect to the great body of electors in the United States but in every other country the voters are the people of its own nationality. In no other would the question have to go to the nationalities of the whole world as it would in our country. For instance, we have to submit our question to the negro and to the Indian men, when we go to the individual voters, and to the native-born Chinese and to all those men from southern Europe who are trained in the idea of woman's inferiority. You put upon us conditions which are not put upon women anywhere in the world outside the United States.

Mr. Littleton (N. Y.): You would have to convince every legislator of the fact that this amendment to the National Constitution ought to be adopted. If you could convince the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States you could get three-fourths of them to grant the suffrage itself.