The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

From the time I left Washington August 25, until I returned to Chicago October 27, I covered approximately 8,000 miles. After speaking three days in Indiana, where the suffragists were straining every nerve to secure a constitutional convention, I spent two days in Chicago and then started into the western States. My first three days were spent in Omaha, and, although my original itinerary contemplated my coming to Nebraska for the last ten days of the campaign, this was afterwards changed and I went back to Montana a second time, so my observations regarding Nebraska refer to Omaha alone. Here existed an almost unbelievable condition of opposition. The brewers had come openly into the field against us and the brewing interests are connected with many of the big financial ventures in that city. Bankers, merchants, tailors and other business men whose wives were in suffrage were brazenly warned that the brewing deposits would be withdrawn from banks, that patronage would be taken away from merchants and tradespeople—even doctors were threatened with the loss of their clientele if their wives continued actively in the campaign. The result was a paralysis of action among many women who would naturally have been leaders and supporters of the work. Mrs. Draper Smith was doing all that was humanly possible under the circumstances to stem the tide of opposition, but money for publicity and organizing and many speakers seemed to be a necessity. Upon my report to Mrs. McCormick all extra aid possible was given.

My trip to South Dakota was interesting in the extreme. It and North Dakota are agricultural States, the cities are small and far apart, the villages are scattered over vast areas. By far the larger percentage of population dwells in the country on farms and ranches. The two Dakotas are almost pioneer States even now, but they present the highest degree of educational advantage and of general literacy perhaps in the whole United States. Their laws are generally good and for that reason there appears to be much apathy on the part of both men and women regarding suffrage. The States are prosperous and the people have not felt to any extent the pinch of wrong political conditions. The great problem was to reach the people and make them think, as when they think at all upon the subject they are apt to think right. I am convinced that whatever the vote against the suffrage amendment may have been in North Dakota it was the result of indifference and lack of special information and not to any extent real opposition.

I believed from what I could learn in South Dakota the liquor interests were making their last fight for State control and about the time I arrived Mrs. Pyle had ascertained that a large amount of money was being used to subsidize the State press, and simultaneously the literary efforts of the anti-suffragists, which have appeared throughout the press during the last year, came out in the leading papers, and anti-suffrage ladies at $100 a week and expenses appeared on the platform of the principal towns and cities. During my campaign there I spoke wherever possible out-of-doors, even though meetings were arranged for me in halls, courthouses and churches. I found that the small audiences which would assemble in these places were made up of women and men already interested and that the uninstructed voter would only listen when you caught him on the street. I spent the week of the State fair at Huron with Mrs. Pyle and witnessed a wonderful demonstration of activity. As high as 50,000 people a day were in attendance and the grounds were covered with our yellow banners. Every prize-winning animal, every racing sulky, automobile and motorcycle carried our pennants. Twenty thousand yellow badges were given away in one day. The squaws from the reservation did their native dances waving suffrage banners, and the snake charmer on the midway carried a Votes for Women pennant while an enormous serpent coiled around her body. I spoke during the fair four and five times a day and held street meetings downtown in the evening. When not thus engaged I assisted Mrs. Pyle and her committee in distributing thousands of pieces of literature and was amazed at the eagerness of the people to receive them. We investigated the fair grounds to see how much was thrown away and found almost none.

In North Dakota Mrs. Darrow had asked me to go into the untilled suffrage field. In many places they had never heard a suffrage address nor had a suffrage meeting ever been held. I zigzagged across from the southeast to the northwest corners and in Minot was arrested for making a street speech. There was no law that I could discover against my speaking in the street and I was convinced and am still that it was the result of the petty tyranny of town officials unfavorable to women. A fine of $5 imposed upon me by the justice of the peace was remitted by him. I spent twelve days in Montana, travelling about 2,000 miles, and found more general interest than in any other State. With 118,000 voters scattered over the third largest State in the Union, with many contending elements, with an acute labor situation, with the political control of the State vested very largely in one great corporation, there was plenty to occupy the attention of a suffragist worker. Miss Rankin's organization work had been carried to a high degree of efficiency by the most strenuous endeavor on her part. The Amalgamated Copper Company, striving to defeat the workmen's compensation act, had joined hands with the liquor interests, working to defeat woman suffrage, and had put on the petticoat and bonnet of the organized female anti-suffragists. I spoke to thousands of people all over the State, and while on the surface all appeared well, there was an undertow of fierce opposition that could be felt but that can not be estimated until the votes are counted. [The State was carried by 3,714.]

Nevada was like a story in a book—a big, little State, with 80,000 inhabitants and 18,000 voters, and so thoroughly was it organized by Miss Martin that I believe she could address every voter by his first name. I felt like a fifth wheel. All the work appeared to be finished and hung aside to season by the time I arrived and I was in the unenviable position of being sandwiched between Dr. Shaw, who had just preceded me, and Miss Addams, who immediately followed me. I went over the desert, however, and into mines, and spoke in butchers' homes and at meetings that wound up with a supper and a dance and came away with the certainty that Miss Martin had two or three thousand votes tucked away in her inside pocket. [The State was carried by 3,678.] On this trip I learned of hundreds of thousands of pieces of literature sent out by our entertaining friend, the Hon. Tom Heflin of Alabama. I know now why it was that all last winter he jumped up in Congress every few minutes and read into the Congressional Record something about the horror of women voting. He had a long business head and he was thriftily saving postage on anti-suffrage literature in the interest of the "society opposed," of the liquor interests, of organized crime and of all those forces that have taken arms against us.

The convention was deeply appreciative of the arduous and extensive work that has been done by the Congressional Committee but there was intense dissatisfaction with the so-called Shafroth Amendment, which had been freely discussed in the Woman's Journal for the last eight or nine months.[91] The debate in the convention consumed several sessions and more bitterness was shown than ever before at one of these annual meetings. The Official Board having endorsed the amendment felt obliged to stand by it, but to most of those delegates who had been in the movement for years it meant the abandonment of the object for which the association had been formed and for which all the founders, the pioneer workers and those down to the present day, had devoted their best efforts. Dr. Shaw was the only member of the board who had been many years connected with the association, and, while her judgment was opposed to the new amendment, she yielded to the earnest pleas of her younger colleagues and the optimistic members of the Congressional Committee that it should have a fair trial. Miss Blackwell, editor of the Woman's Journal, strongly endorsed it and gave it the support of her paper in many long, earnest editorials. She also granted columns of space to vigorous arguments on both sides by suffragists throughout the country.[92] The question had been before the State associations for the last seven or eight months.

Mrs. Mary Ware Dennett, corresponding secretary of the National American Association, wrote to the State presidents the first week in May, 1914: "Strange as it may seem, we find that quite a number of the members of our association have gotten the impression that the introduction of the Shafroth amendment means the abandoning of the old amendment which has been introduced into Congress for forty years or more, and which, as you know, has now been re-introduced and at this session will be called the Bristow-Mondell amendment. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reason for the introduction of the Shafroth amendment is to hasten the day when the passage of the Bristow-Mondell amendment will become a possibility.... Both amendments are before Congress but only the new one stands any chance of being acted upon before adjournment.[93] We stand by the old one as a matter of principle; we push for the new one as a matter of immediate practical politics and to further the passage of the old one." Mrs. Dennett also vigorously advocated the new amendment in the Woman's Journal.

At the opening of the second session of the convention devoted to the subject Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch moved that the Shafroth amendment be not proceeded with in the next Congress and it was seconded. Instantly Mrs. Raymond Brown, president of the New York State Association, offered as a substitute resolution: "It is the sense of this convention that the policy of the National American Woman Suffrage Association shall be to support by every means within its power, in the future as in the past, the amendment known as the Susan B. Anthony amendment; and further that we support such other legislation as the National Board may authorize and initiate to the end that the Susan B. Anthony resolution become a law."[94] After the discussion had lasted for hours, with the administration supporting this resolution, a motion to strike out the words "and further" and all that followed was lost and it was carried by a vote of 194 to 100.[95]

The next day an informal conference was held at which Miss Laura Clay and Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett explained a bill for Federal Suffrage, which they, with others, had long advocated, to enable women to vote for U. S. Senators and Representatives. Congress had the power to enact such a law by a simple majority vote of both houses. The association for many years had had a standing committee on the subject, which was finally dropped because it was believed that the law could not possibly be obtained. It found much favor at this convention, which instructed the Congressional Committee to "investigate and promote the right of women to vote for U. S. Senators, Representatives and Presidential Electors through action of Congress."

There was spirited discussion of the Congressional Committee's plan for "blacklisting" candidates for Congress whose record on woman suffrage was objectionable and it finally resulted in the passing of a resolution that this could be done only when approved by the majority of the societies in the State concerned. It was decided that the Congressional Committee should send out information and suggestions for congressional work but that the State associations should determine how this material should be used and that when the majority of them in a State could not agree upon some plan of cooperation the Congressional Committee should not work in said State.