Many other questions were asked, the committee seeming incredulous that suffragists would fight the re-election of their friends. The next speaker was Miss Alice Stone Blackwell whose address consisted in a solid array of facts and figures that were absolutely unanswerable. As the daughter of Lucy Stone and editor of the Woman's Journal from girlhood she was fortified beyond all others with information as to the progress of woman suffrage; the connection of the liquor interests with its many defeats; the statistics of the votes that had been taken and all phases of the subject. Mrs. Harriet Stokes Thompson, an educator and social worker of Chicago, said in part:
I wish to make my appeal this morning to both your intellect and your sympathies when I speak to you in behalf of the nine million women who are out today assuming their part in the industrial world. These women who are working in the shops and factories have simply followed the evolution of industry. It is not that they have entered into man's work at all, because they are doing what they formerly did in their homes, and I am asking today that you give to them power to protect themselves. Those girls working there now are the mothers of the generation to come and that they may be well protected in their hours of labor, in the conditions under which they work, that they may become mothers of healthy children in the future, we are asking that they may speak with authority through legislative chambers.... I wish to appeal to you, too, for another large group of women, the teachers of the United States. I myself am one of those who stand before the children of this great nation day after day. The teachers should be made citizens in order that they may keep both the letter and the spirit of this democratic country in their teachings. I have lived in my own State to know the difference in the spirit with which you teach citizenship when you yourself are a citizen. A slave cannot teach freedom, cannot comprehend the spirit of freedom; neither can a woman who is not a citizen comprehend the spirit of true citizenship. The teachers of Illinois since they were enfranchised have come to their work with a new life, a new zest and a new responsibility and we expect to send the boys out with a finer appreciation of what it means to render public service to a whole community and not a fraction of it. We also recognize the fact that our men are feeling that in every good work which they undertake a great help has been given to them.
Mrs. George Bass, whose address is quoted in the report of the Senate hearing in this chapter, gave a valuable résumé of the civic and legal reforms which already the women of Illinois had been able to accomplish with their votes and answered a number of questions. Miss Ruutz-Rees spoke along the lines of her speech before the Senate Committee, as did Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs, who made a strong appeal in the name of southern women for the Federal Amendment. She was subjected to a crossfire of questions from the southern members and Chairman Webb asked the question which many times afterwards came back to plague him: "Do you not think that as soon as you have a big enough majority of women in Alabama who want suffrage you will get it from the State and that you ought not come here bothering Congress about something that it should not, under our form of government, take jurisdiction of?" She answered: "I am very regretful that you have been bothered." During the questions and answers that followed Mrs. Jacobs brought forward the unjust laws of South Carolina and Alabama for working women and for all women and said: "The southern man still prefers to think of the southern women as the sheltered, protected beings he would like to have them and he does not realize that now they are the exploited class." Representatives Whaley of South Carolina and Tribble of Georgia denied her statements and afterwards put into the Record statistics attempting to disprove them.
In the paper presented by Mrs. Medill McCormick, chairman of the Congressional Committee, she showed the excellent work that had been done by its branches organized in the congressional districts; the pressure on members of Congress by their constituents; the favorable resolutions that had been passed by organizations and meetings representing hundreds of thousands and closed: "I wonder whether you gentlemen of the committee have computed the number of votes that are now behind the woman suffrage movement in this country? I do not mean the votes of women in the equal suffrage States alone, I mean the popular voting strength as shown at the polls all over the country. Nearly 1,250,000 votes were cast for woman suffrage in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Massachusetts this fall. Nearly 800,000 were cast in Ohio, Missouri, the Dakotas and Nebraska last fall, besides the popular vote of the equal suffrage States and Illinois. The total of these figures from twenty-one States is 6,400,000—that is, 191,000 more than were cast for President Wilson in forty-eight States. Would Congress fail to recognize such voting strength upon any other issue?
The rest of the time was given to the Congressional Union, its chairman, Miss Alice Paul, presiding. The speakers were Mrs. Andreas Ueland, president of the Minnesota Suffrage Association; Miss Mabel Vernon of Nevada; Mrs. Jennie Law Hardy, an Australian residing in Michigan; Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles of Delaware; Miss Helen Todd, Miss Frances Jolliffe and Mrs. Sara Bard Field of California. The first two speakers proceeded without interruption but when Mrs. Hardy said that by marrying in the United States she found herself disfranchised, the committee woke up. After questioning her on this point Mr. Steele of Pennsylvania asked her how she accounted for the large defeat the second time the suffrage amendment was submitted in Michigan and she answered: "I account for it partly by the fact that this was the only State having a campaign that year and the whole opposition was centered there. The liquor interests themselves admitted that they spent a million dollars to defeat it."
The address of Mrs. Hilles also brought out a flood of questions, which, with the answers made by Miss Paul, filled four printed pages of the official report. They began with requests for information about the difficulties of amending State constitutions but soon centered on the campaign of the Union against the Democrats in 1914 and this line was followed throughout the rest of the hearing, the Federal Amendment being largely lost sight of. The members showed deep personal resentment. For example:
Mr. Taggart (Kan.). Your organization spent a lot of time and money trying to defeat men on this committee that you are now before, did it not?
Miss Paul. We went out into the suffrage States and told the women voters what was done to the suffrage amendment by the last Congress.