The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

Your committee regrets that the planks in the two dominant national party platforms, since they mention method at all, do not specifically endorse Federal action, but they will be of great value in the States and progress there will help the Federal work. Every man in Congress is keenly alive to the strength of our movement in his district and State. For that reason we urged the women of each State to secure planks in the State platforms endorsing the principle of woman suffrage. As a last resort, if they could not secure a separate plank in their State platforms, we asked them to make sure that each State convention endorsed its party's national platform, that the plank might in this way have the equivalent of a State endorsement.

With the final yielding of the two dominant parties to the justice of woman suffrage all are now on record in favor of the principle; all except the Republican and Democratic endorse the Federal Amendment. Republicans have been strengthened in their advocacy of Federal action by Judge Hughes' personal endorsement of the amendment. Your committee must sound a note of warning here against over-confidence. Some too zealous suffragists, including one suffrage organ, state quite seriously, notwithstanding the fact that their attention has been called to their error, that "the Republican party has specifically declared for the Federal Suffrage Amendment." Alas! it has done no such thing. It has not done one bit more than the Democratic party. The personal endorsement of the Republican candidate for President can not properly be construed as party endorsement. Those of us who have had some years of experience have witnessed the worming and screwing, fallacy and treachery exhibited by members of a party after their leading candidate has endorsed a particular measure. We know that we can not hold the party responsible for one man's utterances made after the platform had been adopted by the party convention and accepted by the party candidate.

Committee: Mrs. Medill McCormick was unable to continue as chairman of the Congressional Committee and the present chairman was appointed by the National Board in January, 1916, immediately went to Washington and lived there eight months, until the opening of this convention. During the entire term of this session of Congress this committee has had some representatives on duty at the Washington headquarters every moment. The service of each member has not been continuous but has varied from a week to three months in length. In addition to the chairman, the committee consisted of Mrs. Funk of Illinois; Miss Hay of New York; Mrs. Jacobs of Alabama; Mrs. Cotnam of Arkansas; Mrs. C. S. McClure of Michigan; Mrs. Valentine of Virginia; Miss Martha Norris of Ohio; Mrs. Elizabeth Higgins Sullivan of Nebraska and Miss Ruth White of Missouri.

Mrs. Funk resigned March 14 to take up other work and in July Miss White was appointed secretary and has done much special work. Because of the amount of travel involved only two meetings of the full committee have been held, on March 2 and September 4. Every plan for congressional work has been submitted to the National Board or to the national president for approval.

Revision of Work: At the beginning of the present year the work of the National Association was revised and departmentalized, the organization branch was separated from the congressional work, made a distinct department, placed under another head and operated from the New York office. This division was advisable, since each task is big enough by itself. The only disadvantage resulted from the distance between the bases of operation of the two departments—one of the paramount reasons for the removal of all the headquarters to Washington.... The work of the committee in 1916 consisted of the supervision and direction of all activity connected with the Federal Amendment, including lobby work at the Capitol; the stimulating of congressional activity in the States; the cataloguing of information concerning Senators and Representatives; the assembling and filing of all information specifically relating to the Federal Amendment in Congress and in the States; the issuing of newspaper articles; the handling of the large correspondence.

Headquarters: The chairman had been on duty only a short time when the necessity for removing national headquarters to Washington was deeply impressed upon her—so deeply that she made a special trip to New York to labor with the national officers there to this end but was unsuccessful. The headquarters of the Congressional Committee at the opening of this session consisted of two rooms in the Munsey Building at Washington too diminutive to hold even our furniture, to say nothing of our workers. On February 19 it moved to two larger rooms in the same building.

A summary of the correspondence, etc., was given and the report said of the lobby work:

All the direct work with Senators and Congressmen is a time as well as brain consuming process. Usually it means tramping up and down the long stone corridors, hour after hour, in order to find one man in his office. Then he may be having a committee meeting or a previous engagement or emergency business and you are invited to come some other day. Perhaps you have waited an hour before you are sure that he can not see you. It is not uncommon for the members of our lobby to state that they have made as many as six, eight or ten calls before they succeeded in reaching a man. Speaking from my own knowledge, I have wasted hours at the Capitol trying to see men who would not make appointments. I have called eighteen times to see one man and have not seen him yet! He is the Representative from my own district. We carried the district for suffrage in Pennsylvania last year but I am told that he does not want to vote for the Federal Amendment. It is, of course, possible to interview members by calling them out of the session but this method is uncertain and not very successful, since they feel hurried and interviews in a public reception room are seldom satisfactory.

The latest piece of work done by the committee is the interviewing by letter of all congressional candidates who will stand for election in November. This has been done in cooperation with the State associations which have been urged to institute vigorous interviewing in the congressional districts.