The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

Dr. Shaw described the forming of the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense by the Government and her selection as its chairman. She said she had no idea what the committee was expected to do, so she went to the Secretary of the Navy to find out, and continued: "I learned that the Woman's Committee was to be the channel through which the orders of the various departments of the Government concerning women's war work were to reach the womanhood of the country; that it was to conserve and coordinate all the women's societies in the United States which were doing war work in order to prevent duplication and useless effort. This was very necessary, not because our women are not patriotic but because they are so patriotic that every blessed woman in the country was writing Washington, or her organization was writing for her, asking the Government what she could do for the war and of course the Government did not know; it has not yet the least idea of what women can do."

An amusing picture was given of men supervising a department of the Red Cross where women were knitting, making comfort bags, etc. She showed how for the past forty years women in their clubs and societies had been going through the necessary evolution, "until today," she said, "they are a mobilized army ready to serve the country in whatever capacity they are needed. So when the Council of National Defense laid upon the Woman's Committee the responsibility of calling them together to mobilize women's war work, we knew exactly how to do it.... It is not a question of whether we will act or not, the Government has said we must act; it is an order as much as it is an order that men shall go and fight in the trenches. It is an order of the Government that the women's war work of the country shall be coordinated, that women shall keep their organizations intact, that they shall get together under directed heads. I said to the gentlemen here in Washington, when at first they feared our women might not be willing to cooperate: 'If you put before them an incentive big enough, if you appeal to them as a part of the Government's life, not as a by-product of creation or a kindergarten but as a great human, living energy, ready to serve the country, they will respond as readily as the men.'"

We must remember that more and more sacrifices are going to be demanded but I want to say to you women, do not meekly sit down and make all the sacrifices and demand nothing in return. It is not that you want pay but we all want an equally balanced sacrifice. The Government is asking us to conserve food while it is allowing carload after carload to rot on the side tracks of railroad stations and great elevators of grain to be consumed by fire for lack of proper protection. If we must eat Indian meal in order to save wheat, then the men must protect the grain elevators and see that the wheat is saved. We must demand that there shall be conservation all along the line. I had a letter the other day giving me a fearful scorching because of a speech I made in which I said that we women have Mr. Hoover looking into our refrigerators, examining our bread to see what kind of materials we are using, telling us what extravagant creatures we are, that we waste millions of money every year, waste food and all that sort of thing, and yet while we are asked to have meatless days and wheatless days, I have never yet seen a demand for a smokeless day! They are asking through the newspapers that we women shall dance, play bridge, have charades, sing and do everything under the sun to raise money to buy tobacco for the men in the trenches, while the men who want us to do this have a cigar in their mouth at the time they are asking it! I said that if men want the soldiers to have tobacco, let them have smokeless days and furnish it! If they would conserve one single cigar a day and send it to the men in the trenches the soldiers would have all they would need and the men at home would be a great deal better off. If we have to eat rye flour to send wheat across the sea they must stop smoking to send smokes across the sea.

There is no end to the things that women are asked to do. I know this is true because I have read the newspapers for the last six months to get my duty before me. The first thing we are asked to do is to provide the enthusiasm, inspiration and patriotism to make men want to fight, and we are to send them away with a smile! That is not much to ask of a mother! We are to maintain a perfect calm after we have furnished all this inspiration and enthusiasm, "keep the home fires burning," keep the home sweet and peaceful and happy, keep society on a level, look after business, buy enough but not too much and wear some of our old clothes but not all of them or what would happen to the merchants?... We are going to rise as women always have risen to the supreme height of patriotic service....

The Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense now asks for your cooperation, that we may be what the Government would have us be, soldiers at home, defending the interests of the home, while the men are fighting with the gallant Allies who are laying down their lives that this world may be a safe place and that men and women may know the meaning of democracy, which is that we are one great family of God. That, and that only, is the ideal of democracy for which our flag stands.

The National Anti-Suffrage Association took this time to hold its one day's annual convention in a Washington hotel and re-elect for president Mrs. James W. Wadsworth, Jr., wife of the New York Senator, and elect as secretary Mrs. Robert Lansing, wife of the Secretary of State. Mrs. Wadsworth at this time sent to the members of Congress and circulated widely a pamphlet entitled Consider the Facts, in which she charged the suffragists with being pacifists and Socialists and asserted that the recent New York victory was due to the Socialist vote. Miss Mary Garrett Hay, who was chairman of the campaign committee in New York City, where the victory was won, expressed her opinion from the platform in this fashion:

Senator Wadsworth and his wife announced that they weren't going to give any entertainments till the war was over, nevertheless they are dining tonight the Senators and Representatives who are opposed to the Federal Amendment. So I thought I would signalize the occasion by answering the circular Mrs. Wadsworth has sent broadcast asking people to "consider a few facts about the woman suffrage victory in New York." Here are some other facts to consider:

There were only three assembly districts in Manhattan where the suffrage amendment did not poll over a thousand more votes than the Socialists polled. Even in these three suffrage got an average of 600 more votes than the Socialist candidate got. In the 4th district suffrage had the advantage of the Socialists by 551 votes; in the 6th it got 600 more votes than Socialism got; in the 8th it got 656 more. In the 12th, a typical district, where the Socialists got only 1,822 votes, suffrage got 5,480. In my own district, the 9th, suffrage and Fusion ran almost neck and neck, suffrage polling 5,911, Fusion, 5,578; the Socialists polled only 977. In Brooklyn the 14th, 19th and 23rd assembly districts are accounted the Socialists' strongholds. In all three suffrage ran ahead of Socialism. In the 14th suffrage polled a "yes" vote of 4,052, the Socialists 3,142; in the 19th suffrage polled 3,608, the Socialists 3,037; in the 23rd suffrage polled 5,060, the Socialists 3,992.

Considering the suffrage vote in Greater New York in comparison with the vote for Mayor, suffrage polled a "yes" vote of 335,959, the Socialist candidate only 142,178. The Fusion candidate polled 149,307; the Republican, 53,678; the Democratic, the successful one, 207,282. Suffrage, therefore, polled 38,677 more affirmative votes than did the successful candidate. No candidate for Mayor was in the class with the amendment, though all were for suffrage.

Others prominent in the suffrage movement, both men and women, made indignant protest against Mrs. Wadsworth's accusation and pointed to the splendid organized work of the National Suffrage Association in cooperation with the Government from the very beginning of the war.