[111] This Address to Congress in handsome pamphlet form was presented to every member in person by the various women of the association's Congressional Committee. After the Federal Amendment was submitted by Congress it was revised, printed under the title An Address to Legislatures, and through the mail or by the State suffrage workers was put into the hands of every one of the 6,000 members of the forty-eight State Legislatures.
[112] For information regarding the bequest of Mrs. Frank Leslie see Appendix.
[113] This organization, originated by Mrs. Catt even to the name, was effected at the national convention in St. Louis, March, 1919.
CHAPTER XVIII.
NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1918-1919.
For the first time since it was founded in 1869 the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1918 omitted its annual convention. Suffragists were accustomed to strenuous effort but this year strained to the last ounce the strength of all engaged in national work. The Congressional Committee could not secure the respite of a single day and were summoning women from all parts of the country for service in Washington and demanding extra work from them at home, telegrams, letters, influence from the constituencies, etc. There was a vote Jan. 10, 1918, in the Lower House and a continual pressure from that moment to get a vote in the Senate, which did not come till October and was adverse. Then the committee pushed on without stopping. Mrs. Shuler, the corresponding secretary, had been in the Michigan, South Dakota and Oklahoma campaigns all summer and was exhausted. The three States were carried for suffrage and when the election was over all the forces were used to obtain Presidential suffrage in the big legislative year beginning January, 1919. It was a question of pressing forward to victory or stopping to prepare for and hold a convention and lose the opportunities for gains in Congress.
During the first ten months of 1918 the vast conflict in Europe had gone steadily on; the United States had sent over millions of soldiers and other millions were in training camps on this side of the ocean; transportation was blocked; the advanced cost of living had brought distress to many households; thousands of families were in mourning, and everywhere suffragists were devoting time and strength to those heavy burdens of war which always fall on women. By November 1, when it would have been necessary to issue the call for a convention, there was no prospect of a change in these hard conditions, and when on November 11 the Armistice was suddenly declared no one was interested in anything but the end of the war and its world-wide aftermath.[114] During the dark days of 1918, however, there had come a tremendous advance in the status of woman suffrage. The magnificent way in which women had met the demands of war, their patriotic service, their loyalty to the Government, had swept away the old-time objections to their enfranchisement and fully established their right to full equality in all the privileges of citizenship. Early in the winter the Lower House of Congress by a two-thirds vote declared in favor of submitting to the Legislatures an amendment to the Federal Constitution, the object for which the National Suffrage Association had been formed, and the Parliament of Great Britain had fully enfranchised the majority of its women. In the spring the Canadian Parliament conferred full Dominion suffrage on women. Before and after the Armistice the nations of Europe that had overthrown their Emperors and Kings gave women equal voting rights with men. In November at their State elections, Michigan, South Dakota and Oklahoma gave complete suffrage to women. The U. S. Senate was still holding out by a majority of two against submitting the Federal Amendment but it was almost universally recognized that the seventy years' struggle for woman suffrage in this country was nearing the end.
With the opening of the year 1919 the progress was evident by the addition of seven more States to those whose Legislatures had granted the Presidential franchise to women; that of Tennessee included Municipal suffrage and that of Texas had given Primary suffrage the preceding year. The situation now seemed to require an early convention of the National Association and the time was especially opportune, as this year marked the 50th anniversary of its founding. A Call was issued, therefore, for a Jubilee Convention to be held in March, fifteen months after the one of 1917. As it was the intention to launch the organization of Women Voters it was decided to meet in the central part of the country and the invitation of St. Louis was accepted.[115]