The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

Dr. Shaw impressed upon the workers, especially the younger ones, not to be discouraged at what seemed slow progress and said:

It has been the privilege of your president to participate actively in twenty-four out of twenty-seven State campaigns; in the New Hampshire constitutional convention campaign, the Wheeling municipal campaign and directly though not actively in all the others except that of Illinois. The vote cast upon the amendments but inadequately expresses the expanding sentiment in behalf of woman suffrage and it needs only consecrated, persistent, systematic service to reach the goal and complete the task begun by the pioneers of 1848 and led by Susan B. Anthony until her death in 1906. While we accept as our motto her last public utterance, "Failure is impossible," we must also remember her prophetic words, uttered just before she laid down her life work: "There is nothing which can ultimately prevent the triumph of our cause but the time of its coming depends largely upon the loyalty and devotion of those who believe in it." ...

While recognizing that our primary object is to secure the ballot for women citizens and that as an organization we are not wedded to one method of obtaining it but are willing to adopt any just plan which promises success, nevertheless until a better way is found we will seek to secure an amendment to the National Constitution prohibiting disfranchisement on account of sex, and at the same time will appeal to the States that by their action a sufficiently strong support may be given to the Federal Amendment to secure its adoption, unless it become unnecessary by action of the States themselves.... We must face the fact that large bodies of our new recruits know practically little of the history of the suffrage movement, of the long years of faithful devotion and the wise and statesmanlike service which have brought it to its present successful position. These recruits are attracted by new and spectacular methods, are impatient of delay and eagerly follow any scheme which promises to "get it quick." ... If we analyze the arguments set forth by these most ardent advocates of the Federal Constitutional Amendment as the only means of securing immediate results and learn upon what they base their hopes of success, we shall see, as has been shown again and again, that every one of them has its source in the enfranchised States; that instead of State by State action being "wasteful, expensive and slow," it is the foundation of hope. This is the strongest argument in behalf of the wisdom of the founders of our movement, that they recognized the necessity that State and Federal action must go together.

ADDRESS OF MRS. CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT AT SENATE HEARING, DEC. 15, 1915.

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee:

Since our last appeal was made to your committee a vote has been taken in four Eastern States upon the question of amending their constitutions for woman suffrage. The inaction of Congress in not submitting a Federal amendment naturally leads us to infer that members believe the proper method by which women may secure the vote is through the referendum. We found in those four States what has always been true whenever any class of people have asked for any form of liberty and was best described by Macaulay when he said: "If a people are turbulent they are unfit for liberty; if they are quiet, they do not want it." We met a curious dilemma. On the one hand a great many men voted in the negative because women in Great Britain had made too emphatic a demand for the vote. Since they made that demand it is reported that 10,000,000 men have been killed, wounded or are missing through militant action, but all of that is held as naught compared with the burning of a few vacant buildings. Evidently the logic that these American men followed was: Since some turbulent women in another land are unfit to vote, no American woman shall vote. There was no reasoning that could change the attitude of those men. On the other hand the great majority of the men who voted against us, as well as the great majority of the members of Legislatures and Congress who oppose this movement, hold that women have given no signal that they want the vote. Between the horns of this amazing dilemma the Federal amendment and State suffrage seem to be caught fast.

So those of us who want to learn how to obtain the vote have naturally asked ourselves over and over again what kind of a demand can be made. We get nothing by "watchful waiting" and if we are turbulent we are pronounced unfit to vote. We turned to history to learn "what kind of a demand the men of our own country made and determined to do what they had done. The census of 1910 reported 27,000,000 males over 21. Of these 9,500,000 are direct descendants of the population of 1800; 2,458,873 are negroes; 15,040,278 are aliens, naturalized or descendants of naturalized citizens since 1800. The last two classes compose two-thirds of the male population over 21. The enfranchisement of negro men is such recent history that it is unnecessary to repeat here that they made no demand for the vote. The naturalization laws give citizenship to any man who chooses to make a residence of this country for five years and automatically every man who is a citizen becomes a voter in the State of his residence. In the 115 years since 1800 not one single foreigner has ever been asked whether he wanted the vote or whether he was fit for it—it has literally been thrust upon him. Two-thirds of our men of voting age today have not only made no demand for the vote but they have never been asked to give any evidence of capacity to use it intelligently.

We turned again to history to see how the men who lived in this country in 1800 got their votes. At that time 8 per cent. of the total population were voters in New York as compared with 25 per cent. now. There was a struggle in all the colonial States to broaden the suffrage. New York seemed always to have lagged behind the others and therefore it forms a good example. It was next to the last State to remove the land qualification and it was not a leader in the extension of the suffrage to any class.

In 1740 the British Parliament disqualified the Catholics for naturalization in this country. That enactment had been preceded in several of the States by their definite disfranchisement. In 1699 they were disfranchised by an Act of the Assembly of New York. Although the writers on the early franchise say that Jews were not permitted to vote anywhere in this country in 1701, as they certainly were not in England, yet occasionally they apparently did so. In New York that year there was a definite enactment disfranchising them. In 1737 the Assembly passed another disfranchising Act. Catholics and Jews were disfranchised in most States. It is interesting to learn how they became enfranchised. One would naturally suppose that together or separately they would make some great demand for political equality with Protestants but there is no record that they did. I find that the reason why our country became so liberal to them was not because there was any demand on their part and not because there was any special advocacy of their enfranchisement by statesmen. It was due to the fact that in the Revolution, Great Britain, having difficulty with the American colonies on the south side of the St. Lawrence River, did as every belligerent country does and tried to hold Canada by granting her favors. In order to make the Canadian colonies secure against revolution the British Parliament, which had previously disfranchised the Catholics and the Jews, now extended a vote to them. The American Constitution makers could not do less than Great Britain had done, and so in every one of the thirteen States they were guaranteed political equality with Protestants.

The next great movement was the elimination of the land qualification and on this we find that history is practically silent. In Connecticut and Rhode Island a small petition was presented to the Assembly asking for its removal. In New York in the constitutional convention of 1821 when some members advocated its removal others asked, "Where is the demand? Who wants to vote that has no land?" The answer was that there had been some meetings in New York in behalf of removing this qualification. No one of them had seen such a meeting but some members had heard that a few had been held in the central districts of the State. This constitutes the entire demand that has been made by the men of our country for the vote.