Miss Lathrop showed the need of legislation for all social reforms and how the experience of women beginning with domestic duties carried them forward to a sense of their obligations in community life and a fitness for it. Referring to the uneducated women she said: "The ignorant vote is not the working vote. Working women in great organized factories have been having, since they began that work, an education for the suffrage. They are not the ignorant voters nor are wives of workingmen; at least, they know in part what they need to safeguard themselves and their homes. The ignorant vote is the complacent, blind vote of men and of the feminine 'influence' that moves them, which disregards the real problems of setting safe and wholesome standards of life and labor and education and spends its strength in looking backward, insisting upon precedents without seeing that, good and enduring as they may be, all precedents must be daily retranslated into the setting of today. "Women must vote for their own souls' good," she said, "and they must vote to protect the family. The newer conception of the family is one which depends upon giving to both parents the fullest expression on all those matters of common concern."

The address closed with a fine peroration—Pass on the Torch! In the evening the officers of the association gave a largely attended reception to delegates and friends in the banquet hall of Hotel Walton.

The closing night of the convention was one long to be remembered. There was the same vast, eager audience: Dr. Shaw presided and on the platform was the distinguished Apostle of Peace, winner of the Nobel prize, Baroness Bertha von Suttner, and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, just returned from a two-years' trip around the world. The meeting was opened by the Rt. Rev. James Henry Darlington, bishop of central Pennsylvania, whose brief address was of great value to the cause. He congratulated the American people on the fact that four more States had been added to the ever-growing list of those which had given the suffrage to women and he called upon all observers to notice that no State which had once voted in woman suffrage had ever voted it out. Once in use, local opposition to it ceased by reason of the self-evident good results. He offered congratulations to those who were humble privates in the ranks and to the famous and brave leaders who organized the victories. "As the Elizabethan and Victorian eras are the most distinguished for philanthropic, literary and economic advancement in the whole history of Great Britain, though the Kings were many and the Queens were few in the long line," he said, "so no man need be ashamed to follow feminine leadership when it means advancement in every good word and work," and he offered congratulations to little children of the future generations of this and all lands. "When our anti-suffrage sisters throw aside their complacency and selfish ease," he said, "to strive side by side with men to formulate and pass necessary laws to protect and develop the bodies, minds and souls of our present little children and all that are to come through the passing centuries, then will dawn a new day for humanity."

Brief addresses were made by Mrs. Blankenburg, Miss Jane Campbell and Professor Breckinridge of Chicago University. Miss Crystal Eastman gave a graphic account of why the amendment failed in Wisconsin and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, State president, told in her inimitable way of the campaign that failed in Ohio. Baroness von Suttner made a magnificent plea for the peace of the world and asked for the enfranchisement of women as an absolutely necessary factor in it. The dominant note of Mrs. Catt's speech was the great need for political power in the hands of women to combat the social evil, which she had found intrenched in the governments of every country. These last two addresses, which carried thrilling conviction to every heart, were made without notes and not published.

* * * * *

From the early days of the National Suffrage Association its representatives had appeared before committees of every Congress to ask for the submission of an amendment to the Federal Constitution and during many years this "hearing" took place when the annual convention met in Washington. As it was to be held elsewhere this year and at a time when the Congress was not in session a delegation of speakers had gone before the committees the preceding March by arrangement of Mrs. William Kent, chairman of the association's Congressional Committee.

At the hearing before a joint committee of the Senate Judiciary and Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage March 13 six of the members were present: Senators Overman (N. C.), chairman; Brandegee (Conn.); Bourne (Ore.); Brown (Neb.); Johnston (Ala.); Wetmore (R. I.). Senator John D. Works of California, who had introduced the resolution in the Senate, presented Dr. Anna Howard Shaw as "one of the best known and most distinguished of those connected with the movement for the enfranchisement of women." As she took charge of the hearing she said in part:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee, this is the forty-third year that the women suffragists have been represented by delegations appointed by the national body to speak in behalf of resolutions which have been introduced to eliminate from the Constitution of the United States in effect the word "male," to eliminate all disqualifications for suffrage on account of sex. The desire of our association is not so much to put on record the opinions of this committee in regard to woman suffrage as to plead with it to give a favorable report, so that the question can come before the Congress, be discussed on its merits and then submitted to the various States for ratification. The Federal Constitution guarantees to every State a republican form of government—that is, a government in which the laws are enacted by representatives elected by the people—and we claim that it has violated its own principle in refusing to protect women in their right to select their representatives, so we are asking for no more than that the Constitution shall be carried out by the U. S. Government. As the president of the National Suffrage Association, I stand here in the place of a woman who gave sixty years of her life in advocacy of that grand principle for which so many of our ancestors died, Miss Susan B. Anthony. There is not a woman here today who was at the first hearing, nor a woman alive today who was among those that struggled in the beginning for this fundamental right of every citizen. I now introduce Mrs. Susan Walker Fitzgerald of Massachusetts. It has been said that women cannot fight. Mrs. Fitzgerald's father was an Admiral of the Navy and if she can not fight her father could.

Mrs. Fitzgerald spoke at length in the interest of the home and the family, showing the evolution that had taken place until now "the Government touches upon every phase of our home life and largely dictates its conditions while at the same time the woman is held responsible for them and is working with her hands tied behind her back and she asks the vote in order to do her woman's work better." Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw of New York spoke beautifully of the desire of the mothers of the rising generation that their daughters should not have to enter the hard struggle for the suffrage and pictured the need for the highest development of the womanly character. Mrs. Elsie Cole Phillips of Wisconsin showed the standpoint of the so-called working classes, saying in part:

The right to vote is based primarily on the democratic theory of government. "The just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed." What does that mean? Does it not mean that there is no class so wise, so benevolent that it is fitted to govern any other class? Does it not mean that in order to have a democratic government every adult in the community must have an opportunity to express his opinion as to how he wishes to be governed and to have that opinion counted? A vote is in the last analysis an expression of a need—either a personal need known to one as an individual as it can be known to no one else, or an expression of a need of those in whom we are interested—sister-women or children, for instance. The moment that one admits this concept of the ballot that moment practically all of the anti-suffrage argument is done away with.... Is it to strengthen the hands of the strong? Oh, no; it is to put into the hands of the weak a weapon of self-protection. And who are the weak? Those who are economically handicapped—first of all the working classes in their struggle for better conditions of life and labor. And who among the workers are the weak? Wherever the men have suffered, the women have suffered more.

But I would also like to point out to you how this affects the homekeeping woman, the wife and mother, of the working class, aside from the wage-earning woman. Consider the woman at home who must make both ends meet on a small income. Who better than she knows whether or not the cost of living advances more rapidly than the wage does? Is not that a true statement in the most practical form of the problem of the tariff? And who better than she knows what the needs of the workers are in the factories? Take the tenement-house woman, the wife and mother who is struggling to bring up a family under conditions which constantly make for evil. Who, better than the mother who has tried to bring up six or seven children in one room in a dark tenement house, knows the needs of a proper building? Who better than the mother who sees her boy and her girl playing in the streets knows the need of playgrounds? Who better than a mother knows what it means to a child's life—which you men demand that she as a wife and a mother shall care for especially—who, better than she, knows the cruel pressure that comes to that child from too early labor in what the U. S. census report calls "gainful occupations"?

There is a practical wisdom that comes out of the pressure of life and an educational force in life itself which very often is more efficient than that which comes through textbooks of college.... The ignorant vote that is going to come in when women are enfranchised is that of the leisure-class woman, who has no responsibilities and knows nothing of what life means to the rest of the world, who has absolutely no civic or social intelligence. But, fortunately for us, she is a small percentage of the women of this land, and fortunately for the land there is no such rapid means of education for her as to give her the ballot and let her for the first time feel responsibilities....

Now the time has come when the home and the State are one. Every act, every duty of the mother in the home is affected by something the State does or does not do, and the only way in which we are ever going to have our national housekeeping and our national child-rearing done as it should be is by bringing into the councils of the State the wisdom of women.

James Lees Laidlaw of New York was introduced as president of the National Men's League for Woman Suffrage and after stating that such leagues were being organized throughout the country he spoke of the great change that had taken place in the status of women and said:

Most important of all is the change of woman's position in industrial, commercial and educational fields. We are all familiar with the exodus of millions of women from the home into the mill and the factory. Today they may enter freely into business either as principal or employee. I was astonished to hear reported at a recent meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in New York that in the commercial high schools of that city, where a business education is given, 85 per cent. of the pupils are girls. We have today a great body of intelligent citizens with many interests in the Government besides their primary interests as mothers and home-keepers. If men are not going to take the next logical step they have made a great mistake in going thus far. Why give women property rights if we give them no rights in making the laws governing the control and disposition of their property and no vote as to who shall have the spending of tax money? Why give women the right to go into business or trades, either as employees or employers, without the right to control the conditions surrounding their business or trades? Why train women to be better mothers and better housekeepers and refuse them the right to say what laws shall be passed to protect their children and homes? Why train women to be teachers, lawyers, doctors and scientists and say to them: "Now you have assumed new responsibilities, go out into the world and compete with men," and then handicap them by depriving them of political expression? Women now have the opportunity for equal mental development with men. Is it right or is it politically expedient that we should not avail ourselves of their special knowledge concerning those matters which vitally affect the human race?...

Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the Illinois Suffrage Association and member of the national board, contrasted the old academic plea for the ballot with the modern demand for it to meet the present intensely utilitarian age and continued: "Today we know that the ballot is just a machine. In fact it impresses us as being something like the long-distance telephone which we in this scientific age have grown accustomed to use. We go into the polling booth and call up central (the Government) and when we get the connection we deliver our message with accuracy and speed and then we go about our business. Women have been encouraged during the past to have opinions about governmental matters and there is no denying that we do have opinions. If we could submit to you today the list of bills which the Federations of Women's Clubs of the various States have endorsed and for which they are working you would know that women have a large civic conscience and an intelligent appreciation of the measures which affect both women and the homes. They have been encouraged to have these opinions but to try to influence legislation only in indirect ways. Today, being practical and scientific, we are asking ourselves all the time why should we be limited to expressing our opinion on governmental affairs in our women's clubs? Why should we breathe them only in the prayer meeting or in the parlors of our friends? Why not directly into the governmental ear—the ballot box? Why do we not go into that long-distance telephone booth, get connection with central, and then know that our message has been delivered in the only place where it is recorded. The Government makes no record whatever of the opinions which we express in our women's clubs and our prayer meetings."

Mrs. Caroline A. Lowe of Kansas City, Mo., spoke in behalf of the 7,000,000 wage-earning women of the United States from the standpoint of one who had earned her living since she was eighteen and declared that to them the need of the ballot was a vital one. She gave heart-breaking proofs of this fact and said:

From the standpoint of wages received we wage earners know it to be almost universal that the men in the industries receive twice the amount granted to us although we may be doing the same work. We work side by side with our brothers; we are children of the same parents, reared in the same homes, educated in the same schools, ride to and fro on the same early morning and late evening cars, work together the same number of hours in the same shops and we have equal need of food, clothing and shelter. But at 21 years of age our brothers are given a powerful weapon for self-defense, a larger means for growth and self-expression. We working women, because we find our sex not a source of strength but a source of weakness and a greater opportunity for exploitation, have even greater need of this weapon which is denied to us. Is there any justice underlying such a condition?

What of the working girl and her employer? Why is the ballot given to him while it is denied to us? Is it for the protection of his property that he may have a voice in the governing of his wealth, of his stocks and bonds and merchandise? The wealth of the working woman is far more precious to the welfare of the State. From nature's raw products the working class can readily replace all of the material wealth owned by the employing class but the wealth of the working woman is the wealth of flesh and blood, of all her physical, mental and spiritual powers. It is not only the wealth of today but that of future generations which is being bartered away so cheaply. Have we no right to a voice in the disposal of our wealth, the greatest that the world possesses, the priceless wealth of its womanhood? Is it not the cruelest injustice that the man whose material wealth is a source of strength and protection to him and of power over us should be given the additional advantage of an even greater weapon which he can use to perpetuate our condition of helpless subjection?... The industrial basis of the life of the woman has changed and the political superstructure must be adjusted to conform to it. This industrial change has given to woman a larger horizon, a greater freedom of action in the industrial world. Greater freedom and larger expression are at hand for her in the political life. The time is ripe for the extension of the franchise to women.

We do not come before you to beg of you the granting of any favor. We present to you a glorious opportunity to place yourselves abreast of the current of this great evolutionary movement.

Mrs. Donald Hooker of Baltimore gave striking instances of the conditions in that State regarding the social evil, of the hundreds of virtuous girls who every year are forced into a life of shame, of the thousands of children who die because mothers have no voice in making laws for their protection. "There was never a great act of injustice," she said, "that was not paid for in human life and happiness. A great act of injustice is being perpetrated by denying women the right to vote."

Miss Leonora O'Reilly, a leader among the working women of New York, made an impassioned plea that carried conviction. "I have been a wage-earner since I was thirteen," she said, "and I know whereof I speak. I want to make you realize the lives of hundreds of girls I have seen go down in this struggle for bread. We working women want the ballot as our right. You say it is not a right but a privilege. Then we demand it as a privilege. All women ought to have it, wage-earning women must have it." After plainer speaking than the committee had ever heard from a woman she concluded: "You may tell us that our place is in the home. There are 8,000,000 of us in these United States who must go out of it to earn our daily bread and we come to tell you that while we are working in the mills, the mines, the factories and the mercantile houses we have not the protection that we should have. You have been making laws for us and the laws you have made have not been good for us. Year after year working women have gone to the Legislature in every State and have tried to tell their story of need in the same old way. They have gone believing in the strength of the big brother, believing that the big brother could do for them what they should, as citizens, do for themselves. They have seen time after time the power of the big interests come behind the big brother and say to him, 'If you grant the request of these working women you die politically.'

"It is because the working women have seen this that they now demand the ballot. In New York and in every other State, we plead for shorter hours. When the legislators learn that women today in every industry are being overspeeded and overworked, most of them would, if they dared, vote protective legislation. Why do they neglect the women? We answer, because those who have the votes have the power to take the legislator's political ladder away from him, a power that we, who have no votes, do not have.... While the doors of the colleges have been opened to the fortunate women of our country, only one woman in a thousand goes into our colleges, while one woman in five must go into industry to earn her living. And it is for the protection of this one woman in every five that I speak...."

Mrs. Jean Nelson Penfield, chairman of the Woman Suffrage Party of New York numbering 60,000 members, said in part:

In the few moments given me I will confine myself to the handicap women have found disfranchisement to be in social-service work. It is supposed by many that because our so-called leisure women have been able to do so much apparently good community betterment work without the ballot we do not need it. I should like to ask you to remember that the important thing is not that women succeed in this kind of work but that where they do succeed it is at tremendous and needless expenditure of energy and vital strength and at the cost of dignity and self-respect.

The dominant thought in the world today is that of conservation; the tendency of the whole business world is toward economy. How to lessen the cost of production; how to improve the machinery of business so as to reduce friction—these are the questions that are being asked not only in the business world but in the affairs of state. No intelligent man in this scientific day would try to do anything by an indirect and wasteful method if he could accomplish his purpose by a direct and economic method. Even the bricklayer is taught how to handle his bricks so that the best results may be secured at the least possible expenditure of time and energy. Women alone seem to represent a great body of energy, vitality and talent which is unconserved, unutilized and recklessly wasted. If a man wants reforms he goes armed with a vote to the ballot box and even to the Legislature with that power of the vote behind him; but if women want these things they are asked to take the long, questionable, roundabout route of personal influence, of petition, of indirection. Women have accomplished a great deal in this way but it has required a long time.... Take, for instance, one class of work—the establishment of manual training, domestic science, open-air schools, school gardens and playgrounds—all once just "women's notions" but now established institutions. Women have had to found and finance and demonstrate them before municipalities would have anything to do with them, but when city or State adopts these institutions the management is immediately and entirely taken out of the hands of women and placed in the hands of men....

Among thinking women there is a growing consciousness of being cut off, shut out from the civic life in which they have an equal stake with men. We ask you to recognize that the time is here for you to submit an amendment to the States for ratification which will give women the influence and power of the suffrage.

In closing Dr. Shaw asked that her association might have some printed copies for distribution and was assured that it might have fifteen or twenty thousand if it desired them. She also urged that the committee would report the resolution to the Senate for discussion and as a third request said: "We are told that men are afraid to grant women suffrage lest fearful results should come to the Government and to the women. We have asked for years that Congress would appoint a committee to investigate its practical working in the States where it exists—there are now six of them—and we are entirely willing to risk our case on that investigation. We feel that its results would be such that we would not have to come here much longer and take up your time with our arguments on the subject."

Franklin W. Collins of Nebraska spoke in opposition, presenting his case in a series of over fifty questions but not attempting to answer any of them. Among the questions were these: If woman by her ballot should plunge the country into war, would she not be in honor bound to fight by the side of man? Will the ballot in the hands of women pour oil on the troubled domestic waters? Has not this movement a strong tendency to encourage the exodus from the land of bondage, otherwise known as matrimony and motherhood? Is it not true that every free-lover, socialist, communist and anarchist the country over is openly in favor of female suffrage?

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage sent from its bureau in New York a letter of "earnest protest" against the amendment signed by its president, Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge. Its auxiliary in the District of Columbia sent another of greater length signed by its chairman, Mrs. Grace Duffield Goodwin, which not only protested against a Federal Amendment but against the granting of woman suffrage by any method.

* * * * *

Six members of the House of Representatives had introduced the resolution for a Federal Suffrage Amendment—Raker of California; Lafferty of Oregon; Mondell of Wyoming; Berger of Wisconsin; and Taylor and Rucker of Colorado. The hearing before the Judiciary Committee proved to be of unusual interest. Sixteen of this large committee of twenty-one were present and a reason given for the absence of the others. They were an imposing array as they sat in a semi-circle on a raised platform. The chairman, Judge Henry D. Clayton of Alabama, treated the speakers as if they were his personal guests, assured them of all the time they desired and at the close of the hearing was photographed with Miss Addams and Mrs. Harper. Instead of listening in a perfunctory way the members of the committee showed much interest and asked many questions. Miss Jane Addams, first vice-president of the National American Suffrage Association, presided and in presenting her with words of highest praise Representative Taylor said that all who had introduced the resolution would be pleased to speak in support of it at any time and that personally he wished to put in the record a statement of the results of woman suffrage in Colorado during the past eighteen years with a brief mention of 150 of the wisest, most humane and progressive laws in the country for the protection of home and the betterment of society, which the women of Colorado had caused to be put upon its statute books.

Miss Addams called the attention of the committee to the fact that more than a million women would be eligible to vote for the President of the United States in November. She named the countries where women could vote, saying: "America, far from being in the lead in the universal application of the principle that every adult is entitled to the ballot, is fast falling behind the rest of the world," and continued:

As I have been engaged for a good many years in various philanthropic undertakings, perhaps you will permit me, for only a few moments, to speak from my experience. A good many women with whom I have been associated have initiated and carried forward philanthropic enterprises which were later taken over by the city and thereupon the women have been shut out from the opportunity to do the self-same work which they had done up to that time. In Chicago the women for many years supported school nurses who took care of the children, made them comfortable and kept them from truancy. When the nurses were taken over by the health department of the city the same women who had given them their support and management were excluded from doing anything more, and I think Chicago will bear me out when I say that the nurses are not now doing as good work as they did before this happened. I could also use the illustration of the probation officers who are attached to the juvenile court. For a number of years women selected and supported these probation officers. Later, when the same officers, paid the same salary, were taken over by the county and paid from the county funds, the women who had been responsible for the initiation and beginning of the probation system and for the early management of the officers, had no more to do with them and at the present moment the juvenile court has fallen behind its former position in the juvenile courts of the world. I think the fair-minded men of Chicago will admit that it was a disaster when the women were disqualified by their lack of the franchise to care for it. The juvenile court has to do largely with delinquent and dependent children and there is no doubt that on the whole women can deal with such cases better than men because their natural interests lie in that direction. I could give you many other examples.... So it seems fair to say that if women are to keep on with the work which they have done since the beginning of the world—to continue with their humanitarian efforts which are so rapidly being taken over into the Government, and which when thus taken over are often not properly administered, women themselves must have the franchise....

Introducing Representative Raker Miss Addams said smilingly that while the women speakers were allowed ten minutes the men were to have but five. Judge Raker of California referred to the fact that he had pledged himself to this Federal Amendment when he was first a candidate for Congress eight years before and said: "This matter, as it appears to me, has passed beyond the question of sentiment; it has passed beyond the question of advisability; it has passed beyond the question of whether or not women ought to participate in the vote for the benefit of the home or the benefit of the State. As I view it it is a clean-cut question of absolute right and upon that assumption I base my argument—that we today are depriving one-half of the intelligence, one-half of the ability of this republic from participating in public affairs and that from the economic standpoint of better laws, better homes, better government in the country, the city, the State and the nation, we need our wives', our sisters' and our mothers' votes and assistance."

"May I introduce one of my own fellow townswomen, Miss Mary E. McDowell," said Miss Addams, "who has had what I may call a distressing life in the stockyards district of Chicago for many years, and she will tell you what she thinks of the franchise for women." Miss McDowell said in part:

We are all together very human, it seems to me, both men and women, and it is because we are human, because this is a human proposition and not a woman proposition, that I am glad to speak for it and believe in it so firmly. Giving the vote to women is not simply a woman's question, it has to do with the man, the child and the home. Women have always worked but within much less than a century millions of women and girls have been thrust out of the home into a man-made world of industry and commerce. We know that in the United States over 5,500,000, according to the census of 1900, are bread winners.... Do we not see that the working women must be given every safeguard that workingmen have and now as they stand side by side with men in the factory and shop they must stand with them politically? The ballot may be but a small bit of the machinery that is to lift the mass of wage-earning women up to a higher plane of self-respect and self-protection but will it not add the balance of power so much needed by the workingmen in their struggle for protective legislation, which will in the end be shared by the women? Today women are cheap, unskilled labor and will be until organization and technical training and the responsibility of the vote in their hands develop a consciousness of their social value....

The vote and all that it implies will awaken this sense of value. It will give to the wage-earning woman a new status in industry, for men will help to educate her when she is a political as well as an industrial co-worker. As man gave strength to the developing of the institution of the home so woman must be given the opportunity to help man humanize the State. This can be done only when she has the ballot and shares the responsibility.

Representative A. W. Lafferty of Oregon said in his brief five minutes: "I believe it is not only practicable but that it would be profitable to the United States to extend equal suffrage to men and women. We have had here this morning a practical demonstration of the ability of the women of this country to participate intelligently in the discussion of public questions. I think that we could not make a mistake in placing the ballot in the hand that rocks the cradle. Having only the best interests of this republic at heart, I believe it would be a good thing if fifty of the mothers of this country were in the House of Representatives today and I wish that at least twenty-five of them were in the Senate. You should consider, as lawyers, as statesmen and as historians that in the history of the civilized world in monarchies women have participated in the Government; it is a shame that in a republic like ours, the best form of government that has ever yet been established, women can not, under the present law, actively participate in it."

The address which Representative Edward T. Taylor put into the Congressional Record on this occasion was also printed in a pamphlet of forty pages and until the end of the movement for woman suffrage was a standard document for distribution by the National Association. He said in the introduction:

I want to recite in a plain, conversational way some of my personal experiences and individual observations extending over a period of thirty years of public life, during nearly nineteen years of which we have had equal suffrage in Colorado....

When I came to Congress I did not realize and I have not yet been able fully to understand the deep-seated prejudice, bias and even vindictiveness against woman suffrage and the astounding amount of misinformation there is everywhere here in the East concerning its practical operation. I have been equally amazed and indignant at the many brazen assertions I have seen in the papers and heard that are perfectly absurd and without the slightest foundation in fact, and I have had many heated discussions on the subject during the past three years. When I hear men and women who have never spent a week and most of them not an hour in an equal suffrage State attempt to discuss the subject from the standpoint of their own preconceived prejudices and idle impressions, I feel like saying: "May the Lord forgive them for they know not what they do." Let me say to them and to my colleagues in the House that it will not be ten years before the women of this country from the Pacific to the Atlantic will have the just and equal rights of American citizenship.[77]

Since coming here I have been frequently asked by friends what we think of woman suffrage in Colorado, and when I tell them that it is an unqualified success and that I doubt if even five per cent. of the people of the State would vote to repeal it, they ask me what it has accomplished. I believe it is generally conceded by enlightened people that the laws of a State are a true index of its degree of civilization. I will, therefore, give a brief catalogue of some of the most important of the 150 legislative measures that have been either introduced by the women or at the request of the various women's organizations and enacted into law.

Then followed under the head of different years, beginning with 1893, that in which women were enfranchised, a roster of Colorado's unequalled laws. These were followed by a complete analysis of the practical working of woman suffrage during the past eighteen years, with comprehensive answers to all the stereotyped questions and objections.

Several who had addressed the Senate Committee came over to the House office building and spoke to the Judiciary Committee. Mrs. William Kent, wife of a Representative from California, was introduced by Miss Addams as one who was not a member of the House but was eligible. In the course of a winning speech she said: "The United States is committed to a democratic form of government, a government by the people. Those who do not believe in the ideals of democracy are the only ones who can consistently oppose woman suffrage. The hope of democracy is in education. There is food for thought in the fact that the early education of all the citizens is now administered by a class who have no vote.... Our recent California Legislature when it submitted the amendments which were to be referred to the voters on October 10 did a very sensible and intelligent thing. Speeches for and against each one of these amendments were published in a little pamphlet which was sent to every voter. One man—and he was a good man, too—who argued against woman suffrage said that women should not descend into the dirty mire of politics, that the vote would be of no value to them. In the same speech he said that the women should teach their sons the sacred duties of citizens and to hold the ballot as the most precious inheritance of every American boy. Can we really bring up our sons with a clear sense of the civic responsibility which we ourselves have not? We believe that our children need what we shall learn in becoming voters and that the State needs what we have learned in being mothers and home makers."

"May I present next," said Miss Addams, "Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, of New York? She has been before other Congressional committees with Miss Susan B. Anthony, who for so many years came here to present this cause. Mrs. Harper has written a history of the equal suffrage movement and a very fine biography of Miss Anthony and it is with special pleasure that I present her. She will make the constitutional argument."

Mrs. Harper said in beginning: "This argument shall be based entirely on the Federal Constitution and the only authorities cited will be the utterances of two Presidents of the United States within the past month." She then quoted from speeches of President Taft and former President Roosevelt extolling the Constitution as guaranteeing self-government to all the people with the right to change it when this seems necessary, and she showed the utter fallacy of this statement when applied to women. In closing she said: "Forty-three years in asking Congress for this amendment of the Federal Constitution to enfranchise women they have followed an entirely legal and constitutional method of procedure, which has been so absolutely barren of results that in the past nineteen years the committees have made no report whatever, either favorable or unfavorable. How much longer do you expect women to treat with respect National and State constitutions and legislative bodies that stand thus an impenetrable barrier between them and their rights as citizens of the United States?" A long colloquy followed which began:

The Chairman: The committee will be very glad to have you extend your remarks to answer a question propounded by Mr. Littleton awhile ago. I wish to say that this committee, during my service on it, has always been met with this proposition when this amendment was proposed, that the States already have the authority to confer suffrage upon women, and, therefore, why is it necessary for women to wait for an amendment to the Federal Constitution when they can now go to the States and obtain this right to vote, just as the women of California did last year?

Mrs. Harper: Mr. Chairman, the women are not waiting; they are keeping right on with their efforts to get the suffrage from the States. They began in 1867 with their State campaigns and have continued them ever since, but in sending the women to the States you require them to make forty-eight campaigns and to go to the individual electors to get permission to vote. After the Civil War the Republican party with all its power and with only the northern States voting, was never able to get the suffrage for the negroes. The leaders went to State after State, even to Kansas, with its record for freeing the negroes, and every State turned down the proposition to give them suffrage. I doubt if the individual voters of many States would give the suffrage to any new class, even of men. The capitalists would not let the working people vote if they could help it, and the working people would not let the capitalists vote; Catholics would not enfranchise the Protestants and the Protestants would not give the vote to Catholics. You impose upon us an intolerable condition when you send us to the individual voters. What man on this committee would like to submit his electoral rights to the voters of New York City, for instance, representing as they do every nationality in the world? If we could secure this amendment to the Federal Constitution, then we could deal with the Legislatures, with the selected men in each State, instead of the great conglomerate of voters that we have in this country, such as does not exist in any other.

The Chairman: But if one of these suffrage resolutions should be favorably reported and both Houses of Congress should pass it of course it would be referred to the States and then before it became a law it would have to have their approval.

Mrs. Harper: Only of the Legislatures, not the individual voters.

The Chairman: You use an expression which a member of the committee has asked me to have you explain—"conglomerate of voters," which you said does not exist elsewhere. The desire is to know to whom you refer.

Mrs. Harper: I mean no disrespect to the great body of electors in the United States but in every other country the voters are the people of its own nationality. In no other would the question have to go to the nationalities of the whole world as it would in our country. For instance, we have to submit our question to the negro and to the Indian men, when we go to the individual voters, and to the native-born Chinese and to all those men from southern Europe who are trained in the idea of woman's inferiority. You put upon us conditions which are not put upon women anywhere in the world outside the United States.

Mr. Littleton (N. Y.): You would have to convince every legislator of the fact that this amendment to the National Constitution ought to be adopted. If you could convince the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States you could get three-fourths of them to grant the suffrage itself.

Mrs. Harper: They could only grant it to the extent of sending us to the individual voters, while if this amendment were submitted by Congress and the Legislatures endorsed it we would never have to deal with the individual voters. We would not have to convince every legislator but only a majority.

Mr. Higgins (Conn.): In other words, as I understand you, you have more confidence in the Legislatures than in the composite citizenship.

Mrs. Harper: The composite male citizenship, you mean. We suppose, of course, that the Legislatures represent the picked men of the community, its intelligence, its judgment, the best that the country has. That is the supposition.

The Chairman: That supposition applies to Congress also, does it?

Mrs. Harper: In a larger degree.

Representative Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin, who was out of the city, sent a statement which Miss Addams requested Mrs. Elsie Cole Phillips of Wisconsin to read to the committee. It said in part:

Woman suffrage is a necessity from both a political and an economic standpoint. We can never have democratic rule until we let the women vote. We can never have real freedom until the women are free. Women are now citizens in all but the main expression of citizenship—the exercise of the vote. They need this power to round out and complete their citizenship.... In political matters they have much the same interests that we men have. In State and national issues their interests differ little, if at all, from ours. In municipal questions they have an even greater interest than we have. All the complex questions of housing, schooling, policing, sanitation and kindred matters are peculiarly the interests of women as the home makers and the rearers of children. Women need and must have the ballot by which to protect their interests in these political and administrative questions.

The economic argument for woman suffrage is yet stronger. Economics plays an increasingly important part in the lives of us all and political power is absolutely necessary to obtain for women the possibility of decent conditions of living. The low pay and the hard conditions of working women are largely due to their disenfranchisement. Skilled women who do the same work as men for lower pay could enforce, with the ballot, an equal wage rate.

The ideal woman of the man of past generations (and especially of the Germans) was the housewife, the woman who could wash, cook, scrub, knit stockings, make dresses for herself and her children and take good care of the house. That ideal has become impossible. Those good old days, if ever they were good, are gone forever.... Moreover, then the woman was supported by her father first and later by her husband. The situation is entirely different now. The woman has to go to work often when she is no more than fourteen years old. She surely has to go to work sometime if she belongs to the working class. She must make her own living in the factory, the store, the office, the schoolroom. She must work to support herself and often her family. The economic basis of the life of woman has changed and therefore the basis of the argument that she should not vote because she ought to stay at home and take care of her family has been destroyed. She cannot stay at home whether she wants to or not. She has acquired the economic functions of the man and she ought also to acquire the franchise.

Mr. Berger called attention to the fact that "the Socialist party ever since its origin had been steadfastly for woman suffrage and put this demand of prime importance in all its platforms everywhere." Representative Littleton made a persistent effort to ally woman suffrage with Socialism, saying that he "had noticed the identity during the past two years" and Mrs. Harper answered: "I wish to remind Mr. Littleton that the Socialist party is the only one which declares for woman suffrage and thereby gives women an opportunity to come out and stand by it. The Democratic and Republican parties do not stand for woman suffrage and that is why there seem to be more Socialist women than Republican or Democratic women. If the two old parties will declare for woman suffrage, then the women in general will show their colors."

Miss Ella C. Brehaut, member of the executive committee of the District Anti-Suffrage Association, stated that she also represented the National organization and when questioned by Representative Sterling as to the size of its membership answered: "It is too new for us to know the figures." Miss Brehaut's address filled six printed pages of the stenographic report and was an attempt to refute all the favorable arguments that had been made and to show that not only were the suffrage leaders Socialists but "free lovers" as well. "Conservative women can see nothing but danger in woman suffrage," she concluded. Mrs. Julia T. Waterman, of the District association, sent to be put in the report a statement which filled ten pages of fine print, a full summary of the objections to woman suffrage as expressed in speeches, articles and documents of various kinds, with quotations from prominent opponents in the United States and Great Britain. It was a very complete presentation of the question.

Miss Addams in closing urged the appointment of a commission by Congress to make a thorough investigation in the States where woman suffrage was established and the chairman answered that "the committee would probably wish to take this matter under advisement in executive session." She thanked him for their courtesy and asked if the National Suffrage Association might have 10,000 copies of the hearing for distribution. This request was cheerfully granted by the committee and the chairman offered to "frank" them as a public document. [Later the committee increased the number to 16,000.]

Apparently the matter never was considered, as no report, favorable or unfavorable, ever was made by either committee. In so far as bringing the Federal Amendment before Senate or House for action was concerned the hearings might as well never have taken place, but 26,000 franked copies of the splendid arguments before the two committees went forth to accomplish the mission of educating public sentiment.

FOOTNOTES:

[72] Part of Call: This convention has big problems confronting it, interesting, stimulating problems coincident with the tremendous expansion of our government, problems worthy the indomitable mettle of suffrage workers; but in spite of hard work, this week will be a gala week, a compensation for all the hard, dull, gray work during the past year and a stimulus for still harder work during the year to come....

Let us listen to our fellow workers, and, listening and sympathizing with the unselfish labor being carried on everywhere, pledge ourselves to a flaming loyalty to suffrage and suffragists that will burn away all dross of dissension, all barriers to united effort. Let us come with high resolve that we will never waver in our effort to obtain the right to stand side by side with the men of this country in the mortal struggle that shall bid perish from this land political corruption, privilege, prostitution, the industrial slavery of men, women and children and all exploitation of humanity.

Let us come together, in this autumn of 1912, this unprecedented year of suffrage, consecrating ourselves anew on this, the greatest of all battlegrounds for democracy, the United States of America.

ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President. JANE ADDAMS, First Vice-President. SOPHONISBA BRECKINRIDGE, Second Vice-President. MARY WARE DENNETT, Corresponding Secretary. SUSAN W. FITZGERALD, Recording Secretary. JESSIE ASHLEY, Treasurer. KATHARINE DEXTER MCCORMICK, }Auditors. HARRIET BURTON LAIDLAW, } ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, Editor of the Woman's Journal.

[73] History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III, page 31.

[74] Later the total deficit of $6,000 was paid by Mrs. Katharine Dexter McCormick of Boston, an officer of the National Association.

[75] It was supposed at this time that the suffrage amendment had been carried in Michigan but the final returns indicated its defeat, apparently due to fraudulent voting and counting.

[76] It is a noteworthy fact that although woman suffrage was a leading issue in the presidential campaign of 1916 no officer of the National American Suffrage Association took any public part in it, although the platform of each of the parties contained a plank endorsing woman suffrage.

[77] It was eight and a half years.



CHAPTER XIII.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1913.

The Forty-fifth annual convention of the National American Suffrage Association met in Washington, November 29-December 5, 1913, in response to the Call of the Official Board.[78] The first day and evening were given to meetings of the board and committees, so that the convention really opened with a mass meeting in Columbia Theater Sunday afternoon at 3 o'clock and it was cordially welcomed by District Commissioner Newman. Dr. Shaw presided and a large and interested audience heard addresses by Miss Jane Addams, State Senator Helen Ring Robinson of Colorado, Miss Margaret Hinchey, a laundry worker, and Miss Rose Winslow, a stocking weaver of New York; Miss Mary Anderson, member of the executive board of the National Boot and Shoemakers' Union, and others. It was a comparatively new thing to have women wage-earners on the woman suffrage platform and their speeches made a deep impression, as that of Miss Hinchey, for instance, who said in part:

When we went to Albany to ask for votes one member of the Legislature told us that a woman's place was at home. Another said he had too much respect and admiration for women to see them at the polls. Another went back to Ancient Rome and told a story about Cornelia and her jewels—her children. Yet in the laundries women were working seventeen and eighteen hours a day, standing over heavy machines for $3 and $3.50 a week. Six dollars a week is the average wage of working women in the United States. How can a woman live an honorable life on such a sum? Is it any wonder that so many of our little sisters are in the gutter? When we strike for more pay we are clubbed by the police and by thugs hired by our employers, and in the courts our word is not taken and we are sent to prison. This is the respect and admiration shown to working girls in practice. I want to tell you about Cornelia as we find her case today. The agent of the Child Labor Society made an investigation in the tenements and found mothers with their small children sitting and standing around them—standing when they were too small to see the top of the table otherwise. They were working by a kerosene lamp and breathing its odor and they were all making artificial forget-me-nots. It takes 1,620 pieces of material to make a gross of forget-me-nots and the profit is only a few cents.

Four years ago 30,000 shirtwaist girls went on strike and when we went to Mayor McClellan to ask permission for them to have a parade he said: "Thirty thousand women are of no account to me." If they had been 30,000 women with votes would he have said that? We have in New York 14,000 women over sixty-five years old who must work or starve. What is done with them when their bones give out and they cannot work any more? The police gather them up and you may then see in jail, scrubbing hard, rough concrete floors that make their knees bleed—women who have committed no crime but being old and poor. Don't take my word for it but send a committee to Blackwell's Island or the Tombs and see for yourselves. We have a few Old Ladies' Homes but with most of them it would take a piece of red tape as long as from here to New York to get in. Give us a square deal so that we may take care of ourselves.

Miss Addams devoted her address to the great change that was taking place in the conception of politics. She called attention to the practical investigations which were being made in the education of children, in immigration, in criminology, in industrial conditions, and said: "This whole new social work can be translated into political action, and, with this, politics will be transformed and women will naturally have a share in it." She called attention to the pioneer days in various countries where women bore a full part in their hardships and to the revolutions in older countries where women fought by the side of the men, "and yet," she said, "when popular governments are established, women for considerations of expediency are left out.... But in the final program for social problems men and women will solve them together with ballots in the hands of both." Senator Robinson gave a keen and comprehensive account of Women as Legislators. The officers of the association held the usual Sunday evening reception to delegates and friends at Hotel Bellevue.

The 456 delegates, the largest number ever present at a convention, representing 34 States, were officially greeted Monday afternoon by Mrs. Nina Allender, president of the District of Columbia Association, and Miss Alice Paul, chairman of the National Congressional Committee. Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs, president of the Alabama Suffrage Association, responded in behalf of the national body. The excellent arrangements for the convention had been made by the new Congressional Committee: Miss Paul, chairman; Miss Lucy Burns, Mrs. Mary Beard, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and Mrs. Crystal Eastman Benedict, who raised the funds for all its expenses, including those of the national officers, and secured hospitality for the delegates. The report of the corresponding secretary, Mrs. Mary Ware Dennett, described the granting of woman suffrage by the Territorial Legislature of Alaska the preceding January and said: "The bulk of suffrage legislation this year is quite unprecedented. Bills were introduced in twenty-five Legislatures and in the U. S. Congress; bills were passed by ten Legislatures and received record-breaking votes in seven others, and for the second time in history there has been a favorable report from the Woman Suffrage Committee of the U. S. Senate. It continued:

There are three suffrage decisions on record for the year just passed—victory in Alaska and Illinois by act of the Legislature and temporary defeat in Michigan by vote of the electorate. There are four actual campaign States where the amendment will be submitted to the voters next autumn, Nevada (where the bill has passed two Legislatures), Montana, North and South Dakota; and there are three other States where initiative petitions are now in circulation and if the requisite number of signers is secured the amendment will be submitted next autumn, Ohio, Nebraska and Missouri. Then there are three half-way campaign States where the amendment has passed one Legislature and must pass again, in which case the decision will be made by the voters in 1915—New York, Pennsylvania and Iowa, in the first two of which the amendment has the very promising advantage of having been endorsed by all parties.

The full number of twelve delegates and twelve alternates went from the National Association to the Congress of the International Alliance in Budapest last June, and there were many more applicants.... During the year the national president, Dr. Shaw, has spoken at many large meetings in New Hampshire, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Missouri, Kansas, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Michigan. She also spoke in England, Holland, Germany, Austria and Hungary.

A mass meeting was held under the auspices of the association in Carnegie Hall, New York, where the international president, Mrs. Catt, and all but one of the national officers made addresses. Every ticket was sold and a good sum of money was raised. The headquarters cooperated with the New York local societies in the big suffrage benefit at the Metropolitan Opera House the night before the May parade, where a beautiful pageant was given and Theodore Roosevelt spoke. There was a capacity audience and many people were turned away. The headquarters have taken part so far as possible in all the suffrage parades; that of March 3, in Washington; those of May and November in New York and Brooklyn; that of October in Newark, New Jersey. The association was represented at the annual meeting of the House of Governors in Richmond, Va., last December by Mrs. Lila Mead Valentine, the State president, and Miss Mary Johnston, whose admirable speech was published in pamphlet form by our literature department.

The association has cooperated as fully as was possible with the Congressional Committee in all its most creditable year's work. This committee is unique in that its original members volunteered to give their services and to raise all the funds for the work themselves. Their singlemindedness and devotion have been remarkable and the whole movement in the country has been wonderfully furthered by the series of important events which have taken place in Washington, beginning with the great parade the day before the inauguration of the President. Several of the national officers have made special trips to Washington to assist at these various events—the March parade, the Senate hearing, the April 7th deputation to Congress, the July 31st Senate demonstration and the Conference of Women Voters in August. An automobile trip was made from headquarters the last week in July, with outdoor meetings held all the way to Washington, to join the other "pilgrims" who came from all over the country. Mrs. Rheta Childe Dorr, Miss Helen Todd, Mrs. Frances Maule Bjorkman and the corresponding secretary were the speakers for the trip.

Petitions to Congress were circulated, special letters on behalf of the association were sent to the members of the Senate Committee before the report was made, and to the Rules Committee urging the appointment of a Woman Suffrage Committee for the House. Miss Elinor Byrns, assisted by another lawyer, Miss Helen Ranlett, has made a chart of the legislation in the suffrage States since the women have been enfranchised. A collection of all the State constitutions has been made with the sections bearing on amendments and the qualifications for voting marked and indexed.

The following telegram was sent by the National Board April 4 to Premier Asquith: "We urge that the British Government frankly acknowledge its responsibility for the present intolerable situation and remove it by introducing immediately an emergency franchise measure."

The report of Miss Byrns, chairman of the Press Committee, which filled eight printed pages, showed the usual vast amount of press work, as described in other chapters. "There now exists," she said, "a most remarkable and unprecedented demand for information about suffragists and suffrage events. We are 'news' as we have never been before. Moreover, we are not only amusing and sometimes picturesque but we are of real intellectual and political interest." Mrs. Bjorkman, editor and secretary of the Literature Committee, devoted a full report of ten pages to the recent and widely varied publications of the association, to the vastly increasing demands for these, which could not be entirely met, and to the pressing need for a properly equipped research bureau. The report of Miss Jeannette Rankin (Mont.), field secretary, told of a year of unremitting work under four heads: legislative, visiting of States, work with the Congressional Committee and special work in campaign States. Delaware, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota were visited. She travelled by automobile from Montana to Washington City with petitions for the Federal Amendment, stopping at thirty-three places for meetings, and two weeks were given to interviewing Senators. Among the campaign States three weeks were spent in Saginaw, Michigan; organizing the city into wards and precincts; five in North Dakota and the rest of the time in Montana, organizing, arranging work at State and county fairs, visiting State Central Committees and State Federations of Women's Clubs.

Among the recommendations presented from the board and adopted were two of prime importance: 1. That in order that the convention may give its support to the Federal Amendment before Congress, it shall instruct the affiliated organizations to carry on as active a campaign as possible in their respective States and to see that all candidates for Congress be pledged to woman suffrage before the next election. 2. That the convention endorse the Suffrage School as a method of work and the National Association offer to organize and send out a traveling school when requested by six or more States, provided they agree to share the expense. To the Official Board was referred the question of appointing a committee to devise and put into operation a scheme for establishing more definite connection between the enfranchised women of the States and the National Association.

After all the years of patient effort to persuade Legislatures to grant Presidential suffrage to women under the inspiration of Henry B. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, his successor, Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates, could announce the first success and she emphasized the important bearing which this and others would have on securing a Federal Amendment. Her report said:

The extraordinary victory in Illinois has emphasized the fact, not duly apprehended hitherto, that State Legislatures have power to grant Presidential suffrage to women. No man derives his right to vote for presidential electors from the constitution of his State but the U. S. Constitution delegates the power and duty to qualify citizens to vote for them to the Legislatures, in the first section of Article II, in these words: "Each State shall appoint in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct a number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in Congress." Probably U.S. Senator George F. Hoar was the first to discover that this power given to Legislatures involved the possibility of the enfranchisement of women for presidential electors.

The conspicuous position that women suddenly attained in American politics in 1912 was due to the fact that in six States women were able to determine the choice of thirty-seven presidential electors. The large interests involved in a presidential administration, among which are 300,000 offices of honor and emolument, cause keen political concern from the fact that women voters may hold the balance of power in a close election. The whole number of electoral votes in the nine States where women now have full suffrage is fifty-four. These were attained by campaigns for constitutional amendments that involved vast outlay of time and treasure. Simply by act of Legislature, Illinois has added twenty-nine to the list, an increase of over thirty-three per cent., thus bringing an incalculable influence and power into the arena of national politics....

Mrs. Mary E. Craigie made her usual report of the excellent work done by her Church Committee. She gave a list of the Catholic clergy who had declared in favor of woman suffrage and told of the cordial assent by those of other denominations to include it in their sermons on Mother's Day. She named some of the many questions of social reform to which pulpits were freely opened—temperance, child labor, pure food, the white slave traffic and others—and asked: "Why does not woman suffrage, the reform that would bring two-thirds more power to all such movements, receive the same cooperation and support from the churches? The answer plainly is: Because of the apathy of women in demanding it."

The changing character of the national suffrage conventions is illustrated by the reports in the Woman's Journal, whose editors had for a generation collected and preserved in its pages the unsurpassed addresses which had delighted audiences and inspired workers. As the practical work of the association increased and spread throughout the different States, more and more of the time of the conventions had to be given to reports and details of business and the number of speeches constantly lessened. The first evening of the convention was devoted to the victory in Illinois, with delightful addresses by Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, long the State president, who twenty years before had discovered the loophole in the Illinois constitution by which the Legislature itself could grant a large measure of suffrage to women and had tried to obtain the law that had just been gained; by Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, another president, who had carried on this work; and by Mesdames Ruth Hanna McCormick, Grace Wilbur Trout, Antoinette Funk and Elizabeth K. Booth, the famous quartette of younger workers, who had finally succeeded with a progressive Legislature. As there was no representative from far-off Alaska, Dr. Shaw told how its Legislature had given full suffrage to women. [See Illinois and Alaska chapters.] Miss Lucy Burns gave a clear analysis of the situation in regard to the Federal Suffrage Amendment and the evening closed with one of Dr. Shaw's piquant addresses, which began: "I know the objections to woman suffrage but I have never met any one who pretended to know any reasons against it," and she closed with a flash of the humor for which she was noted:

By some objectors women are supposed to be unfit to vote because they are hysterical and emotional and of course men would not like to have emotion enter into a political campaign. They want to cut out all emotion and so they would like to cut us out. I had heard so much about our emotionalism that I went to the last Democratic national convention, held at Baltimore, to observe the calm repose of the male politicians. I saw some men take a picture of one gentleman whom they wanted elected and it was so big they had to walk sidewise as they carried it forward; they were followed by hundreds of other men screaming and yelling, shouting and singing the "Houn' Dawg"; then, when there was a lull, another set of men would start forward under another man's picture, not to be outdone by the "Houn' Dawg" melody, whooping and howling still louder. I saw men jump up on the seats and throw their hats in the air and shout: "What's the matter with Champ Clark?" Then, when those hats came down, other men would kick them back into the air, shouting at the top of their voices: "He's all right!!" Then I heard others howling for "Underwood, Underwood, first, last and all the time!!" No hysteria about it—just patriotic loyalty, splendid manly devotion to principle. And so they went on and on until 5 o'clock in the morning—the whole night long. I saw men jump up on their seats and jump down again and run around in a ring. I saw two men run towards another man to hug him both at once and they split his coat up the middle of his back and sent him spinning around like a wheel. All this with the perfect poise of the legal male mind in politics!

I have been to many women's conventions in my day but I never saw a woman leap up on a chair and take off her bonnet and toss it up in the air and shout: "What's the matter with" somebody. I never saw a woman knock another woman's bonnet off her head as she screamed: "She's all right!" I never heard a body of women whooping and yelling for five minutes when somebody's name was mentioned in the convention. But we are willing to admit that we are emotional. I have actually seen women stand up and wave their handkerchiefs. I have even seen them take hold of hands and sing, "Blest be the tie that binds." Nobody denies that women are excitable. Still, when I hear how emotional and how excitable we are, I cannot help seeing in my mind's eye the fine repose and dignity of this Baltimore and other political conventions I have attended!

One evening session was devoted to Women and Children and the Courts. Mrs. Joseph T. Bowen of Chicago presided and made a stirring plea for better conditions in the courts of the large cities. She told of the outrageous treatment of women and urged the need of women police, women judges and women jurors. "From the time of the arrest of a woman to the final disposition of her case," Mrs. Bowen said, "she is handicapped by being in charge of and surrounded by men, who cannot be expected to be as understanding and considerate as those of her own sex. The police stations in most of our cities are not fit for human beings." Judge of the Juvenile Court Julian Mack of Chicago described its methods and their results; and Justice Harry Olsen of the Court of Domestic Relations and the Court of Morals, gave an illuminating address on its functions and their results; Miss Maude Miner of New York spoke from experience of the Women's Night Court and the Work of a Probation Officer. The delegates were deeply moved and determined to investigate and improve the conditions in their own localities.

There had for some time been need of revising the constitution to meet new requirements and a revision committee had been appointed the preceding year with Mrs. Catt chairman, but as she had been in Europe her place had been taken by Miss Caroline Ruutz-Rees (Conn.), who was assisted by attorneys Helen Hoy Greeley and Jessie Ashley. The discussion was as long and earnest as if the fate of nations were involved but the principal changes adopted concerned representation, dues, assessments, methods of election and similar details. The report of Mrs. Katharine Dexter McCormick, treasurer, showed the total receipts of the year to be $42,723; disbursements, $42,542; balance on hand from preceding year, $2,874. A carefully prepared "budget" of $42,000 was presented to the convention and quickly oversubscribed. The legal adviser, Miss Mary Rutter Towle (D. C.), reported two lawsuits in progress to secure legacies that had been left the association, the usual fate that attended similar bequests. The literature had become so large a feature that it was decided to form a company to publish it. Mrs. Raymond Brown, president of the New York State Suffrage Association, proposed a corporation with a capital stock of $50,000, of which $26,000 should be held by the National American Association, the rest sold at $10 a share. The first $10,000 were at once subscribed and later the Woman Suffrage Publishing Company was organized with Mrs. Cyrus W. Field president.

The election took place under the new primary system and required two days for completion. The only change was the electing of Mrs. Desha Breckinridge second and Miss Ruutz-Rees third vice-presidents. The majorities for most of the officers were very large. The report of the delegates to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Budapest was made by Mrs. Anna O. Weeks (N. Y.). The demand for congressional documents, hearings, speeches, etc., had become so extensive that Mrs. Helen H. Gardener (D. C.) had been appointed to report in regard to it and she shed a good deal of light on the subject. She showed that some documents are free for distribution and some have to be paid for. Hearings are usually limited to a small number but the committee strains a point for those on woman suffrage and prints about 10,000, which may be had without charge. If a member is kind enough to "frank" them nothing else must be put in the envelope under penalty of a $300 fine. If more are wanted they must be ordered in 5,000 lots and a member can get a reduced rate, but, while he is always willing to pay the Government for printing his speech, those who want it for their own purposes should send the money for it. The speech of Representative Edward T. Taylor of Colorado in 1912 was cited as an example, of which the suffragists circulated 300,000 copies.

The resolutions presented by Mrs. Helen Brewster Owens (N. Y.), chairman, were brief and to the point. They called on the Senate to pass immediately the joint resolution proposing an amendment to the National Constitution, which had been favorably reported; they urged President Wilson to adopt the submission of this amendment as an administration measure and to recommend it in his Message; they urged the Rules Committee of the House of Representatives to report favorably the proposition to create a Committee on Woman Suffrage; and they demanded legislation by Congress to protect the nationality of American women who married aliens.

Strong pressure had been made on the President to mention woman suffrage in his Message, his first to a regular session of Congress, but it was delivered on Tuesday, December 2, with no reference whatever to the subject. At the meeting of the convention that evening Dr. Shaw said with the manifest approval of the audience: "President Wilson had the opportunity of speaking a word which might ultimately lead to the enfranchisement of a large part of the citizens of the United States. Even Lincoln, who by a word freed a race, had not such an opportunity to release from bonds one-half of the human family. I feel that I must make this statement as broad as it is for the reason that we at Budapest this year realized as never before that womankind throughout the world looked to this country to blaze the way for the extension of universal suffrage in every quarter of the globe. President Wilson has missed the one thing that might have made it possible for him never to be forgotten. I am saying this on behalf of myself and my fellow officers."

The next morning Mrs. Ruth Hanna McCormick, a clever politician like her father, Mark Hanna, offered the following motion: "Since President Wilson omitted all mention of woman suffrage in his Message yesterday, and since he has announced that he will send several other messages to Congress outlining the measures which the administration will support, I move that this convention wait upon the President in order to lay before him the importance of the woman suffrage question and urge him to make it an administration measure and to send immediately to Congress the recommendation that it proceed with this measure before any other. I also move that a committee of two be appointed to make the arrangements with the President." The motion was unanimously carried and the Chair appointed Mrs. McCormick (Ills.) and Mrs. Breckinridge (Ky.) to arrange for the interview and for a committee of fifty-five, representing all the associations auxiliary to the National, to wait upon the President at his pleasure. To finish the story here—he expressed entire willingness to receive them but was not well enough to do so during the convention. Nearly a hundred of the delegates waited until the next Monday, December 8, when they met in the rooms of their Congressional Committee, a few blocks from the White House and marched two by two to the executive offices, attracting much attention, as this was the first time a President had ever received a woman suffrage delegation officially.[79] He met them cordially and gave them as much time as they desired. Dr. Shaw spoke as follows:

As president of the National Suffrage Association I have come with this delegation, authorized by the association, to present to you the object for which we are organized—to secure equal suffrage for the women citizens of the United States. We have made these pilgrimages to Washington for many, many years and committees have received us with graciousness and have listened to our arguments, but the difficulty is that they have not permitted our claims to come before Congress, so that body itself might act upon them. Our wish is that we may have a national constitutional amendment, enfranchising the women citizens and preventing the States from depriving them of representation in the Government. Since the Judiciary Committee has not reported our measure for many years and has not given the House an opportunity to discuss it we have asked that a special committee shall be appointed to consider it. The Senate some years ago did appoint a special committee and our question has been referred to it. We have appeared before it this year and it has again reported favorably. We hope that the administration of which you are the head may use its influence to bring the matter before the Senate and House.

We ask your assistance in one of two ways or in any other way which may appeal to your judgment: First of all that you shall send a special message to Congress to submit to the Legislatures of the States an amendment to the National Constitution enfranchising women citizens of the United States; if, however, this does not appeal to you, we ask that you will use the administration's influence on the Rules Committee to recommend the appointment in the Lower House of a committee corresponding with the Suffrage Committee in the Upper House, one which will have leisure to consider our subject and report on it.

We appeal to you in behalf of the women citizens of the country. Many of them have cast their ballots for the President already and have an influence in the Government; many are very eager to take an equal part and they appreciate the just manner in which since your administration began you have weighed public questions. Recognizing your splendid stand on the liberties and rights of the people, we appeal to you because we believe you will bring to ours that same spirit of justice which you have manifested toward other great issues.

The President gave close attention and in his answer seemed to weigh every word carefully:

I want you ladies, if I can make it clear to you, to realize just what my present situation is. Whenever I walk abroad I realize that I am not a free man; I am under arrest. I am so carefully and admirably guarded that I have not even the privilege of walking the streets alone. That is, as it were, typical of my present transference—from being an individual, free to express his mind on any and every subject, to being an official of a great government and incidentally, or so it falls out under the system of government, the spokesman of a party. I set myself this very strict rule when I was Governor of New Jersey and have followed and shall follow it as President—that I am not at liberty to urge upon Congress in messages policies which have not had the organic consideration of those for whom I am spokesman. In other words I have not yet presented to any Legislature my private views on any subject and I never shall, because I conceive it to be part of the whole process of government that I shall be spokesman for somebody, not for myself. To speak for myself would be an impertinence. When I speak for myself I am an individual; when I am spokesman of an organic body, I am a representative. For that reason, you see, I am by my own principles shut out, in the language of the street, from "starting anything." I have to confine myself to those things which have been embodied as promises to the people at an election. That is the strict rule I set for myself.

I want to say that with regard to all other matters I am not only glad to be consulted by my colleagues in the two Houses but I hope they will often pay me the compliment of consulting me when they want to know my opinion on any subject. One member of the Rules Committee did come to me and ask me what I thought about this suggestion of yours of appointing a Special Committee for the consideration of woman suffrage and I told him that I thought it was a proper thing to do. So that, so far as my personal advice has been asked by a single member of the committee it has been given to that effect. I wanted to tell you this to show that I am strictly living up to my principles. When my private opinion is asked by those who are cooperating with me, I am most glad to give it, but I am not at liberty until I speak for somebody besides myself to urge legislation upon the Congress.

The following conversation then took place: "May I ask you a question?" said Dr. Shaw. "Since we are not members of any political party, who is going to speak for us—there is no one to speak for us——" "I realize that," interjected the President, "——unless we speak for ourselves?" "And you do that very admirably," rejoined Mr. Wilson. A general laugh broke up the somewhat solemn occasion and as the delegates went away Dr. Shaw said exultingly: "He is in favor of a House Woman Suffrage Committee and that was our chief object in coming to see him."

An interesting evening's program had been prepared under the auspices of the National Men's League for Woman Suffrage with addresses by seven or eight Senators and Representatives, all staunch supporters of the "cause," but all were prevented from coming by one reason or another except Representatives J. W. Bryan of Washington and Victor Murdock of Kansas. They made up for all failures, however, by their strong arguments. James Lees Laidlaw of New York, president of the league, gave a dignified, earnest address and the Hon. Gifford Pinchot made a logical and unanswerable demand for the enfranchisement of women because of the nation's great need for their votes.

An excellent report was presented at this time by Miss Alice Paul, chairman of the Congressional Committee. From the founding of the National Association in 1869 prominent representatives had appeared before committees of every Congress and during many winters Miss Susan B. Anthony had remained in Washington until she obtained a report from these committees, but after she ceased to do this, although the hearings were still granted, nobody made it an especial business to see that the committees made reports and so none was made and action by Congress seemed very remote. In 1910, when the movement entered a new era, the association appointed a special Congressional Committee to look after this matter. By the time of the convention of 1911 the two great victories in Washington and California had been gained and the prospect of a Federal Amendment began to grow brighter. A large committee was appointed consisting chiefly of the wives of Senators and Representatives with Mrs. William Kent (Calif.) chairman. No busier women could have been selected and beyond making excellent arrangements for the hearings, the committee was not active. In 1912, when Kansas, Oregon and Arizona enfranchised women, the whole country awoke to the fact that the turning point had been reached and universal woman suffrage through an amendment to the Federal Constitution was inevitable.

At this time Miss Paul and Miss Burns returned from England, where they had been studying and doing social welfare work and had been caught in the maelstrom of the "militant" suffrage movement, then at its height. Both had taken part in demonstrations before the House of Commons and been sent to prison and they came back to the United States filled with zeal to inaugurate a campaign of "militancy" here. The idea was coldly received by the suffrage leaders and they modified it to the extent of asking the National Association to cooperate in organizing a great suffrage parade to take place in Washington the day before the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson. Dr. Shaw had seen and taken part in such parades in London and was favorably inclined to the project. She put Miss Paul at the head of the Congressional Committee with power to choose the other members to organize the parade, with the proviso that they must themselves raise all the money for it but they could have the authority of the National Association letterheads. Headquarters were opened in a basement on F Street near the New Willard Hotel in Washington. They displayed astonishing executive ability, gathered about them a small army of women and during the next twelve months raised $27,378, the larger part of it in Washington and most of the remainder in Philadelphia. The parade was long, beautiful and impressive, women from many States participating. The report of the Congressional Committee presented to the convention by Miss Paul slightly condensed, read as follows:

Work for Federal Amendment:

Headquarters were opened in Washington, Jan. 2, 1913.

Hearings were arranged before the Woman Suffrage Committee of the Senate; before the Rules Committee of the House, when members of the National Council of Women Voters were the speakers; before the Rules Committee during the present convention.

Processions: March 3, when from 8,000 to 10,000 women participated; April 7, when women from congressional districts went to Congress with petitions and resolutions; July 31, when an automobile procession met the "pilgrims" at the end of their "hike" and escorted them through the streets of Washington to the Senate. This procession was headed by an automobile in which rode several of the Suffrage Committee of the Senate.

Pilgrimages coming from all parts of the country and extending over the month of July were organized, about twelve. These all ended in Washington on July 31, when approximately 200,000 signatures to petitions were presented to the Senate.

Deputations: Three deputations to the President were organized immediately preceding the calling of the special session of Congress in order to ask him to give the administration support to the suffrage amendment during the special session. One of these was from the National Association, one from the College Suffrage League and one from the National Council of Women Voters. On November 17 a fourth deputation, composed of seventy-three women from New Jersey, was sent to the President to urge him to take up the amendment during the regular session of Congress.

Local arrangements were made for the conventions of the National Council of Women Voters and the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

A campaign under a salaried organizer was conducted through the resort regions of New Jersey, Long Island and Rhode Island during July, August and September; and one through New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland during July. A month's campaign was carried on in North Carolina. On September 1 permanent headquarters were opened in Wilmington in charge of a salaried organizer and since that time a vigorous campaign has been carried on in Delaware in the attempt to influence the attitude of the Senators and Representatives from that State.

A salaried press chairman has been employed throughout the year, who has furnished daily press copy to the local papers, to the Washington correspondents of the various papers throughout the country and to all of the telegraphic bureaus in Washington. Approximately 120,000 pieces of literature have been printed and distributed. A weekly paper under the editorship of Mrs. Rheta Childe Dorr was established on November 15. This now has a paid circulation of about 1,200 and is self-supporting from its advertisements.

A Men's League was organized, General Anson Mills, U. S. A., being the temporary and Dr. Harvey W. Wiley the permanent chairman. A large number of Congressmen are members.

Eight theater meetings, exclusive of those during this convention, have been held in Washington. Smaller meetings both indoor and out have been held almost daily and frequently as many as five or ten a day. A tableau was presented on the Treasury steps at the time of the suffrage procession of March 3 under the direction of Miss Hazel Mackaye. A suffrage play was given, also two banquets, a reception and a luncheon, and a benefit and a luncheon were given for the purpose of raising funds.

A delegation in two special cars went to New York for the procession of May 3. An even larger delegation went to Baltimore for the procession of May 31. The play given in Washington was reproduced in Baltimore for the benefit of one of the suffrage societies there. A week's campaign was conducted in the four southern counties of Maryland prior to the primary election, at the request of one of the State's societies.

The Congressional Union was formed during the latter part of April and now numbers over a thousand members.

Congressional Work.

Senate and House Joint Resolution Number One for Federal Amendment introduced in Congress April 7, 1913.

Woman Suffrage Committee of Senate voted on May 14 to report the resolution favorably and did so unanimously, one not voting. On July 31 twenty-two Senators spoke in favor of the resolution and three against it. On September 18 Senator Andrieus Jones (N. M.) spoke in favor and asked for immediate action. On the same day Senator Henry F. Ashurst (Ariz.) announced on the floor of the Senate that he would press the measure to a vote at the earliest possible moment.

Three resolutions were introduced in the House for the creation of a Woman Suffrage Committee and referred to the Rules Committee and are still before it.

The amendment resolution is awaiting third reading in the Senate and is before the Judiciary Committee of the House.

The action of the Senate was due to the fact that under the new administration a committee had been appointed which was favorable to woman suffrage instead of one opposed as heretofore, with a chairman, Senator Charles S. Thomas of Colorado, who had helped the women of his own State to secure the suffrage twenty years before. The resolutions in the Lower House were introduced by old and tried friends and the association's new Congressional Committee had arranged hearings, brought pressure to bear on members and not permitted them to forget or ignore the question. Miss Agnes E. Ryan, business manager of the Woman's Journal, said in her account: "The convention received the report with enthusiastic applause, giving three cheers and rising to its feet to show its appreciation."

This report was signed by Miss Paul as "chairman of the Congressional Committee and president of the Congressional Union" and she said at the beginning that it was impossible to separate the work of the two. At its conclusion Mrs. Catt moved that the part of the report as from the Congressional Committee be accepted, which was done by the convention. She then asked what was the relation between the two and why, if this was a regular committee of the National American Association, no appropriation had been made for its work during the coming year and why there was no statement in the treasurer's report of its expenditures during the past year. It developed that the committee had raised and expended its own funds, which had not passed through the national treasury, and that the Congressional Union was a society formed the preceding April to assist the work of the committee. It was moved by Mrs. Catt and carried that the convention request the Official Board to continue the Congressional Committee and to cooperate with it in such a way as to remove further causes of embarrassment to the association. The motion was amended that the board should appropriate what money could be spared for the work of this committee.[80]

The movement for woman suffrage was now so plainly centering in Congress, which had been the goal for over forty years, that there was a widespread feeling that the national headquarters should be established in Washington. Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, a delegate from New York, through whose generosity it had been possible to take them to that city in 1909, offered a motion that they now be removed to Washington. She had given notice of this action the preceding day and the opponents were prepared. A motion to lay it on the table was quickly made and all discussion cut off. The opposition of the national officers was so apparent that many delegates hesitated to express their convictions for the affirmative but nevertheless the vote stood 134 ayes, and 169 noes.

The National Association had now so many auxiliaries and so much work was being done in all the States that the day sessions were largely consumed in hearing reports from them and the usual conferences and symposiums were almost crowded off the program. For the first time Hawaii took her place among the auxiliaries, a suffrage society having been formed there during the year. At one of the morning sessions U. S. Senator Moses E. Clapp of Minnesota was presented to the convention and extended a pressing invitation to hold its next meeting in St. Paul. Later this invitation was repeated in a cordial invitation from Governor Adolph O. Eberhard. At another morning session Representative Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee addressed the convention and invited it to meet in Chattanooga the next year. The last evening there was not standing room in the large theater. Miss Harriet May Mills, president of the New York State Suffrage Association, took for her subject A Prophecy Fulfilled and gave convincing reasons for believing that the successful end of the long contest was near. Mrs. Katharine Houghton Hepburn made a strong arraignment of Commercialized Vice, using her own city of Hartford, Conn., for an example. Mrs. Catt gave the last address, a comprehensive review of the advanced position that had been attained by women and the great responsibilities it had brought. Dr. Shaw, who presided, spoke the final inspiring words.

A delightful ending of the week was the reception the last afternoon in the hospitable home of Senator and Mrs. Robert M. LaFollette. Three members of the Cabinet were among the guests, Secretaries Lane, Houston and Daniels. Those in the receiving line were: Senator and Mrs. LaFollette, Dr. Shaw and Mrs. Catt; also Mrs. Franklin K. Lane, Mrs. Josephus Daniels, Mrs. Albert Sidney Burleson, Mrs. David Franklin Houston, Mrs. Miles Poindexter, Mrs. Reed Smoot, Mrs. Victor Murdock, Mrs. Wm. L. LaFollette, Mrs. J. W. Bryan, Mrs. John E. Raker, Mrs. James A. Frear, Mrs. Henry T. Rainey, Mrs. Albert B. Cummins, Mrs. John D. Works and Mrs. William Kent, all members of the Cabinet and Congressional circles, and the husbands of most of them were present. To the older members of the association it recalled the conventions of olden times when even the wives of members of Congress, with a few rare exceptions, feared to attend the social functions lest it might injure the political status of their husbands.

* * * * *

The Senate committee of the Sixty-third Congress had already granted three hearings on woman suffrage during its extra session: on April 10, 1913, to representatives of the Anti-Suffrage Association; on April 21 to those of the Federal Women's Equality Association and on April 26 to those of the National American Suffrage Association. This new committee, which the advocates of the Federal Suffrage Amendment will always remember with deep appreciation for its firm and favorable action, consisted of the following Senators: Charles S. Thomas (Colo.), chairman; Robert L. Owen (Okla.); Henry F. Ashurst (Ariz.); Joseph E. Ransdell (La.); Henry P. Hollis (N. H.); George Sutherland (Utah); Wesley L. Jones (Wash.); Moses E. Clapp (Minn.); Thomas B. Catron (N. M.). The last named was an opponent of woman suffrage by any method and was the only member who did not sign the favorable report. Senator Ransdell at first said that he had an open mind but he soon placed himself on the suffrage side, signed the report and later voted several times in favor of the amendment.