The History of Woman Suffrage Volume V Part 43

The report of Mrs. Frank M. Roessing, chairman of the National Congressional Committee, gave so complete an account of the situation at the time the great "drive" for the Federal Amendment was begun that it is largely reproduced.

At the opening of the 64th Congress in December, 1915, several political leaders interested in the progress of social and economic legislation stated that 1916 would be a lean year in Congress for such movements. It was pointed out that particularly in the Senate some of the most reactionary men had been returned at the preceding election. It is also a presidential election year and neither of the great parties is willing to take one unnecessary step which in its judgment may tend to add to the number of its adversaries or to its vulnerable points in some particular section of the country. All of the 435 members of the House and one-third of the Senators come up for re-election in November of this year--they, too, are shy and sensitive. Some legislation, notably child labor after it had been endorsed by the National Democratic platform, successfully ran the gauntlet but not so our Federal Suffrage Amendment. It is with keen regret your committee reports that it has not had action in either the Senate or House of Representatives.

In the Senate the resolution was introduced Dec. 7, 1915, by Senators Sutherland, Thomas and Thompson of Kansas and referred to the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage. This committee reported favorably resolution No. 1, introduced by Senator Sutherland. The written report made from the committee by Senator Thomas is one of the best pieces of literature on the subject and copies were mailed to every State president and State chairman of congressional work. Since that early date our measure has been on the calendar. It has come to the top a number of times but at the request of suffrage Senators has been held until a more auspicious hour.

As the National a.s.sociation was desirous of having a vote on the measure at this session, your committee began to work to that end immediately after receiving specific instructions from the Board June 17, 1916. The meaning of the suffrage planks in the Republican and Democratic platforms was disputed by some men in both parties. The leaders stated that the planks were silent as to the Federal Amendment and thus left men free to vote on the amendment as each decided. In order to ascertain the interpretation which would be given by members of Congress it was determined to push for a vote in the Senate. On June 27 Mrs.

Catt, Miss Hannah J. Patterson, corresponding secretary of the National Suffrage a.s.sociation, Mrs. Antoinette Funk, vice-chairman of the committee, Miss Hay and the chairman held an informal conference with the Senators of the enfranchised States in the office of Senator Shafroth to secure their a.s.sistance. As unanimous consent is required for the consideration of such a measure, the Senators agreed that if we would have the vote taken without debate it would probably be possible, since this would not consume the time of the Senate. We believed that this was best in order to make sure of the vote. On July 22 Senator Thomas wrote to every Senator asking whether he would consent to a vote being taken without debate. He informed us that on both the Republican and Democratic sides there were men who would not give such consent, some stating that they had been asked by certain suffragists of the other organization not to consent. After the endors.e.m.e.nt of the Federal Amendment by Judge Hughes, the candidate for President, frequent remarks were made in the Senate on it by members of both parties. Senator Clark (Republican) of Wyoming and Senator Pittman (Democrat) of Nevada were among those who urged action at this session but finally in August Senator Thomas gave up the effort.

The unfair treatment of the amendment resolution in the House Judiciary Committee and its final suppression by Chairman Edwin Y.

Webb (N. C.) were described in full and the unsuccessful efforts, led by Mrs. Catt, to obtain action on it. [See Chapter on Federal Amendment.] The report continued:

Federal Elections Bill: On December 6 Representative Raker introduced at the request of the Federal Suffrage a.s.sociation a bill to protect the rights of women citizens of the United States to register and vote for Senators and members of the House. The bill was referred to the Committee on the Election of the President, Vice-President and Representatives in Congress and has not yet been reported out. On December 10 this same bill was introduced by Senator Lane of Oregon, referred to the Committee on Woman Suffrage and is still there.

United States Elections Bill: The United States Elections Bill, introduced by Senator Owen at the request of Miss Laura Clay on February 3, aims also to secure to women the right to vote for Senators and Representatives in Congress. Miss Clay says it is simply a declaratory act; that it does not permit Congress to specify qualifications of voters and therefore does not involve the issue of State's rights. This bill was referred to the Committee on Privileges and Elections, where it remains. Your committee a.s.sisted the suffragists in the District of Columbia in the effort for a bill enabling it to elect a delegate to the Lower House....

Planks:[105] For some time prior to June your committee used every opportunity with Senators and Representatives to further the work of securing suffrage planks in the Republican and Democratic national platforms. Its chairman was put in charge of drafting for submission to Mrs. Catt the planks which were to be offered to the two conventions on behalf of the National a.s.sociation. Its members who went to Chicago and St. Louis concentrated their efforts on the planks. The two demonstrations of women planned and supervised by the National Board were the culmination of the campaign on behalf of these planks. In cooperation with your Congressional Committee, many State delegations of women who came for the demonstrations did special eleventh-hour work with the delegates to the conventions.

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

With the final yielding of the two dominant parties to the justice of woman suffrage all are now on record in favor of the principle; all except the Republican and Democratic endorse the Federal Amendment. Republicans have been strengthened in their advocacy of Federal action by Judge Hughes' personal endors.e.m.e.nt of the amendment. Your committee must sound a note of warning here against over-confidence. Some too zealous suffragists, including one suffrage organ, state quite seriously, notwithstanding the fact that their attention has been called to their error, that "the Republican party has specifically declared for the Federal Suffrage Amendment." Alas! it has done no such thing. It has not done one bit more than the Democratic party.

The personal endors.e.m.e.nt of the Republican candidate for President can not properly be construed as party endors.e.m.e.nt.

Those of us who have had some years of experience have witnessed the worming and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, fallacy and treachery exhibited by members of a party after their leading candidate has endorsed a particular measure. We know that we can not hold the party responsible for one man's utterances made after the platform had been adopted by the party convention and accepted by the party candidate.

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

McClure of Michigan; Mrs. Valentine of Virginia; Miss Martha Norris of Ohio; Mrs. Elizabeth Higgins Sullivan of Nebraska and Miss Ruth White of Missouri.

Mrs. Funk resigned March 14 to take up other work and in July Miss White was appointed secretary and has done much special work. Because of the amount of travel involved only two meetings of the full committee have been held, on March 2 and September 4.

Every plan for congressional work has been submitted to the National Board or to the national president for approval.

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

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

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

All the direct work with Senators and Congressmen is a time as well as brain consuming process. Usually it means tramping up and down the long stone corridors, hour after hour, in order to find one man in his office. Then he may be having a committee meeting or a previous engagement or emergency business and you are invited to come some other day. Perhaps you have waited an hour before you are sure that he can not see you. It is not uncommon for the members of our lobby to state that they have made as many as six, eight or ten calls before they succeeded in reaching a man. Speaking from my own knowledge, I have wasted hours at the Capitol trying to see men who would not make appointments. I have called eighteen times to see one man and have not seen him yet!

He is the Representative from my own district. We carried the district for suffrage in Pennsylvania last year but I am told that he does not want to vote for the Federal Amendment. It is, of course, possible to interview members by calling them out of the session but this method is uncertain and not very successful, since they feel hurried and interviews in a public reception room are seldom satisfactory.

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

Presidential Interviewing: The presidential candidates of the two parties whose platforms do not endorse the Federal Amendment have been interviewed in person. On July 17 Mrs. Catt, Dr. Shaw and Mrs. Norman deR. Whitehouse, president of the New York suffrage a.s.sociation, called on Judge Hughes in New York and had a long and satisfactory conversation. He told them that in his speech of acceptance he could not endorse the Federal Amendment because this was the accepting of the party's nomination and of its platform, which had not mentioned it. He said, however, that he believed in it and that soon after his speech of acceptance he would announce his personal advocacy of the amendment. He asked them to hold this information in confidence, which of course they did. His public statement of August 1 was therefore no surprise to them but was nevertheless most gratifying.

On August 1 Mrs. Catt and your chairman called on President Wilson in Washington. He reiterated his belief that woman suffrage should come by State action. We presented the arguments in behalf of the Federal Amendment but he remained unconvinced.

He is a fair and openminded man and your representatives have by no means given up hope of proving to him the justice and advisability of the amendment.

Conferences: At the last national convention a special committee recommended that the Board of Officers should consider the suggestion of conferences between the Congressional Committee of the National a.s.sociation and the Legislative Committee of the Congressional Union, with a view to securing more united action in the lobby work in Washington. Nine such conferences were held--one in January, three in February, three in March, one in June, one in July. Your chairman was present at each and Miss Anne Martin, representing the Union, was present at each. At some of them each organization had additional representatives. Mrs.

Catt attended two and our corresponding secretary, Miss Patterson, attended one. The subject was the time at which action on the Federal Amendment should be secured in both branches of Congress. When on July 20 it was found that the National Committee wished to obtain a vote in the Senate before adjournment and the Congressional Union wished to postpone it the conferences came to an end. It is the unanimous judgment of your committee that they were of no value to the work on the amendment.

General: The congressional work done in Washington this year by the National a.s.sociation has not been spectacular. Your committee had not been on duty long before they realized that many members had been irritated by the too-frequent calls of suffragists and by the inconsiderate demands on their time. As our last national convention was held at the opening session of this Congress, delegations of suffragists used the opportunity to call on their Senators and Representatives. Considering the strain of work of Congress during the past months and the fact that the men had already been interviewed by State delegations or representatives, we did not encourage further visits to the Capitol. In Washington such visits, like pageants and other spectacular forms of activity, have been overdone. There was nothing to be gained and probably something to be lost by them.

Your committee wishes to express its appreciation of the cooperation of many Senators and members of the House. Our friends have often gone out of their way to a.s.sist us and not once has any one refused a request for help. They have made speeches on the floor at our suggestion, taken polls for us, held conferences, arranged interviews, provided us with doc.u.ments and extended all the official courtesies within their power. While we have not secured action we are not discouraged in the least. Even the most radical opponents acknowledge that our movement has grown tremendously this year. We have achieved recognition of the justice of our principle by the political parties and we have with us in our Federal fight the great majority of the leaders of thought and action who believe in suffrage at all. By a continuation of sane methods, sound tactics, coordination and concentration we shall soon accomplish the submission of the Federal Amendment.

Your chairman becomes more convinced each day that one of the next steps necessary to nationalize our work and to secure Federal action is the removal of the national headquarters to Washington. She feels it to be her clear duty frankly to state to the convention her conviction on this point. It is her judgment, based upon her own observation this year and a study of the past work on the Federal Amendment, that it will not pa.s.s until the national headquarters are in Washington and the National Board as well as the Congressional Committee is in a position to gives its direct attention to the work on this amendment.

A lobby in Washington for special educational purposes may be a good thing but you will have to do special educational and political work in the States if your committee is to achieve political action to the point of a two-thirds vote on the amendment. We appreciate that support has been given to it by many suffragists and a number of State chairmen and presidents but there has not been the intensive, persistent, determined congressional activity in the States which there must be before the amendment can be pa.s.sed and ratified. Your committee has done its utmost, I believe, but it can no more put the Federal Amendment through Congress without your activity in the States than a State committee can achieve success without activity in the counties. Activity on the part of a small number of local Washington suffragists is not a sufficient backing for the work of the Congressional Committee. If you propose to secure the Federal Amendment you must work just as hard in the States as you expect it to work in Washington. Without a doubt we can secure the Federal Amendment if the women of this country enthusiastically want their enfranchis.e.m.e.nt that way....

The friendliness of members of Congress toward the National a.s.sociation and their continued respect for the suffrage movement in this country have been maintained by the dignity, poise and ability of the national lobby. In the many years of my connection with various kinds of organizations I have never served any in which there was more frankness, unity and good fellowship than in the National Board and the National Congressional Committee. That such harmony exists is due to our great president, to whom each is more indebted than all of us together can express. Her visits to Washington did for us what nothing and no one else could do.

It was my duty and pleasure always to accompany her to the Capitol, and the unfailing impression of n.o.bility, directness and power which she left upon the men was a joy to witness.

I can not close this report without acknowledging my personal debt to that co-officer who is not on our committee, Miss Hannah J. Patterson. It is but fair to say that had we not had her a.s.sistance at hazardous moments the suffrage planks would not be in the two national platforms today. Food, sleep, rest, pleasure, all were day after day given up by this most self-sacrificing officer. She it was who kept with one other [Mrs. Roessing] the lonely vigil the night of June 6 at the door of the Republican Resolutions Committee while it debated for hours its sub-committee's adverse report on the suffrage plank. The crisis in our work for both the planks came in this sub-committee of seven, for we knew that if we lost in Chicago there would be no hope in St. Louis. At midnight that all-powerful sub-committee by a vote of 5 to 4 turned down our plank and refused to permit suffrage to be mentioned in the platform in any way. That committee has seldom been reversed in all the history of the party. When later Senator Borah, also sleepless and hungry, came to us in one of those agonizing moments when decision must be made at once, when we could not reach our president or our board, it was Miss Patterson who made the decision that won the plank.[106]

A comprehensive plan of work was adopted with the following princ.i.p.al features:

Federal Work: The National Board shall continue a lobby in Washington until the Federal Amendment shall be submitted; the matter of removing headquarters to Washington shall be left to the judgment of the Board; it shall conduct a nation-wide campaign of agitation, education, organization and publicity in support of the amendment, which shall include the following: a million-dollar fund for the campaign from Oct. 1, 1916, to Oct.

1, 1917; a monthly propaganda demonstration simultaneously conducted throughout the nation; at least four campaign directors and 200 organizers in the field and a vigorous, thorough organization in every State; a nationalized scheme for education through literature; national suffrage schools; a speakers'

bureau; innumerable activities for agitation and publicity; a national press bureau and a national publicity council with departments in each State; a national committee to extend suffrage propaganda among non-English-speaking races.

State Work: A Council of the representatives of States shall meet in executive session in connection with each annual national convention to hear reports as to the status of each campaign State and to fix upon States which shall be recommended to go forward with campaigns.

No State a.s.sociation shall ask the Legislature for the submission of a State const.i.tutional amendment or for the submission of the question by initiative or by a referred law until such Council or the National Board has had the opportunity to investigate conditions and to give consent.

Any State which proceeds to a referendum campaign without securing this consent shall be prepared to finance its own campaign without help from the National Board.

Any State which has secured the consent of the National Board to proceed with a campaign shall have its cooperation to the fullest extent of its powers.

As soon as possible experienced campaign managers shall be trained for the work and shall be supplied to a campaign State to work under the direction of the National Board in cooperation with the State board.

States willing to contribute to campaigns in other States should do so by the advice of the National Board, who should be informed as to conditions, and the money so contributed should be pa.s.sed through the national treasury.

The rule that the National Board shall do nothing in States without the consent of the State shall be repealed.

The organization, press work, literature distributed and general activity of the States shall be standardized and regular reports on all of these departments shall be made to the National Board in order that advice and help may be rendered when most needed.

This Board shall have the authority to nationalize the suffrage movement by unifying the work as far as is possible.

Any States not desiring to work for the Federal Amendment may remain members of the National a.s.sociation provided they do not work actively against it.

Dr. Shaw presided over the last evening session of the convention and three of the strongest speeches during the convention were made by the Hon. Herbert Parsons, New York member of the Republican National Committee; Mrs. Deborah Knox Livingston (Me.), Superintendent of Franchise of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and Raymond Robins, a national leader of progressive thought. The convention ended with a ma.s.s meeting Sunday afternoon in the New Nixon Theater with Mrs. Catt presiding. Rabbi Henry M. Fisher of Atlantic City gave the invocation and inspiring addresses were made by Mrs.

David F. Simpson (Minn.) and the Rev. Effie McCollum Jones (Ia.). Dr.

Shaw closed her address with a beautiful delineation of Americanism, saying at its close:

What is Americanism? Every one has a different answer. Some people say it is never to submit to the dictation of a King.

Others say Americanism is the pride of liberty and the defence of an insult to the flag with their gore. When some half-developed person tramples on that flag, we should be ready to pour out the blood of the nation, they say. But do we not sit in silence when that flag waves over living conditions which should be an insult to all patriotism? Why do we care more about our flag than any other flag? Why, when we have been travelling and seeing others, does the sight of the American flag bring tears to our eyes and warmth to our hearts? Is it not because it is a symbol of the hopes and aspirations of the men and women of the whole world?

They say Americanism is the love of liberty, but men died for that and women gave their lives for it thousands of years before America was known. Others say it is the love of justice but the whole world is filled with that, no one country loves it more than another. Human love, sacrifice and sympathy have been manifested in the history of the world since the beginning of time. The American sees in Americanism just what he wants to see.

He looks over the world and finds every good thing and calls it his own--justice, liberty, humanity, patriotism. It is not Americanism but humanism. There is only one thing we can claim in higher degree than the other nations--opportunity is the word which means true Americanism.

The anti-suffragists have said that when women have the vote they will have less time for charity and philanthropy. They are right--when we have the vote there will be less need for charity and philanthropy. The highest ideal of a republic is not a long bread line nor a soup kitchen but such opportunity that the people can buy their own bread and make their own soup.