When, during the last decade, the great suffrage parades,—armies of women with banners, orange and black, yellow and blue and purple and green and gold,—went marching through the streets of the cities and towns of America; when “suffrage canvassers,” knocking at the doors of America, were a daily sight; when the suffragist on the soap box was heard on every street corner; when huge suffrage mass meetings were packing auditoriums from end to end of the country; when lively “suffrage stunts” were rousing and stirring the public; when suffrage was in everybody's mouth and on the front page of every newspaper, few paused to ask how it all started, where it all came from. It was just there, like breakfast.

To the unimaginative man on the street corner, watching one of those suffrage parades, the long lines of marching women may have seemed to come out of no-where, to have no starting place, no connection with his grandmother and his great grandmother. To the same man the insistent tapping of those suffrage canvassers, the commotion of the suffrage mass meetings, the repetition of those suffrage stunts, the incessant news of suffrage in the daily press, may have seemed unrelated acts, irrelevant to social history. Yet it was all part of social 0124history, and had immediate connection with other phases of social history. For the demand for woman suffrage was the logical outcome of two preceding social movements, both extending over some centuries: one, a man movement, evolving toward control of governments by the people, the other a woman movement, with its goal the freeing of women from the masculine tutelage to which law, religion, tradition and custom bound them. These movements advanced in parallel lines and the enfranchisement of woman was an inevitable climax of both.

Neither the man movement nor the woman movement had a dated beginning. In the struggle upward toward political freedom, men were called upon to overthrow the universally accepted theory of the Divine Right of Kings to rule over the masses of men; women, the universally accepted theory of the Divine Right of Men to rule over women. The American Revolution forever destroyed the Divine Right of Kings theory in this country, but it left untouched the theory of the Divine Right of Man to rule over woman. Men and women believed it with equal sincerity, the church taught it, customs were based upon it, the law endorsed it, and the causes which created the belief had been so long lost in obscurity that men claimed authority for it in the “laws of God.” All opposition to the enfranchisement of women emanated from that theory.

Students of human progress might have predicted at the inception of the American Republic that, should it continue, universal manhood and womanhood suffrage would become inevitable. The official announcement of the causes that led the American patriots into revolution emphasized two maxims as explanatory of all their grievances, namely, “Taxation without representation is tyranny” and “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Although in the minds of the Colonists these aphorisms undoubtedly were limited 0135in application to the relation which the Colonies bore to their Mother Country, it was as clear to individual men and women then, as to hundreds of thousands of them a hundred and forty years later, that a nation that proclaimed these principles upon the one hand and denied them upon the other, applied them to men and refused to apply them to women, presented so untenable an inconsistency that sooner or later professions and deeds would have to be squared.

Yet not only was the battle for woman suffrage fought longer in the United States, it was fought harder. It engaged the lifelong energies of a longer list of women, called into action a larger organization in proportion to population, and involved a greater cost in money, personal sacrifice and ingenuity, than the suffrage campaign of any other land. And when, in 1920, the final victory came to the woman suffrage cause in the land of its birth, the rejoicing was sadly tempered by the humiliating knowledge that twenty-six other countries had outdistanced America in bestowing political liberty upon their women. More, American suffragists knew that their victory had, even then, been virtually wrung from hesitant and often resentful political leaders, while the vote had come to the women of many other lands as a spontaneous and liberal concession to the common appeal for justice; and that, too, without serious effort on the women's part.

The delay in America was not due to the retarded growth of the general woman movement, for the rate of progress of that movement had been more rapid in the United States than in any other country, as a brief review will show.

Taking the year 1800 as a fixed point from which to measure progress, the investigator will find the civil and legal status of women practically the same as that of several preceding centuries, although there were signs of a coming revolt, and in North America the personal liberty 0146of women had been much extended under the influence of the freer institutions of the Western Hemisphere. Married women at that date were not permitted in any country except Russia to control their property nor to make a will; to all intents and purposes they did not own property. The Common Law in operation in Great Britain and the United States held husband and wife to be “one, and that one the husband.” The legal existence of the wife was so merged in that of her husband that she was said to be “dead in law.” Not only did the husband control the wife's property, collect and use her wages, select the food and clothing for herself and children, decide upon the education and religion of their children, but to a very large extent he controlled her freedom of thought, speech and action. The husband possessed the right to will the children, even unborn children, to other guardians. If the wife offended the husband, he possessed the legal right, upheld by public opinion, to punish her, the courts interfering only when the chastisement exceeded the popular idea of appropriate severity. Humane, affectionate husbands treated their wives as loved companions, and there were happy wives and homes, but upon the wives of fickle, ignorant, brutal husbands, always numerous, the oppression of the law fell with crushing force.

Although single women were legally as independent as men, it was contrary to accepted form for them to manage their own business affairs. What women were unaccustomed to do the world believed them incapable of doing, and they had in consequence neither confidence in themselves nor public encouragement to attempt ventures of independence. Very few occupations were open to women and these were monopolized by the poor. It was accounted a family disgrace for women of the middle or upper classes to earn money. The unmarried woman of such classes, dubbed “old maid,” forbidden by public opinion to support herself, even were work and 0157wages available, became a dependent in the home of her nearest male relative. Pitied because she had never “had a chance,” regarded with contempt as one of the world's derelicts, she was condemned to a life of involuntary service, and the fact that she legally possessed property enough to insure her independence did not greatly alter her status.

In the church, then a far greater power in the making of opinion than now, women with few exceptions were not allowed to preach, sing, pray, testify or vote. During church services women were seated upon one side, and men upon the other in order that “men might commend themselves to God without interruption.”

It was “indelicate” for a woman to appear upon a business street without a male escort or to go to a bank to transact business, and any woman seen unattended upon the street after dark was regarded with suspicion. No college in the world admitted women, and there were no high schools for girls. It was the universal belief that Greek and higher mathematics, then the two chief corner stones of the collegiate curriculum, were utterly beyond the capacity of women. Convents and boarding schools wherein girls of wealth were educated taught nothing more than the rudiments of learning, with so-called “accomplishments.” The daughters of the poor received no education at all.

It recital of the legal and social disabilities of women at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century is shocking to modern thought, but it conveys only a partial understanding of the timid, self-distrustful, untrained character of the average woman of the day. Taught that it was unwomanly to hold opinions upon serious subjects, that men most admired clinging weakness in women, and that woman's one worthy ambition was to secure men's admiration, it is no wonder that women made little effort to think for themselves.

An English book which appeared at this time, Dr. 0168Gregory's “Legacy to My Daughters,” and which was much read on both sides of the Atlantic and recommended by the clergy as expressing the correct attitude for women, said: “If you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound secret, especially from men, who look with a jealous, malignant eye on a woman of great parts and a cultivated understanding.” The author counseled girls “not to dance with spirit when gaiety of heart would make them feel eloquent, lest men who beheld them might either suppose that they were not entirely dependent on their protection for their safety or entertain dark suspicions as to their modesty.”

The philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau, which had largely influenced the thought of France during the closing years of the eighteenth century, was still representative of thought and feeling in the beginning of the nineteenth. With regard to women Rousseau had said: “The education of women should always be relative to that of man. To please Us, to be useful to Us, to make Us love and esteem them, to educate Us when young, to take care of Us when grown up, to advise, to console Us, to render Our lives easy and agreeable; these are the duties of women at all times and what they should be taught from their infancy.”

In reply “The Vindication of Women” was wrung from Mary Woolstonecraft. Her eloquent appeal for larger opportunities for women was received in the hostile spirit with which the world receives all new ideas, and Horace Walpole doubtless reflected public opinion when he called her a “hyena in petticoats.”

In the Western World there were more robust signs of coming change. Mistress Brent, a relative of Lord Baltimore and the owner of a vast estate in Maryland, not only demanded a voice in the State Assembly, composed of land holders, but defended her contention with so much spirit and logic as to create a lively if unsuccessful debate in that body and all of its constituencies. In 0179March, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote her husband, when he was sitting with the Continental Congress, “I long to hear you have declared an independency, and, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound to obey any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

In New Jersey, tax-paying women were granted the vote by the constitution of July 2, 1776, two days before the Declaration of Independence was declared. In 1790 and 1797 legislative enactments confirmed them in the right. The vote was taken from them by the Legislature in 1807, and the explanation was that although qualified women had used the vote quite generally, they had not supported the right candidates in the election. The legislators therefore sought and won a party advantage by the disfranchisement of electors who had voted against them!

It was upon such signs and portents that the curtain of the nineteenth century rose; the century which the prophetic voice of Victor Hugo proclaimed the “Century of Woman.”

Of special significance were the indications of a definite movement in the United States for education for girls. School Districts taxed their own residents for the maintenance of schools. As it cost more to build schoolhouses large enough for both boys and girls than for boys alone, the discussion was at once precipitated as to whether “schools for she” should be maintained, the liberal-minded contending for them and the conservative and ungenerous against them.

Many districts compromised by permitting girls to 01810attend school in summer months when boys vacated seats to work on the farms. In Boston, from 1789 to 1822, girls were allowed to attend the public schools under this rule, although for a portion of the time an exception was made and they were admitted for two hours in the afternoon after the boys had gone home. In 1826, Boston, amid a storm of opposition, opened a high school for girls, but yielded to hostile clamor and closed it in 1828. It had been an “alarming success”; the school had been full and not a girl had quitted it in the eighteen months of its existence, in spite of the persecution of doubters.

The discussion of educational opportunity for women received a fresh impulse when it was proposed to include geography in the instruction of girls. The proper schedule for girls was held to be confined to the three R's, “Readin', ‘Ritin’ and ‘Rithmetic,” with some knowledge of a fourth R, Religion; so a battle royal was fought around geography. Girls whose parents approved the innovation were chased from the schoolhouse to their homes by bands of rollicking boys, throwing dirt, stones or snow balls, and shouting in tones of derision—“Geography girl, Geography girl! There goes a Geography girl.”

It was not uncommon for a teacher to give private instruction to girls after school hours, and consequent “Dame Schools” for girls, that is, teaching by women in their own homes, sprang up in all parts of the country in response to the demand. In time women began teaching in country districts during summer months when schools were small, one dollar a week and “boarding round” being considered good terms for such teachers. In 1821 the Troy Female Seminary was opened by Mrs. Emma Willard, the first institution in the United States offering “higher education” to women. It became an immediate storm centre of abuse. The complainants charged that time was wasted in teaching girls two subjects utterly 01911nonsensical for them to know, physiology and mathematics. A struggle similar to that which brought geography into the list of subjects permissible for a girl's education was next waged around physiology. As late as 1844, when an exceedingly gifted woman, Paulina Wright Davis, attempted to lecture on physiology and used a manikin for illustration, she reported that so “indelicate was the theme considered that women frequently dropped their veils, ran out of the room or even fainted.” Mary Gore Nichols, another gifted woman, also gave lectures on anatomy and received similar condemnation for the “indelicacy” of the act. A graduate of Troy Seminary * gave evidence in after years of the custom, inaugurated during the controversy, of pasting thick paper over illustrations of the human body in text books on physiology, in order that the modesty of young girls might not be shocked. The graduates of Mrs. Emma Willard's school seem to have felt the responsibility of extending the study of physiology, for they introduced it later into their own schools, yet several reported that visiting mothers on examination day left the room in a body when the examination in physiology was called. Of two clergymen visitors at the Willard school one was as incensed as the other at the “unwarranted attempt to teach girls higher mathematics.” But their reasons were different. One contended that as the female mind was incapable of comprehending mathematics, any effort to teach it to girls was opposing nature and God's will. The other declared, as vehemently, that young women might become so enamored of mathematics that they would employ all their time in solving abstruse problems in algebra and geometry, to the exclusion of proper attention to husbands and babies.

Thus, popular ideas concerning education for girls slowly evolved from the zero point of no education to the acknowledgment of a girl's right to acquaintance with 02012the four R's to be gained in free public primary schools; from the four R's to the inclusion of geography; from geography to physiology; from physiology to higher mathematics and high schools,—each new step being an outpost around which intolerant and bitter controversy raged.

After 1800 the legal disabilities of women also began to receive attention. In 1809 Connecticut gave married women the right to make a will. From that date legislative changes concerning the civil status of women were frequent. Southern states deserve the honor of a share in the leadership of the advanced legislation. The first of all States to grant the married woman the right to control her own property was Mississippi. The third State to give married women the right to make a will was Texas (1840); the fourth Alabama (1843); and the first suffrage for women in the United States, after New Jersey, was the school suffrage granted by Kentucky to widows with children in 1838.

Possibly the most permanent factor in giving impulse to the woman movement came with the announced and undisputed discovery by Von Baer, a German scientist, that the protoplasm of the ovule, the reproductive cell of the maternal organism, contributed at least half to the structure of the embryo child. Before that date it had been held that the mother had no essential share in the formation of the child, the comparison being usual that “man was the seed and woman the soil.” The proof of “at least” equal physical responsibility of parents opened the question of the extent of the mental and moral responsibility resting upon the mother, and by degrees this reversal of theory concerning fatherhood and motherhood changed the attitude of educated men toward all phases of the woman question.

At about this date Margaret Fuller upset the conventions of the staid City of Boston by sitting down at a table in a public library to read a book.

Meanwhile two great reforms were rapidly pressing forward, propelled by the controversy of earnest, consecrated protagonists on the one hand, and bitter, hostile antagonists on the other—the anti-slavery and anti-liquor movements. Both appealed strongly to the humanitarian sympathies of the better educated women. Whether the effort of women had any appreciable effect upon either movement between 1800 and 1850 may be doubted, but it is certain that these reforms furnished the most impelling motive that led women to come forth from their seclusion to take part in public affairs. They came timidly at first, but with the discovery that the majority of men not only did not want their help but expressed their antagonism in phrases and tones of bitter contempt, the spirit of many was stung into resentment. They chafed at the restraint of individual liberty, and the bravest boldly defended the right of any woman to give service to any cause and in any manner she chose. The controversy by degrees inevitably spread to all movements, churches and philanthropic societies.

In 1833, Oberlin College in Ohio was opened, admitting boys and girls, black and white, on equal terms. It was the first college in the world of modern times to admit women, but as the feeling of hostility against Negro rights was even more intense than that against women's rights, the advantage won was lightly regarded by the nation. The Negroes, too, shared the common view concerning women, and when colored students unfitted to enter the college were organized into preparatory classes they rebelled against being taught by Lucy Stone, one of the earliest students. After being persuaded that it would be better to receive education from a woman than not to have it at all, they resigned themselves to destiny and became eventually her loyal supporters, even saving her at one time from the savage threats of a mob.

Two courageous and remarkable women, the Grimke 02214sisters of South Carolina, had freed their slaves in 1828 and gone North. They began speaking publicly in favor of abolition and were mobbed many times. They contended for the rights of women as well as of the slaves. Abby Kelly, “the most persecuted of all the women who labored in the anti-slavery cause,” also began speaking at about this time, and these three fearless women blazed a trail, through a fusillade of rotten eggs, brickbats and vile abuse, to an acknowledgment of the right of women to speak on public platforms. Independence Hall in Philadelphia was torn down and set on fire while Angelina Grimke was speaking in it in 1837, and mobs were frequent incidents in the career of the sisters, but they were unafraid. Many men and women were expelled from their churches for having listened to the pleadings of these women for justice to the Negro. The persecutions continued for years and only ceased with the triumphant acknowledgment by the public of the right of women to organize, speak and work for public causes.

As an outcome of these events the National Female Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1833. It is claimed as not only the first organized women's society but also as the first effort of women to affect a political question. In 1835 at a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, auxiliary to the National Society, from six to ten thousand men, many being “gentlemen of property and influence,” gathered about the hall to demand the adjournment of the meeting composed of fifteen to twenty women. The mayor appeared and ordered them to adjourn, as “he could not guarantee them protection any longer.” The society adjourned to the home of its president, and the mob turned upon William Lloyd Garrison, who was in his office on the same floor, carried him out and tore off his coat. The authorities were obliged to place him in jail for safety. What proportion of this intolerance was aimed at the anti-slavery movement and 02315what at the pro-woman movement, the mob itself probably did not know.

Women abolitionists were far from being intimidated by the public attitude. Eight hundred women in New York petitioned Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, a radical act at the time, as it was generally believed that the right to petition was confined to electors. John Quincy Adams, in his famous congressional campaign to establish the right of petition for all, introduced in 1837 several additional anti-slavery petitions from women. The National Female Anti-Slavery Convention met in New York that same year, the first representative body of women ever convened. Seventy-two delegates were present.

It was in 1837, too, that Catherine Beecher published an Essay on Slavery, with reference to the “Duty of American Females.” It was answered by a pastoral letter, issued by the general association of the Congregational Churches of Massachusetts, in which all attempts of women to do public work were bitterly condemned. The letter included the following: “We appreciate the unostentatious prayers and efforts of women in advancing the cause of religion at home and abroad and in leading religious inquirers to the pastor for instructions; but when she assumes the place and tone of man as a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary, we put ourselves in self-defense against her. She yields the power which God has given her for protection, and her character becomes unnatural. We say these things not to discourage proper influence against sin, but to secure such reformation as we believe is Scriptural.”

In that unveiled resentment that male protection of the female should be found unnecessary, in that threat of self-defense, lies the world-old revelation of man's naive need to appear strong in his own eyes, even if he can do so only by making woman appear weak!

The women doing public work at that time promptly took issue with the letter. Sarah Grimke, in spirited defense of her sex, said: “The business of men and women who are ordained by God to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ to a lost and perishing world is to lead souls to Christ and not to pastors for instruction.” John Greenleaf Whittier poured out his indignation, and Maria Weston Chapman her amusement in verse which traveled far. Sarah Grimke threw a bomb into the established views of society when in vigorous English she said: “If sewing societies, the fruits of whose industry are now expended in supporting and educating young men for the ministry, were to withdraw their contributions to these objects and give them where they are needed, to the advancement of their own sex in useful learning, the next generation might furnish sufficient proof that in intelligence and ability to master the whole circle of sciences, woman is not inferior to man, and instead of a sensible woman being regarded as she now is—a lapse of nature—they would be quite as common as sensible men.”

The controversy raised the Woman's Rights agitation into general notice and made it a burning question in all abolition societies, splitting some of them wide asunder.

The Men's and Women's Anti-Slavery Societies united in 1839, and a resolution endorsing the work of women in the anti-slavery field was passed, but left an embittered minority still unconvinced. Already many “tracts” written by women were in useful circulation, while the propagandistic effect of the public addresses of the increasing number of women speakers was unquestioned. The next year, it was proposed in the same society to name Abby Kelly on a committee, whereupon the defeated minority of the year before vented its wrath upon all women workers. No question of the value of women's work was raised, the opposition to their participation 02517in the work being based upon the claim that they were disobeying God's will. The women were sustained by a large majority, but two clergymen refused to serve upon the committee with a woman, and others left the Society.

In the same year (1840), the British Anti-Slavery Societies issued an invitation to all “friends of the slave” to join in a World's Anti-Slavery Convention to be held in London in July, and all American Anti-Slavery Societies were especially urged to send delegates. Eight women were among those named.* A stormy debate began in the very first session, in which it was vehemently declared that “all order would be at an end” if “promiscuous female representation be allowed” and “God's clear intention violated.” The debate will always stand as a landmark showing the world's opinion of the capacities and rights of women at that date. It ended by a vote to bar out the women delegates. William Lloyd Garrison and Nathaniel P. Rogers, arriving after the convention had taken action, refused to take their places as delegates and sat behind the bar with the rejected women.

Lucretia Mott, delegate, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the wife of a delegate, with indignation thoroughly aroused by this experience, agreed to call a convention upon their return to the United States, to be devoted exclusively to the Rights of Women. Thus the unwarranted rejection of properly accredited delegates by the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, solely because they were women, gave impulse to the organized demand of women the world around for justice in every sphere of action.

Meanwhile women in larger numbers and bolder fashion kept on engaging in public work, and in unexpected fields individual women kept on startling the 02618world by achievements generally believed impossible. Men of vision began to perceive that a powerful movement was under way. But few ventured at that date to predict either the direction it would take or its ultimate aim.

The elections of 1866 resulted in an overwhelming victory for the Republicans. The two-thirds vote of both Houses needed to over-ride any veto of the President had been returned to Congress, and the Northern Legislatures had sufficient majorities to insure the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. There still remained the rasping inconsistency which had put the North in the position of thrusting Negro suffrage on the South while it had taken no action on Negro suffrage itself, but the majority in Congress had been rendered bolder by its size and the emphatic expression of public confidence. Moreover, it had been further aroused by the disturbing reports of Negro persecution in the South. So it determined upon radical action. A bill was promptly introduced to confer suffrage upon the Negro men of the District of Columbia, with the sole qualification of one year's residence. Thereupon Senator Cowan of Pennsylvania, an extreme conservative and a Democrat, moved to strike out the word “male” from the bill, thus making the suffrage apply equally to women and Negroes.

It took three entire days of debate to dispose of Senator Cowan. He had invariably opposed change of any kind, and was accused of insincerity and a desire to hector the Republicans. He confessed that he believed in neither woman suffrage nor Negro suffrage, but “Negro suffrage will come,” said he, “because the majority here is strong enough to bring it,” but, “if I have 05547no reason to offer why a Negro man shall not vote, I have no reason to offer why a white woman shall not vote.” He asked Charles Sumner how he would answer the challenge to the United States Senate “when made by women of the highest intellect perhaps on the planet, and women who are determined, knowing their rights, to maintain them and to secure them.” How can such Senators explain their attitude, especially those “who desire to keep themselves in the front of the great army of humanity which is marching forward just as certainly to universal suffrage as to universal manhood suffrage”?

This gauntlet thrown down to the Republican leaders brought out a paradoxìcal debate, many supporters of woman suffrage stoutly opposing the amendment, and many opponents defending it. Former suffragists not only acknowledged the justice of the woman's claim to the vote but admitted as well that it was a proper reconstruction demand. They contended, however, that while woman and Negro suffrage were both just and logical, the nation would not accept two reforms at one time; therefore the question of suffrage must be divided and the first chance be given to the Negro. “This is the Negro's hour” became the universal response to the woman's appeal. Opponents of both woman and Negro suffrage, chiefly Democrats, played at friendliness and contended that white women were far better qualified to vote than Negro men. They held that if the suffrage must be extended at this time the ballot given to educated white women would offset the illiteracy of the black man, and therefore women should be given the first chance.

Republicans charged Democrats with insincerity and a desire to embarrass the party in power. Democrats in turn charged the Republican leaders with insincerity, since they seemed determined to put aside the woman suffrage cause which they had long advocated and to 05648substitute this newer proposition of Negro suffrage. Time proved that the diagnoses of motives made by the rival parties against each other were both correct. Both parties had carried the Civil War into politics and each was sparring for immediate party advantage. At the end of three lively days of discussion, the vote revealed nine Senators for the amendment and thirty-seven against, the vote in opposition including many convinced advocates of woman suffrage. It was the first vote taken in the United States Congress on the subject of woman suffrage. The historic date was December 13, 1866.

On December 14 (1866), the Congress conferred the suffrage upon the Negroes of the District of Columbia. President Johnson vetoed the bill, January 5, 1867, upon the ground that the voters of the District had rejected Negro suffrage at the polls by an almost unanimous vote.* On January 7 the Senate, and, on January 8, the House passed the bill over the veto.

The Congress followed this act by another, equally revelatory of Republican intentions toward Negro suffrage. On January 25, 1867, it passed a bill providing that “in the territories thereafter organized, the right to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Thus the Congress had extended Negro suffrage wherever it had jurisdiction so to do. This bill became law without the President's signature. Under its provisions Nebraska was admitted to statehood after agreeing that the franchise should be allowed to Negroes. It promptly ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and thereby became an historic bone of contention, the Republicans being immediately charged by the Democrats, and by members of their own party, with “gross irregularity” in their haste to secure another Legislature to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, then 05749pending. Whether the charge was true or false, the amendment was ratified by Nebraska, June 15, 1867.

Meanwhile the irritable political situation in Washington was growing still more acute. While the Republican party included a controlling majority of the people outside the South, there were ominous signs of a split, or at least damaging defections. Leaders began to sense the possibility that all that had been gained by the conflicts of war might be lost by the conflicts of peace, and the instinct of self-preservation pushed all other motives into the background. The lofty expositions of the principles of human justice, which, as pronounced by great leaders, had uplifted the nation a few months before, were heard no more. The Congress ceased to talk of the rights of man and occupied itself with plans for saving the party. Under the threat of disruption from within, the party deserted logic and consistency and drove forward with the power of political might. Senators Sumner, Stevens, Wade, Wilson and Pomeroy, woman suffrage advocates in the Congress, made peace with their own consciences by the agreement that the Negro's chance must come before all else. Outside Congress, Wendell Phillips, Gerrit Smith and Horace Greeley adopted and disseminated that view. Thinking is always a laborious and painful process for the average human being, and the great leaders had simplified it for him by giving him an answer for every query,—“the Negro's hour.”

From statesman to editor, from editor to people, the maxim passed, easy to remember, soothing to troubled consciences and comfortably postponing any necessity for further mental exertion. A successful maxim has ever been the most effective oil for troubled political waters. Political leaders stopped discussing woman suffrage; abolitionists declined further aid; political papers stopped publishing suffrage letters; editorials ceased; and in Congress former friends either withheld 05850petitions for woman suffrage or dishonestly introduced them as petitions for universal suffrage which, in the parlance of Congress at the time, meant Negro suffrage. Abolitionists like Gerrit Smith, who had always decried mistaking policy for principle, now refused to sign a petition to the Constitutional Convention of New York urging that in the extension of suffrage no distinction between men and women be made. Horace Greeley pointed out to the women: “This is a critical period for the Republican party and the Nation. It would be wise and magnanimous in you to hold your claims, though just and imperative I grant, in abeyance until the Negro is safe beyond peradventure, and your turn will come next.”

The women replied: “No, no, this is the time to press the women's claim; we have stood with the black man in the constitution for half a century and it is fitting that we should pass through the same door now opened to his political freedom.” “Well,” said Mr. Greeley, “if you persevere in your present plan, you need depend on no further help from me or the Tribune.” At that moment, the national political leaders had definitely turned their backs upon woman suffrage and were devoting all their energies to the first division of the suffrage question, the enfranchisement of the Negro. The women, surprised and grieved as they certainly were, did not yet comprehend what had happened. Miss Anthony said at this time: “Some think this is a harvest time for the black man and seed-sowing time for women; others, with whom I agree, think we have been sowing the seed of individual rights, the foundation idea of a republic for the last century, and that this is the harvest time for all citizens who pay taxes, obey the laws and are loyal to the Government.” The great party leaders had given the women staunch promises that their turn would come next, and although the latter keenly felt the humiliation of this 05951discrimination, they still believed in the promises and trusted the leaders who made them.

So, when the doors of Congress closed, suffrage leaders, discomfited but still undaunted, turned with brave hopes to New York and Kansas which offered fields for immediate work. In New York, Negroes owning $250 worth of property had long been permitted to vote and as Negro suffrage was no novelty in the State, New York was expected to lead in the movement for their full enfranchisement.

Although all the referenda on Negro suffrage had failed, party leaders believed that the great State of New York would give a fresh impulse to the proposed change, and therefore the Constitutional Convention of the State was watched by anxious men in all parts of the country. The New York Legislature had promptly ratified the Fourteenth Amendment upon the convening of the Legislature in January, 1867, which added strength to their expectations.

The woman suffragists were filled with as urgent a hope. On January 23, Mrs. Stanton by arrangement appeared before the crowded Assembly chamber in Albany where she made a masterly plea on behalf of allowing women to vote for delegates to the Constitutional Convention, basing her argument upon the precedents already established by the State. The Legislatures of 1801 and 1821 had each extended the right to vote for delegates to the Constitutional Convention of those years to all disfranchised classes of men. They had “swept away property qualifications and color barriers” upon the principle that constitutions must emanate from and be representative of all the people. Mrs. Stanton begged the Legislature to continue that precedent in the provision about to be enacted for the election of delegates. “Your laws degrade rather than exalt women; your customs cripple rather than free; your system of taxation is alike ungenerous and unjust. Just imagine the motley 06052crew from the ten thousand dens of poverty and vice in our large cities, limping, raving, cringing, staggering up to the polls, while the loyal mothers of a million soldiers whose bones lie bleaching on every Southern plain stand outside, sad and silent witnesses of this wholesale desecration of republican institutions.”

Logical, eloquent, soul-stirring was that marvelous address. The legislators afterwards declared that no such complete and unanswerable argument had been heard in the Capitol for many a year, but their answer was, “The time is not ripe for woman suffrage; this is the Negro's hour.” A resolution to give women the vote for delegates to the Constitutional Convention was promptly introduced, but only nine members voted in its favor.

Meanwhile an active woman suffrage campaign had been in progress for some months in all parts of the state. Committees had been formed, meetings had been held and petitions had been circulated. From the first, the women workers met the maxim “this is the Negro's hour” at every turn. Clergymen, newspapers, abolitionists, Republicans, who once favored woman suffrage and still professed to do so, refused to help and repeated the wellnigh universal aphorism. Not a letter came to the suffrage headquarters that did not recount experience with advocates of the “Negro's Hour” and the refusal of many suffragists to co-operate with any campaign for woman suffrage until the Negroes were enfranchised.

The Constitutional Convention met on June 1, 1867. The first petition presented was for woman suffrage, and introduced by George William Curtis. Every day the petitions for woman suffrage poured in until the total of signatures was 28,000, a remarkable demand for those days. Horace Greeley was chairman of the Elections Committee. Seven days before the convention opened, he had written editorially in the Tribune another endorsement of the principle of woman suffrage and predicted victory in Kansas. But he, it will be recalled, was among 06153those who were willing to sacrifice the principle of woman suffrage to the expediency of the Negro's Hour.

On June 28, Mr. Greeley, as chairman, rendered the report for the Elections Committee. Just before he arose, suffrage petitions were presented, a few for Negro suffrage but many for woman suffrage. By request of the women the last to be handed in was presented by George William Curtis. It was a petition from Mrs. Horace Greeley and three hundred other women of Westchester County. Mr. Greeley was visibly embarrassed and irritated. His report recommended universal manhood suffrage for blacks and whites. It included the following:

“Your committee does not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to women. However defensible in theory, we are satisfied that public sentiment does not demand and would not sustain an innovation so revolutionary and sweeping, so openly at war with a distribution of duties and functions between the sexes as venerable and pervading as Government itself.... Nor have we seen fit to propose the enfranchisement of boys above the age of 18 years.”

As no one had made a suggestion that boys be enfranchised, while thousands of the best known men and women of the State had petitioned for woman suffrage, the allusion to boys was received as an additional and unnecessary offense.

Although the subject of woman suffrage was debated several times, the convention refused to submit an amendment to give the voters of the State an opportunity to express their opinions upon it, but, acting under party instructions, it submitted a Negro suffrage amendment. The friends of woman suffrage in the New York Convention admitted that a majority of women might not want the vote but declared that proportionately many more women than Negroes were asking for the suffrage. The opponents as frankly acknowledged the truth of this 06254assertion, but with shrugs of the shoulder closed the debate with the finality,—this is “the Negro's hour.”

The Negro suffrage amendment, though clear of any entanglements with woman suffrage and though supported by the urgent influence of the party in power, was lost at the election.*

With the door closed to further action in New York, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony hastened to Kansas where the Republican Legislature of 1867 by a large majority had submitted two State constitutional amendments, one for woman suffrage and one for Negro suffrage. This was the first referendum for woman suffrage in the world, and the hearts of the women leaders were again light with hope and anticipation. Lucy Stone and her husband, Henry B. Blackwell, had already been at work in the State for some months. They had sent optimistic telegrams to the annual national suffrage convention in May predicting victory, and the convention raised a special fund to aid the campaign. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, writing about the campaign afterwards, said:

“With no greater faith did crusaders of old seize their shields and start on their perilous journey to wrest from the infidel the holy sepulcher, than did these defenders of a sacred principle enter Kansas and with hope sublime consecrate themselves to labor for woman's freedom; to roll off her soul the mountains of sorrow and superstition that had held her in bondage to false creeds and codes and customs for centuries. There was a solemn earnestness in the speeches of all who labored in that campaign. Each heart was thrilled with the thought that the youngest civilization in the world was about to establish a government based on the divine idea—the equality of mankind.”

They journeyed westward confident of victory, for the amendment was a Republican measure sponsored by a Republican Governor and advocated by the leaders of the party in Kansas and as they believed in the nation. The New York Tribune, with Horace Greeley at its head, the Independent, edited by Theodore Tilton, and the Anti-Slavery Standard, edited by Wendell Phillips, all circulated widely in the State, and their support was confidently expected. Fourteen of the twenty papers in the State were already supporting the amendment; why should they not have been lighthearted?

Alas! they were to see the Sumner episode in Congress paralleled again and again. Men who had stood shoulder to shoulder with the women leaders in their convention before the war when the women were serving men's causes, men who had earnestly and eloquently espoused in return the woman's cause when it was in a purely academic stage, now at the first opportunity to put theory into practice boldly chided the women for their selfish intrusion upon this, “the Negro's Hour.” The eastern papers upon which they had depended were stolidly silent.

When all was over Mrs. Stanton said:— “The editors of the New York Tribune (Greeley) and the Independent (Tilton) can never know how wistfully from day to day their papers were searched for some inspiring editorial on the woman's amendment, but naught was there; there were no words of hope and encouragement, no eloquent letters from an Eastern man that could be read to the people; all were silent. Yet these two papers, extensively taken all over Kansas, had they been as true to woman as to the Negro, could have revolutionized the State. But with arms folded, Horace Greeley, George William Curtis, Theodore Tilton, Henry Ward Beecher, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglas, all calmly watched the struggle from afar, and when defeat came to 06456both propositions, no consoling words were offered for the woman's loss, but the women who spoke in the campaign were reproached for having ‘killed Negro suffrage.’” Mrs. Stanton testified further that the loss of friends and sympathy just when they were most needed was the hardest experience the suffragists had yet been called upon to bear. Again and again to the very end of the suffrage campaign half a century later this same history repeated itself, for human nature is timid and looks out upon the world through small windows.

The women had expected stalwart help from Republicans and Abolitionists in Kansas. They found that Eastern Republicans had urged the Central Committee to do its utmost for Negro suffrage, which was a party measure although it had not been endorsed in a national platform, and not to entangle itself in the “woman question.” The State Central Committee had been called by its chairman, T. H. Drenning. It had issued an address to voters on behalf of Negro suffrage but had said nothing about woman suffrage. It had summoned ten Republicans who were known opponents of woman suffrage and engaged them to canvass the State for Negro suffrage, permitting them “to express their own sentiments on other questions.” The Committee had taken pains to summon no Republicans who advocated woman suffrage, although such Republicans were numerous and the list included as gifted speakers as those who were called.

The Republican campaign committee therefore officially sponsored and campaigned for the Negro suffrage amendment and as officially repudiated the woman suffrage amendment, which their own party Legislature had submitted. Negroes were encouraged to speak on their own behalf and were aroused against the woman's amendment as an impediment to the success of Negro suffrage. They commonly said that “the black man has the woman question hitched on him.”

Before election day the report had traveled eastward that the Republican managers had so incensed the early settlers that they were likely to lose the Negro amendment, whereupon a list of prominent Eastern Republicans issued an appeal to “Voters of the United States” urging them to apply the principles of the Declaration of Independence to women, but the appeal came too late. The news had reached Kansas that the commission appointed by the Michigan Legislature to consider Negro and woman suffrage had submitted Negro suffrage only, and that Horace Greeley, well known as an advocate of woman's rights before the war, had reported the recommendation from the Elections Committee of the New York Constitutional Convention that Negro suffrage should be submitted to the voters but not woman suffrage. That the national party stood for Negro suffrage and not for woman suffrage was therefore accepted in Kansas.

The suffrage workers in the Kansas campaign were unanimous in their conviction that had the old time friends stood steadfast the woman suffrage amendment could have been won. As it was, it only fell behind the Negro amendment by one thousand votes, though the latter had been supported by the full party influence of the State and nation. Both were lost. The Republicans were dismayed and irritated that Negro suffrage had failed in the two States upon which they had most, depended; the Democrats were rasped by the entire reconstruction program; and white women were hurt by the apostas y of former friends and the failure of the party of which most, if not all of them, were supporters to uphold the principle of equality and justice.

The nation had receded from the exalted unity of sympathy which marks any war period, and public thought had reached that chaotically distrustful, suspicious and divided state which accompanies any reconstruction period.

In the matter of Negro suffrage the Congress was not, however, to be deflected from its purpose of completing the ratification of the 14th Amendment, although completing it meant the coercion of at least four of the seceding Southern States, all of whom save Tennessee had rejected ratification. It is written in imperishable history that they were coerced, just the same, and that the Negro was temporarily enfranchised in the ten rebellious States by statutory act of Congress, the measure carrying the penalty that until this act was respected by the States and acknowledged in their constitutions, military supervision would be in force. The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted by no less than seven States under military compulsion and the threat that military supervision would continue until they did.

Thus it came about that under the threat of the bayonet, resolved upon by the majority party in Congress, the black man was enfranchised in the Southern States; under the instructions of the same party, the Congress declined to consider woman suffrage and the New York Constitutional Convention refused to the voters of the State their constitutional right to decide the question; while in Kansas that same party used its enormous influence to secure the adoption of Negro suffrage and the defeat of woman suffrage at the polls.

It was with troubled minds that Republican leaders faced the presidential election of 1868. Negro suffrage had already been temporarily imposed upon the South by the Military Reconstruction Act which also stipulated that the seceding States must include Negro male suffrage in their new constitutions. These acts were in operation and must be defended. Of all the referenda on Negro suffrage in the North, none had been won.* Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts had warned his party in January that the insistence upon Negro suffrage had cost a quarter of a million votes. Similar expressions of doubt were common. The Fourteenth Amendment was still pending, waiting for five more ratifications. These were certain to be supplied and were in fact supplied by the States reconstructed under military supervision.

On July 28 the Legislatures of Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia having ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, it was proclaimed. (Mississippi and Texas ratified later.) While the Military Reconstruction Act had declared that military governments should continue in control of the South until those States had adopted a constitution with Negro suffrage in them, the Fourteenth Amendment seemed to 06860speak in a softer tone and to say to the South: take your choice, grant suffrage to your male Negroes or lose a portion of your representation in Congress. The harmonizing of these two acts required explanation not easy to make.

Speaking of the general sentiment concerning Negro suffrage at this period, James G. Blaine commented as follows:

“Political leaders with few exceptions shunned the issue (suffrage) preferring to wait until public sentiment should become more pronounced in favor of so radical a movement. But a large number of thinking people who gave more heed to the absolute right of the question than to its political expediency could not see how with consistency, or even with good conscience and common sense, the Republican party could refrain from calling to its aid the only large mass of persons in the South whose loyalty could be implicitly trusted. To their apprehension it seemed little less than an absurdity to proceed with a plan of reconstruction which would practically leave the State Governments of the South under the control of the same men that brought on the Civil War.”

The Republican Convention, meeting in Chicago in May, 1868, had unanimously nominated General Ulysses S. Grant. The platform included a plank dealing with the question of suffrage. “The guarantee of Congress of equal suffrage to all loyal men of the South (meaning Negroes) was demanded by every consideration of public safety, of gratitude, and of justice, and must be maintained; while the question of suffrage in all the loyal States properly belongs to the people of those States.”

The Democratic Convention meeting in New York in July, 1868, had declared that “The privilege and trust of suffrage belong to the several States.” The real difference in these platforms hinged on the fact that Republicans were regarding the seceding States as conquered 06961provinces and as such subject to a federal control of suffrage not imposed on loyal States.

In an old diary kept by Miss Anthony one finds this entry under date of January 1, 1868: “All the old friends, with scarce an exception, are sure we are wrong. Only time can tell, but I believe we are right.”*

There were two reasons for this expression of doubt and anxiety. First, many of the friends with whom the suffragists had worked side by side before and during the war, with no differences of opinion as to policy, had now not only deserted the ranks of woman suffrage workers but were also engaged in bitterly denouncing the women for not repudiating their own cause. Second, the suffragists now had a paper of their own, the Revolution, and it was causing a new outbreak of hostility from old friends.

George Francis Train, a wealthy and eccentric Democrat, had volunteered as a helper in the Kansas campaign and had stirred up much irritation among Republicans by his witty and pungent comparisons of the relative qualifications for the vote of white women and black men. One day he had asked Miss Anthony what would give the woman's cause most aid, and she had answered —a paper. That night he announced upon the platform, without further consultation with her, that when the Kansas campaign was over there would be a woman suffrage paper with Miss Anthony as manager, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury as editors. Its name would be the Revolution; its motto “Men, their rights, nothing more; women, their rights, nothing less.”

With Mr. Train and David M. Mellis, financial editor of the New York World, as financial backers, the paper appeared on January 8, 1868. It was the first paper of national scope the movement had had. Challenging the 07062sincerity of both political parties in their attitude on suffrage and advocating Negro suffrage when and if included with woman suffrage in the extension of universal suffrage in many a brilliant editorial, it became at once a power in the political field. In the words of Mrs. Stanton: “Some denounced it, some ridiculed it, but all read it.”

Since the two men who had become its financial sponsors were Democrats, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony were charged with deserting the slave and enlisting with “copperheads and traitors.” The Revolution took the position held by the great leaders of the Republican party in 1865, but from which they had later receded. Its editorials were based upon the impregnable principles of human rights and its pleas were set forth in terms no logician could challenge. It proved terribly embarrassing to the peace of mind of those who admitted the justice and logic of woman suffrage, and who being unable to deny the accusations of inconsistency, retreated behind the defense, universal under similar circumstances, of attacking the accusers. In the tone of derision with which naughty boys had once screamed “Geography girl,” former comrades in reform now inconsistently hurled at these two consistent leaders the word Democrat, a term of opprobrium to all loyal citizens at that time.

The Revolution held fast to the position it had assumed. Upon one occasion it said: “Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips with one consent bid the women of the nation stand aside and behold the salvation of the Negro. Wendell Phillips says: ‘One idea for a generation, to come up in the order of their importance. First, Negro suffrage, then temperance, then the eight-hour movement, then woman suffrage.’ Three generations hence, woman suffrage will be in order. What an insult to the women who have labored thirty years for the emancipation of the slave 07163now, when he is their political equal, to propose to lift him over their heads.”

Upon another date it said:

“Because we make a higher demand than either Republicans or Abolitionists, they in self-defense revenged themselves by calling us Democrats; just as the church at the time of its apathy on the slavery question revenged the goading of Abolitionists by calling them infidels. If claiming the right of suffrage for every citizen, male and female, black and white, a platform far above that occupied by Republicans or Abolitionists today, is to be a Democrat then we glory in the name, but we have not so understood the policy of modern Democracy.”

The American Equal Rights Association held its annual meeting in New York in May, 1868. Lucretia Mott, its president, was detained at home by illness in her family; Elizabeth Cady Stanton was vice-president. So vindictive had the feeling of Abolitionists become toward Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, that Thomas Wentworth Higginson attempted to persuade them that Mrs. Stanton, whose official duty it was to call the meeting to order, should give way to another. Miss Anthony would not yield this point and Mrs. Stanton presided over the convention. The public meetings of the convention were as crowded as ever, the speeches as eloquent, but a spirit of dissension never before present prevailed, owing to the determination of the men advocates of woman suffrage to compel the women to admit the wisdom of all working for Negro suffrage at that time, let woman suffrage come when and if it would. The slightest hint that the Fourteenth Amendment was not a perfect solution of reconstruction problems brought forth hisses.

The convention, however, did not surrender to these attacks but made plans to bombard Congress with more 07264petitions, this time for a woman suffrage constitutional amendment and for the inclusion of woman suffrage in the proposed revision of government in the District of Columbia.

A group of the more radical members organized a special committee which sent a memorial to the National Republican Convention, urging it to include a woman suffrage plank in its platform. Apparently it found its way into the mysterious oblivion which received so many similar pleas in after years.

During the convention, Theodore Tilton presented a resolution half jocularly requesting Miss Anthony to attend the Democratic convention as a delegate appointed by the American Equal Rights Association, and to secure in the Democratic platform a recognition of woman's rights to the elective franchise. The resolution was intended as a gentle gibe at the alleged Democratic leanings of women who would not postpone work for woman suffrage. Miss Anthony accepted the instruction as sincere and with Mrs. Stanton prepared a memorial to the Democratic convention.

The effect of this news upon the country was to harass the Republicans and disturb the Democrats. The Republicans were in absolute control of the political situation in the nation, yet many leaders feared for the permanency of this control, since the Republican attitude toward Negro and woman suffrage could not stand the test of reason. For the first time since 1860, Southern Democrats would sit with Northern Democrats in the coming convention. Many Northern Democrats had taken the attitude that if suffrage was to be given to illiterate Negro men, it should not be denied to educated white women. Would Southern Democrats support this position? Would the voters insist upon logic instead of expediency? Alarm that “abolition women should associate with copperhead enemies of the nation” to the extent of presenting them with a memorial was common. 07365The Democrats, unwilling to extend suffrage to any class, asked themselves equally disturbing questions, and the press found the incident a call for a surprising amount of editorial comment. The New York Herald said (July, 1868):

“The Democrats have a splendid opportunity to take the wind out of the Republican sails on womanhood suffrage against manhood suffrage and for white women especially as better qualified for an intelligent exercise of the suffrage than the thousands of black men just rescued from the ignorance of Negro slavery. The Democratic convention can turn the radical party out of doors upon this issue alone if only bold enough to take strong ground upon it.”

The Republicans were greatly relieved when the Democratic delegates, after hearing the memorial read by the Secretary,—with Miss Anthony seated upon the platform,—far from showing any sign of comprehending the opportunity pointed out by the Herald, received the petition with “yells, shrieks and demoniacal, deafening howls.”

Whether silent contempt, as shown by the Republicans, or audible contempt, as shown by the Democrats, is more damaging to a cause was a question women discussed through the next generation. They had numerous after experiences with both varieties of treatment.

Meanwhile the presidential campaign moved onward.

Francis Newton Thorpe* emphasizes the extension of the suffrage to the Negro as the great political issue of the campaign. Braxton † says that “Negro suffrage for the South was a paramount issue.” While John Mabry Matthews in his history of the Fifteenth Amendment takes the position that Negro suffrage, as the subject of a 07466possible Fifteenth Amendment, was not recognized as a campaign issue at all.*

James G. Blaine throws a strong light upon these three contradictory statements.† “The evasive and discreditable position in regard to suffrage taken by the National Republican Convention was keenly felt and appreciated by the members of the party when subjected to popular discussion. There was something so obviously unfair and unmanly in the proposition to impose Negro suffrage on the Southern States by national power, and at the same time to leave the Northern States free to decide the question for themselves, that the Republicans became heartily ashamed of it long before the political canvass had closed.”

Even when there is no deliberate intent to deceive, it is inevitable, owing to the enormous size of the United States and its division into States each of which has its own political point of view, that party policy, interpreted by a great number of campaign speeches, be expounded with varying meaning. The campaign of 1868 was no exception to this rule.

Speakers pressed the view in the East that the Negro needed and must have the vote for his own protection; in the Middle West, that those States, having very small colored populations, should enfranchise the Negro by referenda in order to support the policy of insistence upon Negro suffrage in the South; and assured the far West, where fear of Chinese domination was professed, that Negro suffrage was intended only for the South. In all parts of the country campaigners took the ground 07567phrased by Senator Carl Schurz of Missouri, “For Negroes, suffrage is of right, for rebels of grace.”

Throughout the campaign, the term “impartial suffrage” was employed to denote Negro suffrage. “Universal suffrage” could not be used as that would include women, and the frank words, “Negro suffrage” were offensive to many. “Impartial suffrage” had come into use to express the delicate discriminations intended, the inclusion in the electorate of Negroes and the exclusion of Northern white women and Southern white traitors. The word “impartial” could scarcely be construed by any known definition as explanatory of this unique political policy, and it therefore served to confuse rather than clarify the general understanding.

The fact that the Southern States had accepted the Fourteenth Amendment was announced, however, with a heartening assurance that political turmoil would now end, and this had more effect than any other point in the discussion. “The stoical submission of the South to the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment” was seized upon by its northern advocates as confirmation of the justice and wisdom of the measure,”* and the election closed in victory for the Republicans, with the national tension much relieved.

The Republican Congress, triumphantly re-elected, returned to Washington determined to forget all inconsistencies and to make Negro suffrage secure in the South by further action. Many proposals were made and debated and the entire subject of suffrage became again a consideration of Congress.

The first move toward insuring suffrage to the Negro by means of another federal amendment was made by Senator Pomeroy of Kansas in December, 1868. His proposal based the suffrage on citizenship, thus including women. George W. Julian of Indiana introduced a similar 07668amendment in the House; also three other bills, one to give the vote to women in the District of Columbia, another to grant it to women in the territories, and later one to give it to the women of Utah. The first two of these bills followed the precise lines taken by the Congress relative to the Negro.

While Congress was making ready to submit a 15th amendment, the first suffrage convention held in Washington took place in January, 1869. A new feature at women's rights conventions was the attendance of several colored men who were given the opportunity of free speech. All denounced the women for jeopardizing the black man's chances for the vote and one, standing by the side of that saintly superwoman, Lucretia Mott, presiding officer, declared that “God intended the male should dominate the female everywhere.” Abolitionists too were there to defend the black man's prior claim and the spirited debate ran on for many hours, the women contending that it was never expedient to deny justice, and white and black men uniting in the declaration that justice in this particular case must yield to expediency.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton made another masterly speech which incidentally expressed the sentiments of suffragists in regard to the proposed Fifteenth Amendment. Said she:—

“While poets and philosophers, statesmen and men of science are all alike pointing to women as the new hope for the redemption of the race, shall the freest Government on the earth be the first to establish an aristocracy based on sex alone? to exalt ignorance above education, vice above virtue, brutality and barbarism above refinement and religion? Not since God first called light out of darkness and order out of chaos, was there ever made so base a proposition as ‘manhood suffrage’ in this American Republic, after all the discussions on human rights in the last century. . . . In our Southern States women were not humiliated in seeing their coachmen, 07769gardeners, and waiters go to the polls to legislate for them; but here in this boasted Northern civilization women of wealth and education who pay taxes and obey the laws, who in morals and intelligence are the peers of their proudest rulers, are thrust outside the pale of political consideration with minors, paupers, lunatics, traitors and idiots, with those guilty of bribery, larceny and infamous crimes.”

The first Congressional Hearing ever secured for suffrage followed this convention. Mrs. Stanton addressed the District Committee of the Senate with women representatives of nineteen States at her back in a powerful plea to save the women of the District from being debarred from the exercise of their right of suffrage.

In and out of the Congress the debate concerning the further extension of suffrage continued at white heat. President Grant recommended the ratification of the Negro suffrage amendment in his inaugural address, in March, 1869, saying: “The question of suffrage is one which is likely to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the nation are excluded from its privileges in any State. It seems to me very desirable that this question should be settled now.” Commenting privately upon the political situation he said, however: * “I could never have believed that I should favor giving Negroes the right to vote but that seems to be the only solution of our difficulties.” Petitions poured in from many States to refer the question to referendum or to submit it to conventions called for the purpose.

Throughout the angry contentions over Negro suffrage, the women quoted often the well-known suffrage letter of the martyred Lincoln. His influence lay over the country like the spirit of a benediction, but although the letter helped the women's cause, it rasped the Republicans. Lincoln's letter read as follows:

“New Salem, June 13, 1836.

“To the Editor of the ‘Journal’:

“In your paper of last Saturday I see a communication over the signature of ‘Many Voters,’ in which the candidates who are announced in the ‘Journal’ are called upon to ‘show their hands.’ Agreed. Here's mine. . . .

“I go for all sharing the privileges of the Government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females.

“A. Lincoln.”

The Fifteenth Amendment was submitted on February 27, 1869.* Whereupon the phrase “The Negro's Hour,” on all tongues from 1865 to 1868, was cast aside and immediately forgotten. In its place there came a new slogan, “A Political Necessity,” which served as effectively to explain the inexplicable as its predecessor; under its suggestion loyal voters were cautiously led to overlook the fact that the amendment was not only in direct contradiction to the suffrage plank in the platform by which the Republicans had been charged with national power, but also to the solemn pledges made by campaigners in the West. As has been shown above, the Republican platform had firmly relegated all authority for Negro suffrage to the States, with the exception of those recently in rebellion, and had not mentioned women at all. Yet out of the maze of politics, with no emphatic change of public opinion, the proposed Fifteenth Amendment had emerged as a “political necessity” with a united party behind it. And so carefully had the preparations 07971been made that eleven States ratified the amendment within the first month.

On March 15, 1869, Mr. Julian of Indiana introduced a Sixteenth Amendment which copied the phraseology of the Fifteenth Amendment and substituted “sex” for “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” The women, of course, were back of this amendment, which was a federal woman suffrage amendment; but though supported by a ceaseless succession of petitions and an unanswerable plea, it was utterly ignored. The congressional friends who had introduced the suffrage bills, Senators Pomeroy of Kansas and Wilson of Iowa, and Mr. Julian of the House, were all regarded as “irregular” by the party majority, which had decided that Negro suffrage, superseding all other considerations, had become an imperative “political necessity.”

The Fifteenth Amendment made the rounds of the Legislatures in a year and a month and was proclaimed as ratified by the necessary three-fourths of the States on March 30, 1870. The States of California, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Oregon and Tennessee, having gone Democratic, rejected the amendment. The State of New Jersey ratified subsequent to the Proclamation by the Secretary of State. The ten reconstructed States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, where Negroes, carpet-baggers and a minority of loyal Southern men directed the government, are counted in the list of ratifying States.

New York ratified in a Republican Legislature April 14, 1869, and a Democratic Legislature the following year withdrew her consent, January 5, 1870. The Democratic Legislature of Ohio rejected the amendment, May 4, 1869, and a Republican Legislature ratified it, January 27, 1870. The federal Secretary of State ruled that a State once ratifying an amendment could not reverse 08072its action and reject it, but that a State rejecting an amendment could reverse its decision and ratify it. The ratifications of both States were, therefore, counted in the total. These points were never reviewed by the Supreme Court.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments had been submitted by Congress and ratified by a strictly party vote, the Republicans voting solidly for them and the Democrats against them. With the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, the United States became the first country in the world to elevate all men to the sovereignty of voting citizenship. In all other countries there were certain classes of men excluded with the women. The discrimination had been advertised and emphasized by the Fourteenth Amendment and its triply reiterated adjective “male.” This political degradation put upon women would have been less humiliating had there been promise of relief, but the prediction of Mr. Beecher was completely realized; the public mind had indeed “shut up altogether.”

Appeals to party leaders who had faithfully pledged their help to women when the Negro's hour should have passed fell upon deaf ears and resisting minds. Many Republicans were disturbed by the realization that the reconstruction measures had violated logic, justice, consistency and common sense. They were irritated by the fact that these measures had not brought peace and stability, but it was too late to reconsider, too late to be logical, and, obeying a psychological rule, they began to hate woman suffrage and woman suffragists,—incidentally the occasion of the self-accusation of their own consciences. In the South, an antipathy toward the Negro race as the cause of the Southern humiliation, which was very different from the pre-war variety, was manifesting itself in a new and portentous form. The North had enfranchised the Negro the South had capitulated in form, but the sheeted Ku Klux Klan, riding by 08173night, had established a reign of terror over the ignorant and superstitious freedmen compared to which their former slavery was comparative freedom. The political future looked dark and troubled. The moral courage of statesmen, but recently contending in exalted phrase for human liberty and equal rights for all, had utterly surrendered to the politician's eternal plea of expediency.

Once Mrs. Stanton, lecturing in California, met Senator Bingham of Ohio stumping the State on behalf of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments which that State had declined to ratify. Mrs. Stanton gently charged him with insincerity, since every argument he was presenting applied equally to woman suffrage. “With a cynical smile he replied that he was not the puppet of logic but the slave of practical politics.”*

Victimized by “practical politics” and its slaves, the politicians, suffragists pushed forward, just the same, with their national and state programs.

The enfranchisement of the Negro did not have the effect upon the politics of the nation that was expected.

General Grant had been elected in 1868 with a “handsome majority” but, said Mr. Blaine:*

“An analysis of the vote gave food for serious reflection. Six of the reconstructed States gave Grant their electoral vote. Georgia and Louisiana gave theirs to Seymour, the Democratic candidate, and it was believed that this had happened through fraud and intimidation of the Negro. If these conditions had obtained in all the States and Mr. Seymour had received the electoral vote of the solid South, he would, in connection with the vote he received in the North, have had a majority over General Grant in the Electoral College.”

Many Southern men had fought in the Northern army, risking their lives for the cause of the Union and had proved effective leaders of the Negroes in the first days of reconstruction, but by degrees when Negro suffrage became the test of loyalty the strongest of them deserted the Republican Party and joined the secessionists' standard. The remnants of the various political parties which had existed in the South before the war drew together under the banner of the Democratic party, whose watchword in that section was “white supremacy.” The so-called carpet-baggers from the North were driven out, intimidated, or their views modified. Few white men remained as leaders and the black 09587man was far too inexperienced to command his own forces.

The Fifteenth Amendment was proclaimed on March 30, 1870, and on May 31, 1870, the Congress passed what was familiarly known as the Force Bill in the effort to quiet southern disturbances, overthrow the Ku Klux Klan and insure Republican control over the South. The bill “was based upon the idea that until the colored man should have reached the point at which he could compete on even terms with the white man, his undeveloped powers must be reinforced.”* “These Southern State governments proved a source of angry contention inside the Republican Party in the North,”† and the military supervision of Southern elections, with its need of continual defense was waxing more and more unpopular. The strong characters who had unceasingly striven for Negro rights were passing out, and new men, whose convictions had not been formed in the long and hard-fought abolition struggle, were less ardent. As once the “political necessity” of enfranchising the Negro “to save the party” had been urged, the advancing years brought forth talk of “unloading the Negro” in the interest of the salvation of the same party. The Pacific Coast continued to be alarmed by the possibility of Chinese political domination ‡ and this state of the public mind in that section was aggravated by the presence of large numbers of Southern men who, lured by the greater promise of the undeveloped resources of the West, had migrated there after the war.

The Negro vote proved annoying to Republicans in other ways. The gentleman's game of battling on the floor of presidential conventions for the nomination of favorite candidates lost much of its interest and thrill in 09688the presence of full delegations from all the Southern States, mostly colored, few of whose members were competent to play their part on the plane of mental and ethical equality with other delegations. Their expenses were usually paid and they demanded favors not easy to confer. Candidates earliest in the field or with most money at their command had an unfair advantage which further increased the irritation. All in all, the Northern conscience became easier and less determined to protect the Negro in his right to vote. Negro suffrage had proved a load to carry instead of an added strength. It became odious to Northern Republicans to give military protection at elections to men the majority of whom could neither read nor understand; as odious to them as the intimidating Ku Klux methods had become to the better classes of the South. Any mention of further extensions of suffrage affected the average Republican politician with mental nausea.

Meanwhile, the hands of Northern suffragists were stretched across Mason and Dixon's line and accepted by Southern women, timidly at first, but after the lapse of twenty-five years with friendly loyalty to the common cause. “How I hate Susan B. Anthony,” exclaimed one Southern woman in 1895 to an astonished visiting suffragist from the North. “Why? Do you know her?” No, the lady had never seen her, but Susan B. Anthony was an Abolitionist, the Abolitionists had won the war, and had sent Sherman marching across Southern plantations, one of which had belonged to her father. The same Abolitionists had devised Negro suffrage and the Force Bill. Therefore all of them and all of their ideas were gall and wormwood to the South. Fearless Southern women in time, within the locality whose peculiar prejudices they knew and understood, waged unremitting warfare against these prejudices, and no stronger characters did the long struggle produce than those great-souled Southern suffragists. They had need to be great 09789of soul. As late as 1920, the average Southern Democrat was filled with explosive rage at any mention of woman suffrage. He would not and could not argue the question. His response to all appeals was a scornful, sputtering ejaculation, “Negro women!”

For years, Southern white women demonstrated by Census reports that, when enfranchised, white women would outnumber black men and women in all save two Southern States, yet the invariable answer was that of the Mississippi Senator, though less rudely given: “We are not afraid to maul a black man over the head if he dares to vote, but we can't treat women, even black women, that way. No, we'll allow no woman suffrage. It may be right, but we won't have it.” A Southern woman, pleading with a Congressional Committee for the submission of the Federal Suffrage Amendment in 1918, was publicly chided by a Congressman for having deserted the traditions and the political creed of her section.

As no action had ever been taken by the Republicans to enforce the penalty of loss of representation on account of the flagrant violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the State of Mississippi in 1890 called a constitutional convention for the frankly avowed purpose of restoring white supremacy. It accomplished the purpose by establishing an educational and poll tax qualification. No federal penalty being enforced, Louisiana called a convention in 1898, with the determination to go farther. She adopted all the Mississippi handicaps and added the “grandfather clause” which limited the vote to those who had it before the Civil War “and their legitimate descendants.” As the Republicans still took no action, other Southern States followed with constitutional conventions in quick succession, until in the “black district” the Negro was almost completely disfranchised. In after years the Supreme Court, upon an Oklahoma case, declared the 09890“grandfather clause” wholly unconstitutional, but to this day no political action has ever been taken to reduce Southern representation as provided by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Southern Democratic States disfranchised the Negro by as unconstitutional processes as the Republican Northern States had employed in enfranchising him. Whether the Negro, enfranchised a generation before his time, or the woman, enfranchised two generations after her time, suffered the greater injustice, it may take another century to demonstrate. Certainly both paid heavy penalties for the political blunders of the “white male.”

“The real reason behind the attitude of both Congress and the Courts” concerning the enforcement of the amendments, “is the apathetic tone of public opinion which is the final arbiter of the question. In the technical sense, the amendment is still a part of the supreme law of the land. But as a phenomenon of the social consciousness, a rule of conduct, no matter how authoritatively promulgated by the nation, if not supported by the force of public opinion, is already in process of repeal.”*

In the year 1872, the Republican Party suffered a split over financial problems. A convention of delegates calling themselves Liberals met in Cincinnati and nominated Horace Greeley for president. The women, led by Miss Anthony, were there to ask endorsement of woman suffrage, but although many of the old and true suffrage friends were delegates, they would not heed the appeal “to load the new party” with issues other than those which called it into being. The Republicans met in Philadelphia in June, anxious and distressed by the defection of the so-called liberals. They needed all the help possible and for the first time put a woman's plank in the platform—a plank that deserves to go down in 09991song and story as the ablest effort to say something and mean nothing that was ever written.

“The Republican party is mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to the cause of freedom; their admission to wider fields of usefulness is received with satisfaction; and the honest demands of any class of citizens for equal rights should be treated with respectful consideration.”

Suffragists spoke of it not as a plank, but as a splinter!

The Democrats, meeting in July, made no mention of women. A strong pressure was now put upon suffragists to throw all their forces into the Republican side of the balance and many did, believing with Henry Blackwell that the “recognition of 1872 would be endorsement in 1876.” The chairman of the National Republican Committee wired Miss Anthony to come to Washington, but as there was serious illness in her home she was unable to reach Washington until five days later, and then in response to a second telegram. Said the chairman:— “At the time we sent our first telegram we were panic-stricken, and had you come then you might have had what you pleased to carry out your plan of work among the women; but now the crisis has passed and we feel confident of success.”

The same change of front was soon noticeable in the press. “When it looked as if Greeley might be elected, the Republican newspapers were filled with appeals to the women, and the plank was magnified . . . but as the campaign progressed and the danger passed, it was almost wholly ignored by press and platform.”*

Horace Greeley was defeated and for 48 years the Republicans, with restored confidence, not needing women's help, made no further pronouncement concerning woman suffrage in a national platform.

At the annual woman suffrage convention of 1872, Miss Anthony led a lively discussion as to whether the 14th and 15th amendments* could be interpreted as extending the vote to women as well as to Negroes. Strong resolutions were adopted in favor of a declaratory act of Congress to affirm this interpretation. A hearing was granted before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony and Isabelle Beecher Hooker, on behalf of these resolutions, made arguments which could not have failed to leave conscientious Senators with disturbed peace of mind.

Many Senators, Representatives of Congress and eminent lawyers in all parts of the country interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment as securing the vote to Negroes and to women. The Attorney General of Nebraska ruled that women were voters under that amendment. In order to test this possibility, and acting under legal advice, women in several States, inspired by the action of their national leaders, attempted to register and vote in 1871 and 1872.† Usually their right either to register, or to vote after having registered, was denied by election inspectors, and the method pursued was to bring action against the inspectors for that refusal. Learned and able counsel volunteered in most instances to conduct the defense of the inspectors.

Four cases surpassed all others in importance, three drawing an opinion from the Federal Supreme Court. In chronological order these were:— (1) The case of seventy women in the District of Columbia appealing from the decision of the District Supreme Court, decided December, 1871, chief counsel Senator Matthew Carpenter of Wisconsin; (2) The case of Myra Bradwell, only indirectly bearing upon the subject but testing the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, appealing from the Supreme Court of Illinois which had denied her admission to the bar, decision given, December, 1872; (3) The case of Virginia L. Minor, appealing from the Supreme Court of Missouri, chief counsel Francis Minor, an eminently able lawyer of that State, decided October, 1874; and (4) The case of Susan B. Anthony and thirteen other women who, November, 1872, registered and voted in one ward in Rochester, New York. This case did not reach the Federal Supreme Court but attracted the widest comment of all the cases.

The tendency of judges and counsel to turn aside from the consideration of the legal points involved in these cases, in order to deliver lectures upon the proper sphere of women, was a noticeable feature common to all of them, and that prejudice seriously affected the judicial decision will be manifest to readers of the literature of the cases. Manifest, too, will be the muddle in which Court opinions left the Fourteenth Amendment. Even to this day it is doubtful if any exposition, explanation or interpretation of that amendment has been given which is capable of being clearly understood by an average American mind.

Said Albert G. Riddle, counsel for the women voters of the District of Columbia:

“Colored male citizens now vote constitutionally and rightfully, although the word ‘white’ stands as before in most of the State constitutions; and yet they vote in spite of it. Some 10294potent alembic has destroyed the force of that word. We are at once referred to the Fifteenth Amendment for a solution. The Fifteenth Amendment does not confer anything. It is a solemn mandate to all concerned not to deny this right which is clearly recognized as having existed before. . . . You see in a moment this does not confer anything. It uses no words of grant. . . . It expressly recognized, as an already existing fact, that the citizens of the United States have the right to vote. . . . It is absolutely certain that colored male citizens do not claim their admitted right to vote from the Fifteenth Amendment. Whence did they derive it? From the Fourteenth Amendment? If so, then did women acquire it by the same amendment?”

Francis Minor, also counsel in the same case, picked up the argument at that point and carried it forward.

“Clearly, the Fifteenth Amendment does not confer any right of suffrage. Clearly, prior to the Fourteenth Amendment colored men had no right to vote. The Thirteenth Amendment gave them no such right. But between the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendments in some way or other, the colored man came into possession of this right of suffrage and the question is, where did he get it? If he did not get it under the Fourteenth Amendment, by what possible authority are they voting by hundreds of thousands? The legislative and constitutional provisions that prohibit their voting still remain unrepealed upon the statute books of many States, but yet they do vote. There is no way by which they legally can vote except by the operation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Chief Justice Cartter delivered the opinion of the Court, the main point being, “This clause (the first) of the Fourteenth Amendment (see page 41) does advance them (women) to full citizenship and clothes them with the capacity to become voters. The constitutional capability of becoming a voter created by this amendment lies dormant, as in the case of an infant, until made effective by legislative action.”

Judge Cartter turned aside from his opinion on the 10395legal points under consideration to discourse upon the failure of universal suffrage for men and by implication betrayed his own doubt of the wisdom of universal suffrage. The decision was quoted with ridicule in the press as meaning “that women were voters but had no right to vote.”

The most important phase of the Myra Bradwell case is the explicit evidence that popular opinion at the time so governed the views of the Supreme Court of Illinois and of the Federal Supreme Court as completely to control their verdict. The Illinois Court discoursed at great length upon the sphere of women and whether it would “promote justice to permit women to engage in trials at the bar.” Mrs. Bradwell's qualification was admitted but her petition was denied because she was not only a woman, but a married woman. Illinois denied to women the right to hold office, and to a married woman the right to make contracts. Mrs. Bradwell had pointed out that a woman, a married woman, under precisely the same conditions, had been admitted to the bar in Iowa, but this precedent fixed by a neighboring State made no impression upon the mental operations of either the Illinois or the Federal Supreme Courts, which were molded by older custom. Justice Miller rendered the judgment of the Federal Supreme Court, denying that “privileges and immunities” protected by the United States include the practice of law; and Justice Bradley, concurring, gave a further opinion in which he delivered a long address on the historic sphere of woman in which “man is or should be woman's protector and defender.”

The Minor case traveled somewhat farther. Francis Minor, Mrs. Virginia Minor's husband, joined with her in the appeal as required by the Missouri law, and served as chief counsel. Said he:

“While the Negro votes today in Missouri, there is not a syllable of affirmative legislation by the State conferring the 10496right upon him. Whence then does he derive it? There is but one reply. The Fourteenth Amendment conferred upon the Negro race in this country citizenship of the United States, and the ballot followed as an incident to that condition. Or to use the more forcible language of this Court in the Slaughter house cases (16 Wall, 71) ‘The Negro having by the Fourteenth Amendment been declared a citizen of the United States, is thus made a voter in every State of the Union.’ . . . If the Fourteenth Amendment does not secure the ballot to women, neither does it to the Negro; for it does not in terms confer the ballot upon any one.”

In summing up, Mr. Minor claimed that the plaintiff was entitled to any and all the “privileges and immunities” guaranteed to all citizens by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the elective franchise is a privilege of citizenship in the highest sense of the word.

The decision delivered by Chief Justice Waite was long and indefinite. The chief points were: “The constitution does not define privileges and immunities of citizens.” “The amendment did not add to the privileges and immunities of a citizen.” “No new voters were necessarily made by it.” “The constitution has not added the right of suffrage to the privileges and immunities of citizens.” Since “The constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone,” the constitution and laws of the several States which commit that trust to men alone “are not necessarily void.” “If suffrage was one of these privileges and immunities, why amend the constitution to prevent its being denied on account of race?”

Neither Judge nor Court has yet been able to point out in terms comprehensible to the average man on the street, wherein lay the “potent alembic” cited by Mr. Riddle in the District of Columbia case which had granted the vote to Negro men. The laws of no State had conferred the vote upon them. The Federal Supreme 10597Court before 1884, in all cases seeking interpretation of the two amendments, held that the constitution of the United States, including the new amendments, conferred the vote upon no one. If neither State nor federal constitutions nor laws had conferred the vote upon colored men, where did they get it? The military reconstruction act had given the Negro the vote in disloyal states, but that act did not apply to the loyal States and presumably was intended as a temporary measure. No other act of any kind had been passed.

Justice Miller in the case of ex parte Yarborough, in 1884, delivering the opinion of the Federal Supreme Court, declared:

“While it is true, as said in the Reese case, that the Fifteenth Amendment gave no affirmative right to the colored man to vote . . . yet it does substantially confer on the Negro the right to vote, and Congress has the power to protect and enforce that right.”*

In bewilderment, the public asked, “How may an amendment substantially confer a right when it does not confer it?” Just why the Congress, in which sat many of the ablest men of the nation, was unable or unwilling to write amendments which could be understood by those who read them is difficult of comprehension, but the explanation is undoubtedly to be found in the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was a compromise of many conflicting views.

A participant in the controversy, in writing its inner history, throws light upon the puzzling situation. He quotes Alexander Stevens, the father of the reconstruction measures and leader of the majority in the House of Representatives, as saying:

“Don't imagine that I sanction the shilly-shally, bungling thing that I shall have to report to the House tomorrow.”†

Replying to a protest following the public announcement of the provisions of the amendment, Mr. Stevens wrote:

“In the course of last week the members from New York, from Illinois and from Indiana, held, each separately, a caucus to consider whether equality of suffrage, present or prospective, ought to form a part of the Republican program for the coming canvass. They were afraid, so some of them told me, that if there was ‘a nigger in the woodpile’ at all (that was the phrase) it would be used against them as an electioneering handle, and some of them—hang their cowardice!—might lose their elections. By inconsiderable majorities each of these caucuses decided that Negro suffrage, in any shape, ought to be excluded from the platform; and they communicated these decisions to us. Our committee hadn't backbone enough to maintain its ground. Yesterday the vote on your plan was reconsidered, your amendment was laid on the table, and in the course of the next three hours we contrived to patch together—well, what you've read this morning.”*

The Fourteenth Amendment extends certain rights to the Negro, but not the suffrage. It merely threatens to cut down the representation of States which deny the vote to any male inhabitants. The Fifteenth Amendment declares in stern tones that the right to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude and gives the Congress power to enforce the provision.

It takes a careful reading of the long congressional debates on the subject to reveal the “potent alembic” that was challenged by Mr. Riddle as destroying the force of the word “white” as one of a voter's qualifications. It was politics. The National Republican party passed on to the State Republican parties an interpretation that was not written in the law: The Negro must 10799have the vote in the South to protect himself from the domination of white men. The Republican party must have the support of loyal men in the secession States if there is to be peace, and the loyal men are the Negroes. The right of the State to make its own suffrage laws shall be respected, and therefore no conferring of the vote upon the Negro shall be done by federal act. These amendments mean however that the Negro shall have the right to vote in your State. They do not confer the vote, they merely threaten you with penalties if you deny the vote.

Politics, therefore, put into the amendments the meaning not clear to the reader of the text, and over whose obscurity courts and lawyers tripped. The Negro voted by the authority of the federal law forbidding the States to deny him the right to do so, but not conferring the right upon him. The States accepted this political order and allowed him to vote, although no State law conferred the vote upon him. This strained attempt not to offend State's rights sensibilities, when considered in connection with the methods of ratification, including “the crack of the party whip” at the North and the threat of the bayonet at the South, offers a curious example of State's rights in theory and centralized autocracy in practice.

It was in connection with the controversy and confusion over the 14th and 15th Amendments, that one of the most spirited chapters of all suffrage history was enacted. It was the last and most noteworthy of the four cases enumerated above through which the women of that day tried to get into the electorate by way of the door opened by the 14th amendment. On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony and thirteen other women voted in a ward of Rochester, New York, in an effort to test the provisions of the amendments as applying to women. The Supreme Court of the nation had already passed upon the District of Columbia cases, and the decision 108100had not only aroused keen criticism and comment but many lawyers charged the Court with prejudice and failure to meet squarely the question involved. Other cases were pending and Rochester gave a fresh impulse to the popular discussion as to what the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments really meant.

At this juncture politics, directed by Washington, took a hand in the Rochester proceedings. A few days after Miss Anthony's vote, a Deputy United States Marshal appeared at the various houses of the Rochester women voters and arrested them in the name of the United States government, upon the criminal charge of “having voted without having a lawful right to vote.” Authority for the United States government to take charge of the alleged violation of State election laws was laboriously drawn from the so-called Ku Klux Klan law which had been passed by Congress to prevent disfranchised rebels from exercising the suffrage before being pardoned.The women were gathered, fitly enough, in the same office where before the war fugitive black men and women had been examined and returned to slavery. Bail of $500 each was ordered for their appearance at the Albany term of the United States District Court in January, 1873. Miss Anthony refused to give bail and petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, her petition being presented by Judge Selden, one of the most eminent attorneys in the State of New York.*

On January 16 and 17, 1873, the annual national woman suffrage convention met in Washington. Miss Anthony named the possible methods of securing the vote for women as: by State constitutional amendments, to be adopted by electors at the polls, by a federal constitutional amendment to be adopted by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of the Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the State Legislatures, or, by taking “their 109101right under the Fourteenth Amendment.” She pointed out that court decisions permitting women to avail themselves of this right, or a declaratory act of Congress, were necessary. “The vaults in yonder Capitol,” said she, “hold the petitions of 100,000 women for a declaratory act; and the calendars of our courts show that many women are already testing their right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. I stand here under indictment for having exercised my right as a citizen to vote at the last election, and by a fiction of the law I am now in custody and not a free person.”

The convention passed resolutions declaring its confidence that the Fourteenth Amendment enfranchised women as certainly as Negroes, and again called upon Congress for a Declaratory Act.

Miss Anthony hastened from Washington to Albany, where her petition was denied by United States District Judge N. K. Hall and her bail increased to $1,000 with orders for appearance at the May term in Rochester. This was in January. Again she refused to give bail, but Judge Selden, her counsel, against her wishes and without her knowledge, went on her bond. When she learned that by this fact “she had lost her chance of getting her case before the Supreme Court by writ of habeas corpus, she tried to have the bond cancelled but to her chagrin her counsel pronounced this impossible.”* Immediately after Judge Hall's decision, all the women and the three inspectors were indicted by a Grand Jury. Between the hearing before Judge Hall and his decision, Miss Anthony had time, accompanied by her counsel, to appear before the Commission on Amendments to the New York State Constitution, then sitting in Albany, and make a powerful plea to include woman suffrage in the proposed changes.

Before the May term of Court, Miss Anthony held a meeting in every post office district of her county (Monroe), 11010229 in number, speaking upon the subject, “Is it a crime for a United States citizen to vote?” The United States District Attorney, Richard Crowley, notified her that if she did not desist he would have the case moved to another county when the Court met, and made good his threat. Claiming that no jury could be drawn which might not be prejudiced in her favor, he asked and secured a change of venue to the United States District Court at Canandaigua, Ontario County, allowing just 22 days before the trial. The change was ordered on Friday, and on Monday she held her first meeting in Ontario County and followed it by 21 other meetings. Matilda Joslyn Gage came to her aid and held 16 meetings. When on June 17, 1873, the trial took place, the court room was filled by politicians, lawyers and prominent citizens, among them ex-President Fillmore and Judge Hall who had denied the writ of habeas corpus. The jury was sworn in, with Judge Ward Hunt presiding, United States District Attorney Crowley appearing for the United States government and Henry R. Selden and John Van Voorhis for the women voters.

Some hours were consumed in the arguments presented. The one point which stands out most conspicuously after the lapse of half a century was this statement of Judge Selden's:

“Miss Anthony believed and was advised that she had a right to vote under the provisions of the Federal Constitutional Amendments. She was advised as clearly that the question of her right could not be brought before the courts for trial without her voting or offering to vote. Her motives were pure and noble and carried no intent of fraud or crime. If by the laws of her country she shall be condemned a criminal for taking the only step by which it was possible to bring the great constitutional question of her right before the courts for adjudication, it adds another reason to those I have advanced to show that women need the ballot for their protection.”

When the last word had been spoken, those assembled were shocked to see the presiding Judge draw from his pocket a written opinion, clearly prepared before he had heard evidence or argument. He directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty, and when Judge Selden protested at this unwarranted act, he refused to have the jury polled and in the midst of the controversy discharged it!

The character of Judge Hunt's previously prepared opinion was equally astonishing. Said he: “Miss Anthony knew that she was a woman and that the constitution of this State prohibits her from voting.” Since Miss Anthony based her claim to a vote upon the fact that she was a citizen of the United States and upon the belief that the vote was included among the “privileges and immunities” which the Fourteenth Amendment, as a part of the federal constitution, forbade any State to abridge, this point of view begged the whole question. Quite possibly this curious failure even to comprehend what the contention was about would not have been expressed had the Judge waited to hear the case before he wrote his opinion.

He further held that although she might have believed that she had the right to vote and voted in good faith, and that she had been advised that such right was hers, nevertheless she was guilty of a crime because she had had no legal right to a vote, the motive having no bearing upon the question.

There was widespread condemnation of Judge Hunt's conduct of the case, and none were more outspoken than some members of the jury who boldly declared that had they had the opportunity they would not have voted guilty. The Albany Law Journal, though scornfully disapproving woman suffrage, admitted that the Judge usurped power in taking the case from the jury, and editorial discussion of the question “Can a judge direct a verdict of guilty” was frequent. Those who had sympathy 112104neither with woman suffrage nor the effort to test the Fourteenth Amendment, pronounced Judge Hunt's assumption of authority a dangerous and menacing threat to free government.

A motion for a new trial was denied. A fine of $100 and the costs of the prosecution were the penalties imposed. Miss Anthony responded with the declaration that she would never pay a penny of the unjust penalty, whereupon Judge Hunt said that the Court would not order her committed until the fine was paid, and although this procedure was contrary to the custom and the law, the fine was neither paid nor remitted.

Had the Judge demanded the penalty or imprisonment, Miss Anthony would have gone to prison and could then have taken her case directly to the Supreme Court of the United States by writ of habeas corpus. Lawyers claimed that the fact that she had been denied a trial by jury would have made her discharge certain. Had this case been permitted to find its way to the Supreme Court, or had the jury at Canandaigua been allowed to perform the ordinary function of jurymen, history might have been decisively changed.

The trial of the inspectors which followed attracted little attention by comparison, but it was in reality an even more unwarranted usurpation of authority. The inspectors served under the laws of New York and any failure to perform their duty in accordance with that law was clearly an offense against State, not national, law. Yet they were arrested by officers of the United States and tried by a Judge of the Federal Supreme Court for the crime of violating a New York law! The inspectors were found guilty, although it was made quite clear that they believed it to be their duty to accept the women's votes and that they acted in good faith and without criminal intent. This time the jury was permitted to act, although counsel was denied the privilege 113105&,of addressing it, and the judge virtually directed it to bring in a verdict of guilty, which it did.

In February, 1874, about nine months after their trial, the three inspectors were seized by the United States authorities and thrown into jail because they had not paid their fines. As was well known, they had been advised not to do so. Senator Sargent of California promptly presented a petition to President Grant who at once remitted their fines. They were, however, in jail a week, during which time the best of meals were furnished them by the fifteen women voters; hundreds of citizens called to pay their respects, and the entire city regarded the proceedings as a joke.

The press gibed at United States District Attorney Crowley unmercifully for prosecuting the young men and being afraid to attack the woman “who shrinks not from any of the terrors of the law,” but she was neither arrested nor approached again in reference to her fine. She was importuned to allow an appeal to be made to President Grant, for whom she had voted, to remit her fine, but this she refused to do. Instead, by the advice of Judge Selden she addressed an appeal from Judge Hunt's decision to Congress in her own name. Her petition was presented in the Senate by Senator Sargent of California, afterward Minister to Germany, January, 1874, and was referred to the Judiciary Committee, which through its chairman, Senator Edmunds of Vermont, asked to be discharged from consideration, as Congress had no authority to act.

Senator Matt H. Carpenter of Wisconsin, acknowledging that Congress could not remit the fine imposed, nor secure a new trial, yet condemned the injustice of the trial, denouncing it as without precedent, and called the attention of Congress to the need of an amended system of jurisprudence, since “a citizen may be tried, condemned and put to death by the erroneous judgment of a single judge, and no court can grant him relief or a 114106new trial.” In the House the petition was reported adversely by the Judiciary Committee, a letter being incorporated in the report from District Attorney Crowley urging the Committee “not to degrade a just judge and applaud a criminal.” As Judges Hall and Hunt and District Attorney Crowley were appointees of the Administration, political considerations assisted the committee in arriving at its conclusions.

Benjamin F. Butler, however, offered a minority report recommending that the prayer of the petitioner be granted. He too declared that she had had a mistrial, and though both Senator Carpenter and Mr. Butler had been careful not to accuse too boldly the motives or the qualifications of Judge Hunt, their subtle comments were recognized as a severe reproof.

Although the women failed to secure an opinion from the Federal Supreme Court that the Fourteenth Amendment included women under its provision concerning “the privileges and immunities of citizens,” the conviction remained with suffrage leaders and many able lawyers that the words of the law could be only so interpreted. Again and again in after years eminently qualified lawyers with briefs in hand begged suffragists to make further appeals to the Court for affirmation of their rights as set forth in the amendment, but the women knew that the “potent alembic” of politics would not be made to operate in their case, and they steadfastly refused to waste any more time in efforts to get favorable judicial decisions to support their claim to the suffrage under the provisions of that amendment.

Three years were consumed in the process of writing the word male into the Federal Constitution, two more in completing the enfranchisement of the Negro. Both were strictly Republican party measures and were achieved by the combined political force of a majority party and the military power of the nation. The demand to include women in any further extension of the suffrage, although supported at the time by men of great influence in party and nation, was effectually evaded all along the way by the proposal to “let the women wait—this is the Negro's hour,—the woman's hour will come.”

To get the word male in effect out of the constitution cost the women of the country fifty-two years of pauseless campaign thereafter. During that time they were forced to conduct fifty-six campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to urge Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 campaigns to induce State constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into State constitutions; 277 campaigns to persuade State party conventions to include woman suffrage planks; 30 campaigns to urge presidential party conventions to adopt woman suffrage planks in party platforms, and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses. Millions of dollars were raised, mainly in small sums, and expended with economic care. Hundreds of women gave the accumulated possibilities of an entire lifetime, thousands gave years of their lives, hundreds of thousands gave constant interest and such aid as they could. It was a continuous, seemingly endless, 116108chain of activity. Young suffragists who helped forge the last links of that chain were not born when it began. Old suffragists who forged the first links were dead when it ended.

During this long stretch of time, the dominant political parties, pitted against each other since 1860, used their enormous organized power to block every move on behalf of woman suffrage. The seeming exceptions were rare and invariably caused by breaks or threatened breaks in party ranks. Strong men in both parties and in all States championed the woman's cause in Legislatures and in political conventions, and eventually the number of these became too large to be ignored. But it was not until public opinion, far in advance of party leaders, indicated that a choice between woman suffrage and party disruption must be made that organized party help was given, and even then it was neither united nor whole-hearted.

Between the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment (March 30, 1870), which completed the enfranchisement of the Negro, and 1910, lie forty years during which women watched, prayed and worked without ceasing for the woman's hour that never came. The party whips had cracked to drive the nation to enfranchise the Negro. They cracked, and cracked again, to prevent the enfranchisement of women. Whenever there was an exception and the parties stood by woman suffrage in a referendum, success came to the woman's cause. Most victories were won, however, in spite of party opposition.

It was with amazing courage that the 480 campaigns to secure the submission of State constitutional amendments from Legislatures were conducted. In these campaigns millions of names were presented to the several Legislatures in the form of petitions, party endorsement was sought in political conventions, candidates were interviewed—hundreds of whom gladly gave their pledges of support—press aid was solicited, and, in most States, 117109a majority of the newspapers were won over to support the submission and adoption of the question. These campaigns were conducted in all the thirty-three States and territories lying outside the original pro-slave district, in some continuously through the half century, in some intermittently. Yet in forty years, as a result of the 480 campaigns, only seventeen referenda* were secured. As Oregon submitted the question four times in those years, and Washington, South Dakota, and Colorado twice respectively, the number of States wherein the voters expressed their opinion upon State amendments was eleven only. Since no Legislature or constitutional convention possesses the authority to extend or withhold suffrage from women, and has only the right to pass the question on to the voters or to refuse to do so, the autocracy of this record makes impressive legislative history.

The strongest suffrage organizations were in the East where the movement began and where the ablest of the early leaders lived. It was these States which had furnished the initiative and the insistence which enfranchised the Negro by bayonet. Yet in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, where the woman suffrage appeal was continual during those forty years, no suffrage referendum was secured. Of the seventeen referenda in those years, all were in States west of the Mississippi except three. Four referenda, Michigan 1874, Colorado 1877, Nebraska 1882 and Oregon 1884, were normal by-products of the Negro suffrage agitation; ten were the direct result of the defection within the dominant parties, chiefly Republican, which was produced by the Populist 118110uprising which reached its crest between 1890 and 1900,* and the three remaining (Washington 1889, Rhode Island 1887 and New Hampshire 1902) were due to local causes. Two States only were won in these seventeen referenda, Colorado and Idaho; in both cases the party organizations were broken wide asunder and each faction endorsed the amendment. In the fifteen other States where amendments were submitted there were disturbed political conditions in nine, but in no case did the opposing factions endorse the amendment, and the regular party organization used its power to defeat it.

A cursory review of these referenda campaigns, State by State, makes clearer and clearer the character of the opposition that piled higher and higher in the path of suffrage workers.

Michigan—In 1874 a special session of the Michigan Legislature submitted a woman suffrage constitutional amendment. The debate indicated that the action was an attempt to do justice to the women who had been made political inferiors of the recent slaves. Forty thousand men voted in favor but the amendment was lost and little record of the campaign has been preserved.

Nebraska—In 1869 the Legislature failed to submit the question of woman suffrage by a single vote in one house. In 1871 the Legislature memorialized the constitutional convention sitting that year, urging it to submit woman suffrage, and it did so, but the entire constitution was defeated. It was never charged that the woman suffrage provision caused the defeat of the constitution. In 1882 the Legislature, by the required three fifths vote, submitted a woman suffrage amendment. The State constitution stipulates that an amendment shall receive a majority of all the votes cast in the election at 119111which it is voted upon, a handicap so serious that most amendments submitted under this condition, however popular, have gone down to defeat. Liberal promises of help had been received from many men of prominence. For that day the organization was good, the campaign carefully planned, and more efficient than any yet conducted, but as election day approached the women were mystified because so many men failed to fulfill their promises and developed a sudden aloofness.

The reason for this defection was soon apparent. “The organ of the Brewers Association sent out its orders to defeat the amendment to every saloon, bills posted in conspicuous places by friends of the amendment mysteriously disappeared or were covered by others of an opposite character, and the greatest pains were taken to excite the antagonism of foreigners by representing to them that woman suffrage meant prohibition.”* “Judge O. P. Mason, who had agreed to give ten lectures for the amendment and whose advocacy would have had immense weight, was engaged to speak for the Republican Party and at every place but one the managers stipulated that he should be silent on the amendment.” There was a large German vote, thoroughly aroused over the “menace of prohibition,” and prejudiced against and afraid of the woman vote. Nebraska was a State where men voted on first papers, and with the appearance of evidence of possible organized opposition threatening candidates and parties, politicians flew to safety like a frightened covey of ducks. The Republican party machinery, set in action against the amendment, defeated it 2 to 1. Fraudulent ballots with no mention of the amendment on them were found in large numbers. Ballots with wording differing from that prescribed by the Legislature were also numerous. All these were counted in the total number of votes at the election, of which the amendment must secure a majority, and were therefore virtually counted 120112as against the amendment. The correct returns were never known and many suffragists had justification for the belief that had the election been an honest one, the amendment would have been won. The vote for woman suffrage was 25,756; against, 50,693. The suffragists learned in this campaign that they had an insidious enemy which was not public opinion.

Nebraska announced that this was the German's hour!

Rhode Island—The Legislature of Rhode Island in 1887 submitted an amendment, leaving just twenty-nine days for a campaign. In that time the women held 92 public meetings, but the two political parties passed the word along the line that the amendment was to be defeated. No secret was made of the bi-partisan order which, combined with normal conservatism and prejudice, brought the heaviest defeat yet recorded, or more than 3 to 1; 6,889 against, and 2,195 in favor.

Washington—In 1883 the territorial Legislature of Washington had followed the example set by the Legislatures of Wyoming and Utah, and extended full suffrage to women. The women voted in large numbers at every election. In 1887, a man named Harlan Young, convicted by a jury composed in part of women, contested the verdict upon the ground that women were not legal voters. Grover Cleveland had come into the presidency in 1884 and, adhering to the spoils system common to both parties, had filled the Supreme Court of Washington with Southern Democrats whose prejudices against woman suffrage were impregnable. The Court declared the suffrage law invalid because its object had not been properly described in its title. The next Legislature, 1889, promptly re-enacted the law, free from the defects of the former one, and women continued to vote. Washington Territory was agitating for statehood and the enemies of prohibition were determined that women should not vote on the constitution soon to be drafted. They121113arranged that the judges of the spring municipal election in a district of Spokane should refuse to accept the vote of Mrs. Nevada Bloomer, the wife of a saloon-keeper. She then brought action against them, the case was speedily rushed through, and on August 14 the Supreme Court decided that the Act of January 18 was invalid, as a Territorial Legislature had no authority to enfranchise women. Mrs. Bloomer refused to appeal and no one else could. The women were therefore debarred from participating in the next election.

The decision of the Court was certainly an illegal one, for the following reasons: (1) The Act of Congress authorizing the organization of the Territory had stated clearly that “all persons should be allowed to vote upon whom the Territorial Legislature might confer the elective franchise.” (2) The women of Wyoming had voted under such a law since 1869 and in Utah since 1870. (3) When Congress, in 1887, disfranchised the women of Utah in order to strike a blow at polygamy, that act admitted the right of the Territorial Legislature to enfranchise women. Yet Congress, which had enfranchised the Negro by bayonet and defended his vote with military force, admitted Washington to statehood on a constitution framed by a convention whose members had been elected by voters of whom a considerable number had been illegally restrained from voting. Moreover, the constitution had been adopted by the same illegal electorate!

The liquor forces, having thus illegally disposed of the woman vote, conducted a successful campaign to elect a convention that would represent their wishes. The convention submitted a separate suffrage amendment to male voters only, and both parties, under direction of the liquor interests, used the power of their organizations to prevent its passage.

There was no doubt in any mind that 1889 was the saloon's hour in Washington.

These four referenda in the twenty years from 1869 to 1889 represented the sole results of efforts to secure full suffrage for women.

In the year 1890 a farmer's party, later called the Populist party, emerged from earlier farmers' organizations,—the Farmers' Alliance, the Grange, and others,— in Western agricultural States, and as it held the “balance of power” it exercised an enormous influence upon American politics for the next decade. As all these States were controlled by large Republican majorities, the new party drew its chief support from that party. The minority Democratic party, fusing with the Populists, produced a combination which either wrested power from the Republicans or shared it with them.

Simultaneously a movement arose in Western mining States, caused by the low price of silver and aiming to correct it by giving silver a place with gold, at the “ratio of 16 to 1,” as the basic standard of money values. The silver movement split the Republican Party in most of the mining States, and the Populists, fusing with Democrats and silver Republicans, became an even more important political factor in those States. As the result of these political changes, Grover Cleveland was elected in 1892. The free silver coinage movement reached its climax in 1896 and the Fifty-fifth Congress (1897-1899) contained six Populist Senators and twenty-seven members in the House, while in all the Western States many Populist or Fusion members were elected to the Legislatures, and in some instances were in control.

In Washington the Fusionists were so successful that the 1897 Legislature was made up of reform elements. That Legislature submitted a woman suffrage amendment to the voters of 1898. It was defeated but the adverse majority was only half as great as in the election of 1889.

South Dakota—The splitting and fusing of political groups had direct bearing upon the suffrage referendum 123115in South Dakota in 1890. The Territory of Dakota, created in 1861, was later divided, and North and South Dakota were admitted into the Union in 1889. The Dakota Territorial Legislature of 1872 came within one vote of extending full suffrage to women, and in 1885 it did so, following the example of Wyoming, Utah and Washington, women at the time voting in all three. The Republican Governor, Gilbert A. Pierce, vetoed the bill of 1885, upon the ground that Congress might not welcome Dakota into statehood with woman suffrage in operation, since Congress had taken no steps to enfranchise women, which it had a right to do.

The constitution accepted by Congress when South Dakota was admitted to statehood provided that the first Legislature at its first session should submit a constitutional woman suffrage amendment to the voters. But the Constitutional Convention submitted a prohibition amendment which went to vote in 1889, at the same election which adopted the constitution. After a bitterly fought battle, prohibition was carried and an immediate campaign was undertaken by the liquor forces for its repeal. They regarded, as the first outpost to be taken, the defeat of the suffrage amendment which, according to plan, was to come to vote the following year—1890.

Before the campaign began suffragists anticipated victory in South Dakota. The Farmer's Alliance was a large and powerful body and its officers had not only agreed to exert the full influence of their organization for the amendment, but had urged Miss Anthony to come to South Dakota to conduct the campaign in person in order that it might the more certainly be won. The Knights of Labor had agreed by resolution to support the amendment “with all our strength.” These two organizations later decided to form an Independent or People's party, and at the convention called for the purpose of adopting a platform and nominating a ticket, the leaders repudiated their pledges, having decided that the new party 124116would be overloaded should it endorse woman suffrage. When this group of professed friends refused endorsement, nothing could be expected of the regular parties, weakened by the defection of those who composed the new party.

The Republican party, recognizing that 300 Sioux Indians would vote in the State by the act of the federal government, invited three blanketed representatives to sit on the floor of the convention with the delegates, but refused to allow any women so honored a position. The suffrage amendment was ignored in the platform.

It was the Indian's hour.

When Susan B. Anthony addressed the Democratic convention, a delegation of illiterate Russians wearing large badges “Against Woman Suffrage and Susan B. Anthony” were carefully seated where their presence announced the party attitude. As the delegates came out of these two conventions, men at the door thrust into their hands a paper called the Remonstrance, published by ladies in Boston who were not yet courageous enough to indicate their responsibility by printing their names on the sheet. The men who distributed the papers were saloon men, and the sight of their dirty hands and degenerate faces would have made the gentle remonstrants squirm. The outstanding feature of this campaign was the employment for the first time in a large way of the foreign vote as a bloc, voted under direction and paid for the assistance it rendered. South Dakota permitted foreigners to vote on their first papers, and there were 30,000 Russians, Germans and Scandinavians in the State. Thousands had been there from six months to two years only. These men, unable to read or write in any language or to speak English, were boldly led to the ballot boxes under direction of well known saloon henchmen, and after being voted were marched away in single file, and, within plain sight of men and women poll workers, were paid for their votes. The movement 125117to curb the practice of buying votes, which led in after years to laws in all States more or less strict, had scarcely begun and in the new State of South Dakota there was no redress. The amendment was lost—22,072 ayes; 45,682 nays; majority opposed 23,610.

It was the Russian's hour.

The Legislature again submitted the question in 1898 and again the Russians were mobilized “like dumb driven cattle” and paid to defeat the amendment.

Suffragists drew the following conclusions from this campaign: (1) That non-English speaking, illiterate men who were voted by the thousands did not go to the polls voluntarily, nor had they offered their own services. Some power had enlisted them, voted them, paid them. What was it?

(2) Whatever that power was, it had either commanded the political parties to do its bidding, or the political parties had called it to their aid.

Colorado—In 1893 Colorado had inaugurated a Populist Governor, and the Legislature, with Republicans in control in the House and Populists in the Senate, submitted the question of woman suffrage to the voters, most Populists voting for the measure and the majority of Republicans against.* This was not the first experience with suffrage referenda in Colorado. The constitutional convention of 1876, preparing for statehood, had submitted a separate amendment which had come to vote in 1877. The debate had indicated that the details of Negro enfranchisement were fresh in the minds of the delegates and that some amends were due the women. A hurried organization had been effected and a creditable campaign conducted. The amendment was lost, but the 126118effects of the campaign persisted and the organization had never entirely lapsed.

Old friends and new now united in preparing for the contest of 1893. There was no State election that year. The State political machines were not in operation, and the rank and file of the voters received no orders. County nominating conventions were held, and in most counties one or more party conventions endorsed the amendment, all Populist conventions and many Republican conventions taking this stand. Very many individual Republicans and Democrats frankly espoused the amendment, and assisted in the campaign. A factor everywhere manifest was the influence of Wyoming. No imaginative prediction of baneful results to arise from woman suffrage was allowed to travel far, for a man from Wyoming was certain to come forward with a scornful denial.

Although there were many women who labored long hours, hard and earnestly, and although the consecrated central committee was wise and alert, the campaign, as compared with those that came after, was neither elaborate nor thorough.

No organized opposition appeared until the eve of election day. The Denver Brewers' Association then gave hurried orders to the saloons, assessing them for funds. Dodgers were issued, bearing the imprint of the Brewers' Association on the first few issued, which found their way into circulation. The imprint was soon removed, however, and the thousands later distributed from door to door carried no evidence of their origin. Fortunately a newspaper came into possession of some of the first dodgers issued and revealed the character of this eleventh-hour attempt to defeat the amendment.

Tricks with which suffragists afterwards became sickeningly familiar were also used. A lawyer was employed to discover ways of throwing ballots out of the count on “technicalities.” Influence with election officials, wielded by some of the opponents, secured ballots 127119bearing the words “For the Amendment,” “Against the Amendment.” The question to be voted upon was not an amendment. By the provision of the constitution of 1876 woman suffrage could be granted by the Legislature if confirmed by referendum. The women of the State had been enfranchised by the Legislature, and the voters were now being asked to confirm or deny. The Attorney General gave a prompt opinion which was published by the State authorities to set the voters right. At the polls the measure was carried by a majority of 6,347.* The counties that had gone Republican and Democratic in the previous election gave a majority of 471 against the measure. The counties that had gone Populist gave the favorable majority.

Startled by their own victory, the women wanted to do something in celebration which would remain forever after in their memories. A crowd gathered in the suffrage headquarters and they talked it over, but being unable to devise any unique plan, some one started “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” and people passing by outside heard a great chorus of song. After which the tired workers went home quietly with praise God singing in their hearts.

Informed suffragists derived two convictions from the Colorado campaign which stayed with them to the end: (1) That which was achieved in the State would not have been possible had there been no break in party control. (2) That which had been done in Colorado could be done in any Western State were voters free to vote their own convictions.

Kansas—The Populist contest in Kansas was particularly aggressive and bitter. In 1892, the Populists swept the State and the following election was regarded as the test of strength. As both Populists and Republicans carried planks favoring the submission of a woman suffrage amendment in their platforms, the Legislature 128120of 1893 submitted the question. The Kansas Equal Suffrage Association was one of the most alert in the United States, its president, Mrs. Laura M. Johns, one of the ablest of presidents. A series of county conventions by way of preparation had been held in all the more thickly populated sections. Kansas was a State where women were trained in politics. In 1861, school suffrage had been extended to women. There had been a woman suffrage referendum in 1867 that had aroused public opinion and its effects were still manifest. In 1887, the Legislature had granted municipal suffrage to women. Kansas was a prohibition State and municipal politics had centered largely upon the enforcement of this law. The women, because they were voters, had been drawn into the party campaigns and yet by the exercise of rare good sense had kept their organization non-partisan. Mrs. Johns was a Republican, but Mrs. Annie E. Diggs, a Populist, was made vice-chairman of the Kansas Auxiliary to the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Work without ceasing was now the order of every day. More able, well-trained women were engaged in the campaign than in all the preceding ones put together. All agreed that should the Republican and Populist parties endorse the amendment, as they had the question of submission, there was no possibility of defeat. The Republican convention met on June 6. The leaders had already decided to throw woman suffrage overboard “to save the party.” There were no saloons in Kansas but there were “wets.” There was also a conservative Southern element which had come in before the war to make Kansas a slave State. Ex-Governor C. V. Eskridge, an active opponent of woman suffrage since 1867, was chairman of the Committee on Resolutions, Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, a national Republican lecturer, and Mrs. Johns addressed the Committee. It was reminded that by common admission women municipal voters had kept 129121the State of Kansas Republican. Yet Committee and Convention ignored the amendment.

The women now awaited the Populist convention with dread. The Populist candidate for Governor, Mr. Llewellyn, declared that he would not stand for re-election on a platform that contained woman suffrage. Genuine disapproval of woman suffrage there was, but it was rendered powerful by the accession of those who feared for the party's safety.

This convention proved to be one of the most thrilling experiences in the long suffrage struggle. The Resolutions Committee sat most of the night, and, worn and haggard, its members brought in next day a report which omitted the expected suffrage plank. There was one woman member, Mrs. Eliza Hudson, who brought in a minority report signed by herself and seven men members. Then began a parliamentary tilt to keep the minority report from being heard. It was however brought to debate, and four hours were consumed in as tense and earnest a combat of words as had ever been heard in Kansas. A Negro delegate with halting language declared that woman suffrage would mean party defeat and that in any event women did not know enough to vote. This called forth wild and scornful laughter, and the floor was dotted with delegates who sprang to the defense of the women voters of the State. The minority report was adopted by a vote of 337 ayes to 269 nays, but only after it had been amended by the addition “but we do not regard this as a test of party fealty!”

Suffragists sitting on the platform, glad to get even this much of an endorsement, applauded the vote, whereupon the editor of the chief Republican newspaper, the Topeka Capital, with eyes flashing, hastily left the plat-form and, in the heat of temper, indited an editorial which called upon all Republicans to understand that the amendment was now a Populist measure and no Republican need support it.

A campaign followed which acquainted women with new phases of American politics. Jealousy and suspicion were aroused between the parties. Jealousy and suspicion guided the campaign. The Populists believed that women in the cities, being more numerous than those in the country, would make the State Republican. The Republicans held that, there being more women in the country than in the cities, women voters would make the State Populist! Both were unchangeable. No one expected victory to emerge from a situation so utterly unreasonable. The amendment was lost by 34,837 votes, —95,302 ayes and 130,139 nays. An effort was made to keep a record of the vote by parties and much careful work and tabulation of returns was done. The estimated result showed that 38 1/2% of the Republicans, 54% of the Populists, 14% of the Democrats and 88% of the Prohibitionists voted for the amendment.

This was the most heart-breaking defeat of the suffrage struggle. The majority of the people of Kansas were earnest advocates of suffrage, as was apparent to anyone making a canvass of the State, yet the moral conviction of Kansas men had been utterly surrendered to imagined party advantage.

Idaho—As both Populists and Republicans had declared for suffrage in their State platforms, the submission of a woman suffrage amendment was passed by the Idaho Legislature of 1895, unanimously in the Senate and by 33 to 2 in the House. The National Suffrage Association made itself responsible for the traveling forces that covered the State during the campaign. In August, 1896, four State political party conventions met in Boise; the Republicans splitting into Regulars and Silver Republicans, the Populists and Democrats fusing. All four endorsed the suffrage amendment and many of the campaigners of all parties spoke for it. The campaign was simple and normal, costing only $1,800. The 131123amendment carried without organized opposition by a majority of 5,844—12,126 for and 6,282 against.

California—The Republican Legislature of California, carrying out the declaration in its platform, submitted a woman suffrage amendment, which was voted upon in 1896. Participants have always remembered the campaign as the best conducted, liveliest and most enthusiastic of their experience. All meetings were crowded, jubilant and heartily in sympathy. The press was friendly. No opposition appeared. The hospitable Western spirit of freedom for all seemed to control the situation.

Four days before election day, the chief Republican newspaper, the Chronicle, burst forth in a vituperative frenzy of hostility and used its utmost powers to arouse opposition. Election day brought the unique sight of Chinese voters, in “pigtails” and sandals, at the polling booths. Chinese are denied naturalization by the United States but those born in this country are citizens by the provisions of the 14th Amendment and some 5,000 were thus qualified voters. Faithful watchers reported that these men were rarely informed enough to mark more than one item on the ballot, in which case their vote was invariably marked against the amendment. When the voter was intelligent enough to mark two items he, voted for McKinley electors and against the amendment. The Pacific Coast, and especially California, had made a vigorous protest against the 14th and 15th Amendments because of the fear that the Chinese under unscrupulous direction would dominate politics, and for these reasons the State had rejected the 15th Amendment. By a curious cynicism Chinese voters now, with the possible knowledge of those who had once protested against them and certainly with the aid of their fellow partisans, directed their votes to deny self-government to American women.

It was the hour of the Chinese!

The entire State was carried for the amendment with the exception of San Francisco and Alameda counties. Ayes 110,355, nays 137,099. Majority against 26,744. The majority against in San Francisco County was 23,772, in Alameda 3,627. Both counties returned the Republican ticket.

Oregon—In 1882 the Oregon Legislature submitted an amendment which was voted on in 1884. A notable list of prominent men and women were scheduled to speak and work for the amendment. Abigail Scott Dunniway, the leader, reported that “suddenly, in the midst of the enthusiastic and promising campaign, politicians were seized with alarming reticence. They ceased to attend meetings, made excuses for breaking speaking engagements and dodged their suffrage friends.” On election day, “railroad gangs were driven to the polls like sheep and voted against us.” Although 11,223 votes were cast for the amendment it was lost by more than 2 to 1. The women were astounded that anyone should care enough about holding them in disfranchisement to pay men to vote against the amendment as had been done. They were bewildered, too, by the discovery that an enemy supplied with money and strong enough to intimidate a political party had been working against their amendment.

Oregon Legislatures thereafter submitted woman suffrage amendments in 1900, 1906, 1908, 1910 and 1912. In each election the women found public sentiment strong and effective, but on election day they discovered the presence of the same mysterious foe that had scattered their forces in 1884.

In 1906 evidence appeared to indicate its character. A secret circular, sent out by the Brewers' and Wholesale Liquor Dealers' Association of the State to every retail liquor seller, fell into the hands of the press and was reproduced in several newspapers. It read in part:

“It will take 50,000 votes to defeat woman suffrage.

“There are 2,000 retailers in Oregon.

“That means that every retailer must himself bring in twenty-five votes on election day.

“Every retailer can get twenty-five votes. Besides his employees, he has his grocer, his butcher, his landlord, his laundryman and every person he does business with. If every man in the business will do this, we will win.

“We enclose twenty-five ballot tickets showing how to vote.

“We also enclose a postal card addressed to this Association. If you will personally take twenty-five friendly voters to the polls on election day and give each one a ticket showing how to vote, please mail the postal card back to us at once. You need not sign the card. Every card has a number, and we will know who sent it in.

“Let us all pull together and let us all work. Let us each get twenty-five votes.

“Yours very respectfully, BREWERS' &&; WHOLESALE LIQUOR DEALERS' ASSOCIATION.”

The postcard enclosed for reply was addressed: “Brewers' and Wholesale Liquor Dealers' Association, 413-414 McKay Building, Portland, Oregon.”

The reverse side of the card bore this reply:

“Dear Sirs:

I will attend to it.

“25 times.

“ooooo”

Instead of a signature, a number was appended.

Despite the publicity given the plan of the brewers, the campaign of 1906 followed its predecessors to defeat, Mrs. Abigail Scott Dunniway finding the cause in the “slum vote.”

Another referendum was secured in 1908, but again the brewers assigned to saloons the number of voters necessary to defeat the Amendment and again the foreign-born 134126were organized to defeat the native woman's plea for the suffrage.

It was the hour of the foreigner in Oregon.

New Hampshire—One campaign took place in the East during this period. In 1902, New Hampshire held a constitutional convention and the suffragists, following their custom of appeal to all constitutional conventions, conducted a preliminary campaign of preparation which was to culminate in a hearing before the convention. The Grange of the State was a popular and thoroughly established organization. One hundred and forty local Granges and all Pomona or District Granges were addressed before the convention met, and 145 delegates pledged their support. The amendment was submitted by a vote of 145 to 92. This was in December and the vote took place on March 10, leaving little more than two months for a campaign in a bitterly cold winter. Yet 200 meetings were held. The total previous vote in the State had not exceeded 80,000 and these voters were circularized, material was furnished weekly to the press, and 75 ministers preached sermons in favor of the amendment.

So alarmed did the opponents become that an antisuffrage meeting was arranged on March 4, with Rev. Lyman Abbott as chief speaker; it was followed by a suffrage meeting the next evening, the largest and most enthusiastic of the campaign. The amendment received 14,162 votes for and 21,788 against. The State suffragists considered the result excellent for so conservative a State, but outside workers had come in contact with a new factor in campaigns. The electorate of New Hampshire was utterly demoralized by corruption, and this sad fact was generally admitted. The chairman of the Republican and Democratic Committees both frankly acknowledged that a group of voters called “floaters” had to be paid even when they voted their own party ticket.

This completes the roster of the seventeen referenda in eleven different States and brings the suffrage story forward to 1910. That year found full woman suffrage established in four States, Wyoming and Utah, won in their territorial days, and two, Colorado and Idaho, won on referendum. These four States, composing a great territory in the heart of the West, stood for fourteen years (from 1896 to 1910) like a democratic oasis in a desert of pretension, without another acquisition.

There had been hours for the Indian, the Russian, the German, the Chinese, the foreigner, the saloon, hours when each had decided the limits of woman's sphere, but no woman's hour had come.

Meantime the possibilities of gains for woman suffrage in the Territories had not been overlooked by suffragists. Territories had the right to grant full suffrage to women by act of their Legislatures without a referendum to the voters, and many suffrage lecture and organizing tours had been made in the early days into each and all of them.

Wyoming had led the way to victory in 1869; Utah followed promptly in 1870. The Mormons practiced polygamy and defended it as a tenet of the church. In 1869 George W. Julian of Indiana had introduced a bill to enfranchise the women of Utah with the expectation that they would in some undefined manner make an end of polygamy. Possibly this initiative prompted the Utah Legislature to enact a woman suffrage measure in 1870, under which the women of Utah territory voted for seventeen years. Observers agreed that they availed themselves very generally of the privilege and voted in the interest of good government; but they did not eliminate polygamy, which was a church and not a state institution. In 1887 Senator Edmunds of Vermont caused the introduction and passage of a congressional bill to disfranchise the women of Utah in order to strike a blow 136128at polygamy. The Territory, and especially its women, made heroic protests, in vain. Utah regarded this act of Congress as a discriminatory one and that fact tended to keep alive and to strengthen the suffrage sentiment in the territory. After many efforts to secure statehood, an enabling act was signed by Grover Cleveland in 1894. Both parties dominant in the State placed woman suffrage planks in their platforms, and the women presented a memorial to the Utah Constitutional Convention asking that they should be recognized in the constitution. Their plea was granted. The constitution, like that of Wyoming, declares that the right to vote shall not be denied on account of sex. The vote of the convention on this clause was ayes 75, nays 6, absent 12. Every member signed. Cleveland affixed the presidential signature January 4, 1896, and Utah was admitted to statehood with woman suffrage in its constitution, the women having been deprived of their vote by act of Congress for nine years.

Arizona and Oklahoma were the two remaining territories, and after the successful Utah denouement in 1896 the Organization Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association promptly marked both for suffrage campaigns. In both there proved to be as frank revelations of the nature of the opposition and its methods as were encountered anywhere along the line of suffrage march. In the nineties suffragists were not as familiar with this power and its methods as they came to be later, and they were left gasping by developments on both battlefields.

In Arizona they saw a complete volte face on the part of the Council (or Senate) from a strong favorable majority to an insidious opposition that filibustered the suffrage bill of 1899 into innocuous desuetude; they heard the popping of corks and the clinking of glasses that accompanied the barter and sale of senatorial votes to the proprietors of the prosperous saloons of the State; 137129and they were the legatees of the confession of the young president of the Council who told them, with tears in his eyes, that the saloons of Prescott had elected him and had made him their attorney, that now their representatives not only threatened to repudiate him politically and take from him their legal work but to “break him” completely if he dared to vote for woman suffrage. He was under promise to his mother not only to vote but to work for suffrage; he had told his masters of the promise; and they had assured him that the blame should be neatly laid upon the committee which would never report the bill. And which never did report the bill.

Working in this same devious way, the saloons of Arizona for eleven years successfully checkmated every effort to secure woman suffrage by territorial legislative act.

In Oklahoma the story was the same—almost down to chapter number and line on page. There, too, in the year 1899, advocacy of suffrage by legislators changed overnight to opposition. There, too, the saloons worked hard and furiously against suffrage, having organized themselves into a “Saloonkeepers' League” with the purpose of “protecting our interests from unjust legislation.” There, too, corks popped and glasses clinked while the vote for the political freedom of women was bartered away; and there, too, in the face of marked evidence that the people wanted woman suffrage the legislative filibuster checkmated all efforts to secure it for Oklahoma women.

The women of two territories lost the vote through the veto of Republican Governors, one through the decision of a Democratic Supreme Court, two through the direct intervention of an organized saloon power and one through an act of Congress. Wyoming alone stood the test of years unchallenged.

It is clear that the attempts to win the territories were little more effective than the campaigns with State Legislatures 138130to get them to submit the woman suffrage question to the voters of the States. Territory or State, it was work of a heart-breaking slowness, this pitting of suffrage against politics in State and territorial Legislatures. Had there been encouragement from Washington, Republican or Democratic, the entire West in its territorial days would assuredly have extended the vote to women and would have defended it as gallantly as did Wyoming, but politics was not yet willing to allow this act of inevitable justice to prevail.

Reviewing this forty years of effort between 1870 and 1910 and comparing the carefully filed reports of all the States year after year, the suffragists of 1910 arrived at some more conclusions: (1) The more favorable public opinion was and the more numerous the pledges of State Senators and Assemblymen, the more certain were suffrage amendments not to pass Legislatures. (2) The better the campaign, the more certain that suffrage would be defeated at the polls. (3) The majorities which defeated amendments were clearly composed of ignorant Americans and foreigners, controlled, that is organized, persuaded or bought, by some master mind. (4) The rank and file of men in the dominant parties accepted platforms and tickets as framed by party leaders without question and voted as advised. (5) The average party leader played “the game of politics,” using these voters as pawns, and the big stakes were power, patronage and graft. (6) The real influence which dictated platforms and tickets were monied interests which made gigantic contributions to party treasuries or their candidates' campaign funds. (7) Here and there a statesman, “fair as a star when only one is shining in the sky,” kept faith with the people.

The outlook in 1910 was dark. To win without party support seemed impossible, and behind the lack of party support there was now uncomprehending public opinion 139131which had largely lost its earlier zeal for governments by majorities.

The crucial deduction drawn from all the facts at hand was that public opinion must be made to understand, to arise and to exert its power, not only to secure justice for women but to save the nation from the threatened peril of elections controlled by invisible influences.

Those invisible influences that were controlling elections; that invisible and invincible power that for forty years kept suffragists waiting for the woman's hour; for forty years circumvented the coming of suffrage; that power that made Republican leaders hesitate to fulfil their promises to early suffragists; restrained both dominant parties from endorsing woman suffrage; kept Legislatures from submitting suffrage amendments; and organized droves of ignorant men to vote against suffrage amendments at the polls when its agents had failed to prevent the submission of the question, was, manifestly, the power that inhered in the combined liquor interests.

The vested interest in human slavery exerted a controlling influence over American politics for more than half a century, but the public was never deceived concerning that fact, for its battles were fought in the open and its political compromises were frankly acknowledged. But when the vested interest in liquor arose to dictate terms to parties and politicians it executed its strategical moves in secret. The political wires, laid with purposeful care to trip the feet of men, were unseen by the public. The action of men, Legislatures and parties had the appearance of being the reflection of public opinion.

Victorious movements record their history; vanquished ones rarely do. The men who buy or sell votes do not confess. Political leaders do not acquaint their own party following with the deals they make. Full 141133knowledge, therefore, of the extent to which the liquor trade exercised a dominating influence over the politics of the United States for a generation will probably never be revealed. But enough indisputable evidence has been accumulated to establish the fact that it did wield that influence and to reveal also much of the general plan by which results were achieved.

In 1862, while the nation was absorbed in the life and death struggle of the Civil War, the United States Brewers' Association was quietly organized. Although other reasons for organizing were afterwards given by the Brewers, the weight of evidence indicates that the main object of the Association was the political protection of the trade. It is a fact that this organization continued to be the chief directing power in the political defense of the liquor interests until the end of the struggle.

At its convention in 1867 the Association boldly warned political parties to take due notice that it would declare war upon all candidates of whatever party who were favorably disposed toward the total abstinence cause.* Although no more resolutions of this character were passed, and no public pronouncements of this nature were made by the leading brewers in the years that followed, there was no break in carrying out that policy. When the first decision was made to include woman suffrage as an indirect menace to the liquor cause is unknown, but in 1867, during the Kansas suffrage campaign, suffragists noted that in all parts of the State local liquor men were conspicuous workers against the suffrage amendment.

It was in 1869 that the Legislature of Wyoming extended the vote to women. It was in that same year that the Prohibition Party was organized. These unrelated but outstanding events may have called the attention of the trade to a possible connection between the two reforms, 142134but far more definite causes for fear of women on the part of the liquor interests soon appeared. In 1873-4 an uprising of Christian women against the saloons of Ohio startled the church, the saloon and the nation. Groups of women, well known for their virtue and piety, appeared before the doors of saloons, or at times entered, read passages of Scripture, sang hymns and, kneeling, prayed fervently for the abolition of all “rum shops.” Out of this “crusade” the Woman's Christian Temperance Union emerged in 1874. It grew in size and influence with astonishing rapidity, spreading to all States of the Union and carrying with it much of the crusade spirit that had created it.

Women thus became an unmistakable factor in the movement which was rapidly pressing forward the demand for “total abstinence for the individual and prohibition for the State.” Their meetings filled churches, bridged denominational differences, enlisted the clergy and influential churchmen. More than all else, the organization aroused women and trained them for public work as no movement had yet done. Soon the Woman's Christian Temperance Union became the largest organization women had yet formed in any country. Its leader for many years, Frances Willard, was one of the world's greatest women, beloved by her followers and honored by all. She captivated audiences, disarmed their prejudices and enrolled them in her cause. Under her inspiration a great army of women, recruited chiefly from orthodox Protestant churches, rapidly mobilized.

It was doubtless because of these things that the press reports of the Brewers' Convention of 1881 included the account of the adoption of an anti-suffrage resolution to the effect that the Brewers would welcome prohibition as far less dangerous to the trade than woman suffrage, because prohibition could be repealed at any time but woman suffrage would insure the permanency of prohibition. Thirty-two years afterward, President Ruppert 143135of the United States Brewers' Association denied that the brewers had ever taken such action, but suffrage scrapbooks preserved the resolution and the brewers confessed to the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, in 1918, that they had kept no minutes.

Meanwhile evidence had accumulated to prove conclusively that whether the brewers had stated their hostility to woman suffrage in resolutions or not, they had ceaselessly demonstrated it in practice. Three official investigations into the political activities of the brewers have been made and four large volumes of the evidence have been published. On January 9, 1915, the Attorney-General of the State of Texas filed suit against seven breweries in the State charging “the use of their corporate means and assets in politics and elections” contrary to the laws of the State. In March, 1916, indictments were brought against one hundred Pennsylvania brewing companies and the United States Brewers' Association by a Federal Grand Jury. The indictments charged the brewing companies with the unlawful expenditure of money in the election of federal officials. Rather than have the investigation proceed, the brewers chose to plead guilty and pay a fine of a million dollars.

In September, 1918, the United States Senate called for an investigation by the Judiciary Committee into the charges of German propaganda by German brewers in association with the United States Brewers' Association. The charges included the following:

“The United States Brewers' Association, brewing companies and allied interests have in recent years made contributions to political campaigns on a scale without precedent . . . and in order to control legislation in State and nation have exacted pledges from candidates to office . . . have subsidized the press and stipulated when contracting for advertising space with the newspapers that a certain amount be editorial space, the material to be furnished by the brewers' central office . . . they have set in operation an extensive 144136system of boycotting of American manufacturers, merchants and railroads, etc. . . . have on file political surveys of States, tabulating men and forces for and against them, and that they have paid large sums of money to citizens of the United States to advocate their cause, including some in government employ.”

The press reported that some tons of documents were taken on subpoena from various offices and bureaus. Although the evidence was fragmentary, it made clear that a national political agency, set up by the combined interests, had long existed and that it supervised or was active in both prohibition and suffrage campaigns throughout the United States.

This evidence, combined with the circumstantial and direct evidence supported by affidavits carefully preserved by the National American Woman Suffrage Association during a period of fifty years, shows the liquor interests in active opposition to woman suffrage on the following counts:

1. The same man or men who conducted the anti-prohibition campaign directed the anti-suffrage contests in Legislatures, constitutional conventions and referenda campaigns.

6. By the same coercive means they sought contributions for anti-suffrage campaigns from firms with which they dealt.

It is probable that few persons, if any, knew how much money was actually raised and spent by the liquor 147139forces in any given year. The money did not pass through one treasury, and the trustees of the different funds made no acknowledged reports to each other. Each State conducted an independent campaign, raised its own money and spent that contributed by all the national liquor organizations. As State laws became more and more drastic in their demand for public reports of campaign receipts and expenditures it became increasingly necessary, from the liquor viewpoint, to conceal as far as possible both the source and amount of receipts and the nature of expenditures. This was easily done by dividing the funds among the different committees or bureaus, many being totally unknown to the public and therefore never called upon for reports.

Some facts are known, however, and from them a fair estimate of the amount of money raised annually for campaigns may be made. It is a known fact, for instance, that $1,400,000 was deposited by the United States Brewers' Association in 1914.* Let us start with that and trace it back to its likely sources. It is true that the total number of barrels from which campaign funds, as well as the assessment levies, were collected is a secret buried with destroyed bankbooks, but the usual half-cent per barrel for dues, plus the three cents per barrel assessment for campaign purposes agreed to in 1913, would bring in that $1,400,000 if the assessment had been levied on only forty millions of barrels. Forty million barrels formed not more than two-thirds of the total barrelage of the country for that year. Allowing $100,000 for national administration expenses, the amount available from the brewers for campaigns was $1,300,000. At that time the agreement in operation was that the brewers should furnish two-thirds and the distillers one-third of the campaign fund, so the brewers' 148140quota of $1,400,000 was augmented by a distillers' quota of over $700,000, making a total of $2,100,000 plus, raised by the national liquor organizations.

It was the rule that the manager of each State campaign must raise within the State a sum equal to the sum given to that State's campaign fund from the national fund. If each State, therefore, merely duplicated its quota from the national fund, the total funds, national and State, available for campaign purposes reached the vast sum of four million dollars. As a matter of fact, though some States may not have raised more than the necessary amounts to secure the national contribution, other States raised funds far in excess of those amounts. We know this because assessments of five cents upwards to $2.00 per barrel were admitted, and twenty cents was not unusual.

In Ohio, where the hardest fought battle between the prohibition and liquor forces was waged and where woman suffrage was caught in the embroglio and held fast for a dozen years, the annual output was about five millions of barrels, and it was admitted that that State paid twenty cents per barrel regularly during the years of its main struggle. Such a State assessment alone would have netted an annual fund of a million dollars. If State assessments of twenty cents per barrel applied on the total 40,000,000 barrelage from which was raised the $1,400,000 known to have been deposited as the tribute from the two national liquor organizations, the result would have been eight millions of dollars, instead of the mere two millions plus, necessary to match the national contributions. That the State funds approached this amount is supported by considerable evidence. For example, the manager of the anti-prohibition campaign in Texas wrote Adolph Busch, in 1913, that plans to raise five and a half millions of dollars for their campaign had been completed and that it ought to be enough.* Mr. 149141Beis of Ohio in a secret conference said* that the State Brewers' Association had spent half a million dollars in 1913 and would spend another in 1914.

From all of which it seems fairly clear that the liquor funds spent in the political campaigns of the country ranged from four to ten millions of dollars a year.

It was against such a Croesus foe as this that suffrage, with its pitiful but consecrated dimes and dollars, dared raise its head.—“I will pledge my car fare,” said a shabby little woman at an upstate suffrage meeting in the New York campaign of 1915, when pledges of money to the suffrage campaign were being made. “I will pledge my car fare. I can walk to and from my work.”

There were other sources of money-raising than the assessments upon the output of the liquor manufacturers. In a fervid speech made at a closed session of the United States Brewers' Association in 1913 by Percy Andreae † it was said that the allied interests of Ohio had paid out a million dollars in five years to perfect an organization which he declared performed campaign work with “unerring accuracy.”

A National Retail Liquor Dealers' Association, organized in 1893 with auxiliaries in each State, was also a political and financial ally. A system of assessment upon the sales of local dealers in order to secure campaign funds was the rule in this organization. The liquor retailers invented a new method, which was later adopted by the manufacturers and wholesalers. When paying bills for any and all supplies, such as plumbing, furniture, crockery, glassware, groceries, it became their custom to withhold a small per cent, with the explanation that should prohibition obtain they would no longer be 150142able to buy, and as their creditor would lose trade to that extent he surely ought to be willing to assist in the campaign to continue his own business.

Although the liquor management of anti-suffrage campaigns was subrosa so far as possible, the same method of raising funds for the direct purpose of opposing woman suffrage was used in several States (several of the covering letters were turned over to suffrage workers). In Montana, such a letter was sent out while the suffrage measure was pending in the Legislature, and again after it had been submitted to the voters. That letter openly connected the liquor interests and anti-suffrage in these words, “The local wholesalers and retailers are working unanimously to maintain for Montana the proud position of being the wettest State in the Union. This takes money. We are preparing a State-wide campaign against woman suffrage in this State. Our local retailers are doing all they can but the burden is too heavy for them to carry alone and it is only right that those who are enjoying and making a profit from the sale of their goods should help us in conserving for them their accounts and goods.”

A National Hotel Men's Association became an active and open opponent of prohibition and an active but secret opponent of woman suffrage. Druggists and other dealers in various kinds of liquors, and tobacco manufacturers and dealers were also organized opponents of both movements. The money raised by these organizations was probably expended in their own activities and no estimate of the amounts so used can be made, though they swelled the unknown total of the anti-prohibition and anti-suffrage campaign funds.

Reports on woman suffrage were held to be as vital to the liquor interests as those on prohibition, as the minutes of several secret conferences secured on subpoena revealed. At a conference between the “Interstate Conference Committee” and the Board of Trustees 151143of the United States Brewers' Association, held at the Hotel Kimball, Springfield, Massachusetts, October 13, 1913, Oscar Schmidt, a Milwaukee brewer, said:

“Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: ... I have been in this game fighting prohibition for about thirty years and I want you to know that I learn something all the time.... For the State of Wisconsin I will have only a few words to say, that we are fortunate in having a good organization.... In the last campaign ... we had the usual bills, like every other state-county option, women's suffrage in about six different forms and we had everything else, which were all defeated; and I can say that can be done only by organization and by active work of the brewers being on the job all the time and not leaving it to somebody else....”

(Wisconsin's only referendum on suffrage was defeated in 1912.)

“I am also a delegate from Nebraska.... For eight years I have been treasurer of the so-called Executive Committee consisting of three brewers from Omaha and two smaller brewers from the State. These five brewers have been doing all the work.... The women's suffrage in the State we defeated two years ago at a tremendous expense and we won in the State by about 9,000 votes. If they had carried the election, of course the State would have been dry.”*

(This boast is inexplicable, as the Nebraska referendum on woman suffrage was defeated in 1914.)

Mr. Doyle of the Illinois State Brewers' Association wanted “to suggest” and “to implore” that “female suffrage” be defeated at all hazards.

“As the result of experience we have had with two different subjects, I want to suggest to the gentlemen who are here a very serious matter, that if you are living in liberal states which have not the initiative and referendum and have not 152144female suffrage, I want to implore you to defeat these two things at all hazards.”*

Mr. Schlighting, South Dakota brewer, said:

“We have some possibility of winning if we get plenty of assistance.... So far we have been able to cope with these things; we have defeated county option by the vote of the people at four different times. We have defeated women's suffrage at three different times, and I want to say that this association, the United States Brewers' Association, through the efforts of one gentleman, Mr. Edward Dietrich, has been able to cope with it, and he has always been fortunate in winning.”†

A report on Iowa was presented to the Interstate Conference Committee of the United States Brewers' Association by Henry Thuenen, General Counsel of the Iowa Brewers' Association, on June 10, 1915, in which he said: ‡

“We are of the opinion that Woman's Suffrage can be defeated, although we believe that the liquor interests should not be known as the contending force against this amendment. (Italics ours.) Action of some kind should be taken to assure a real and active campaign against this measure.

To sum up, what Iowa needs at your hands, if you are disposed to interest yourselves in the State, is—

First, A contest on Woman's Suffrage at the Primary, in 1916.

Second, A contest for liberal Senators at the election, in 1916, and if this fails, then

Third, a contest at the polls on the prohibitory amendment which will be held at the general election in 1917 unless other wise provided by the Legislature.”

The brewers were disposed to interest themselves in the State. They sent the assistance, and woman suffrage 153145was announced as defeated in Iowa in 1916—although suffragists believed it was won.*

The struggle between temperance and liquor forces had reached its height in 1913. Local option authorized by the Legislatures of most States had thrown large expanses of territory into the “dry” column. Statewide prohibition had been established in several States and the issue was a crucial one in the politics of many others. Court decisions were notably more friendly to the temperance side of legal contests, but a far more important factor in the situation was the addition of many powerful manufacturers to the prohibition forces. The labor unions had striven long for employer's liabilities in cases of death and accident of employees, and such laws had been passed by many States. Manufacturers now discovered that accidents happened more often when men were under the influence of intoxicants and sought to protect themselves from this risk by advocating the legal removal of the cause. Another cogent factor pushing them toward prohibition was the argument that working forces would not be so depleted at the beginning of each work-week if working men had no Saturday night and Sunday sprees to sleep off on Monday morning. A tremendous impulse was given prohibition through the addition of this new ally. Legislators, sensing a changed public opinion, became more independent and daring. The liquor traffic recognized the need of more money and more intensive campaigning than ever before. Onlookers saw the final battle emerging from the half century struggle.

The brewers promptly entered into the five years' agreement previously noted to provide more money, and accepted the proposal of Percy Andreae, chief of a publicity bureau for the Brewers' Association, to increase organization. It was in an executive session of the United States Brewers' Association, held in Atlantic City 154146in October, 1913,* that he urged this new policy. He announced that arrangements were already completed whereby the venture would be made operative under his direction. He did not take the brewers into his confidence as to how the plan was to be put into execution. “I must have a free hand,” he said. “No one who realizes the character and the magnitude of the work I have undertaken will believe that it could be accomplished under any other conditions. An army—and it is an army if you please, that is to be called into existence—must have a leader.... What hope would there be for the success of an undertaking ... involving alliances which the slightest misconstruction ... of our intentions would place in jeopardy if I were obliged to herald all details ... to the world, which I would be doing if I confided them to the knowledge of several hundred men.”

The general plan, however, was made clear and involved two main features:

1. To rely no longer upon contributions and favors as the sole means of controlling parties and politicians, but to add the threat of large blocks of voters which would go for or against the party or candidate who did not do the bidding of the trade.

Mr. Andreae was authorized to proceed upon the policy that the foreign vote should be organized in order to control elections and legislation. The experiment about to be tried was not new, and had already proved 155147itself. It had organized the Russian vote against woman suffrage in the Dakotas, the German vote in Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa, the Negro vote in Kansas and Oklahoma, the Chinese vote in California.

The most important organizing done along this line was that which resulted in the National Association of Commerce and Labor. Mr. Andreae organized it and became its president. It appeared to be a business man's organization and exerted great influence in consequence upon national and State political parties. Its staff salaries were $46,000 per year and its workers were mainly ex-State Senators and Representatives.

With these precedents to encourage similar activities, innumerable societies sprang up. Every State with a prohibition or suffrage campaign had its inevitable accompaniment of Home Rule Societies, Personal Liberty Leagues, Traveling Men's or Merchants' Leagues, Men's Anti-Suffrage Associations, ad infinitum. With object and sponsorship concealed, the seemingly spontaneous outburst of public protest exerted an influence, often widespread and effective.

The allied organization that performed the deadliest work in woman suffrage campaigns was the German-American Alliance. It was organized in 1901 and chartered in 1907, and although the leading German brewers were influential members from the beginning, it is probable that it was not organized originally either for the purpose of defending the liquor traffic or for pro-German propaganda. Its charter was taken away by unanimous vote of Congress in 1918 upon proved charges that it was in part supported by the brewers and that some of its officers were engaged in dangerous pro-German activities, yet the rank and file of the membership, however obedient to the “systematized direction” of their votes, were probably quite unaware of the illegal part the organization was playing in American politics.

At the national convention of this German organization 156148in San Francisco in 1911, a membership of 2,500,000 persons and 10,000 branches were claimed. There were at the time 700 German newspapers in the country. The National Bulletin, the national organ of the Alliance, was resuscitated by the brewers, its organizing committees in Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Indiana and probably other States* were assisted financially by the brewers, and when in 1914 a headquarters and a lobby were established in Washington, the brewers paid the rent.

Each State German Alliance had a political committee which received direct from the liquor campaign managers a ticket to be supported at each election. Meanwhile, an active campaign by letter and circular, as well as through meetings, was maintained in States holding elections, to persuade all Germans to register and vote. In Texas, Missouri, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Michigan, this organized German-liquor vote was hurled into woman suffrage referenda campaigns with the unerring accuracy claimed for it, the combination of the German-American Alliance with the liquor trade making a well-nigh all-controlling political power in these States.

An important feature of the plan for utilizing the foreign-born vote was the subrosa campaign to increase naturalization, the fees often being paid by the liquor forces. Under subpoena, documents and proceedings showed that this had been done in several States. In Texas, where foreign citizens were allowed to vote on first papers, the campaign took the direction of urging Germans to pay their poll-tax in order that they might vote. Joseph Keller, Chairman of the Propaganda Committee of the German-American Alliance, reported to Percy Andreae that the anti-prohibitionists had gained 70,000 votes through the payment of the poll tax.†

Probably the most ambitious venture along this line was in Pennsylvania, where special headquarters were established for the purpose of giving the appearance of labor offices with names of leading labor leaders on the doors. Thither men were urged to go, and their naturalization was facilitated by liquor money for the purpose of gaining more votes under control. Upon cross-examination, Mr. Gardner, president of the Pennsylvania Brewers, admitted that the electorate had been increased there by two or three hundred thousand votes, although “Jim said he could do better than that.”*

The liquor trade was non-partisan and made its combination with any or all parties. Henry Thuenen, general counsel of Republican Iowa's Brewers' Association, reported to Percy Andreae, June, 1914, that the Republican nominations for governor and lieutenant-governor were very satisfactory, as were the Democratic nominations. The Democratic nominations for United States Senator and for Congress were equally gratifying. For all the big offices, “we won in every instance.”—“This being the first time that the so-called Andreae system of organization was put into practice in Iowa, you are to be congratulated upon results.... With the continued application of the system of organization we have commenced in Iowa, it cannot be more than one or two battles until we will find ourselves in possession of the fort. I am sure that if we continue this work through another, or at least two more campaigns, we will be practically in a position to dictate legislation on the liquor question.”†

It should be plain by now why it was that when suffragists turned from the closed doors of Congress to seek justice by State action, they found that legislative doors were also closed; nay more—mysteriously locked! Suffragists approached their task with the exaltation of a belief that theirs was a righteous reform demanded by 158150the great destinies of the human race. In the beginning they regarded the opposition they met as normal inertia to be overcome, but in later years the end of many campaigns left them prostrated with amazed despair, for with the years came the clearer comprehension of the invisible and devious but monstrous force against which suffrage was contending.

The legislative anti-suffrage work of the liquor interests began by simple processes. The first move was to “fix” the committee to which a suffrage bill was referred and this they, or some other mysterious power, were able to do in nearly three-fourths of the suffrage legislative campaigns. An overworked committee, a crowded legislative calendar, were the explanations given to women workers, while the bargains which brought the result were made without witnesses behind closed doors. If the suffrage bill was likely to be reported out by the committee to which it had been referred, work was begun on the legislators.

Very often the legislative campaign was confined to the Senate, the smaller body where a single man or small group of men could be a sufficient balance of power to insure an adverse vote. The liquor lobbyist worked with economy and concentrated his efforts on a few men who held key positions in the Legislature. The member who believed that his political future depended upon getting a bill through the Legislature often traded his vote on suffrage for that of a liquor or railroad man who favored his pet measure.

Men who could not be bought were definitely influenced by the knowledge that generous contributions were made to the State and national campaign committees of their party by representatives of the trade, and that blocks of voters alienated from party support would mean party defeat. With these thoughts in their minds, they were readily persuaded that women could wait for the vote. Cajolery, promises of assistance in coming 159151campaigns, presents to wives, attentions to relatives and friends, business, financial and political preferment, were all among the methods employed. If the legislative poll showed a majority by these means, no others were applied. If, however, a few votes were still necessary to make the majority, the “third degree” of politics was brought to bear. Intimidation, threats “to make or break men” and out-and-out bribery were the methods used at this stage.

The women in time learned to know the signs, but they had incomplete proof to offer. The public neither knew nor wanted to know. After every legislative term, the reports of State suffrage auxiliaries to the National Suffrage Association bore a remarkable similarity of testimony. The full force of the statements of any one became apparent only when taken in connection with all the others. Men who wanted to go straight compromised with their consciences in that shady political borderland lying between honesty and dishonesty. An illustration chosen from many on file explains the difficulties of such men. It came from a State wherein manufacturers, railroads and liquor interests had each their great political battles and where all three worked together to secure the desired aims of any one. Wrote the State suffrage officer February, 1917:

“That the Senators meant to vote for the suffrage bill when they first came to —, we believe. They said to us and to each other that they were pledged to it. The women antisuffragists who appeared at the hearing seemed to have made no impression. Various Senators told us so repeatedly. Yet gradually Senators began to weaken. One Senator, who spoke and voted for our bill, said ‘You know, I suppose, that it was the liquor interests which were responsible for the death of the bill.’ Many others said the same thing, but no man will come out in the open and make a charge against the wet interests and back it up, for they are too afraid of those interests.

“A Senator who had openly espoused the bill in this Legislature 160152and pledged himself to vote for it, not only voted, but made a speech against it. This was a matter of frequent occurrence, but this Senator gave an interview to the women to whom he had pledged his support, unusual for its frankness. Said he: ‘The client giving me most business is a manufacturer who is tied up with the liquor interests. The most powerful newspaper in the town gives me all its legal business but the newspaper is wet in policy and also opposed to woman suffrage. If I become too pronounced as a champion of woman suffrage, the liquor interests would put the screws on the manufacturer and he in turn would notify me that he had found it convenient to seek legal counsel elsewhere. The newspaper would let me know that my services could be dispensed with. I have a nice home, a little Ford for business and pleasure, and two sons to educate. I cannot afford to lose the patronage of my two best-paying clients.’ He added that he had often regretted that he was not a man of wealth and thus could be independent.”

Nowhere does the rule, “Self-preservation is the first law of nature,” show itself more conspicuously than in politics. The liquor trade's representatives systematically proceeded with faith in the claim that “every man has his price.” From that base were projected the methods by which Legislatures were controlled.

The liquor trade also made allies of other special interests seeking legislative protection or privilege, and successes were frequently due to this combination. Liquor, railroad, manufacturers’, cattle, sheep, and packers’ lobbies were among the allied interests. None had “trouble” in every State nor in every Legislature but all had their big political campaigns, which frequently resulted in regularly employed counsel for the liquor interests being nominated as representatives of the people by the controlling party—and being elected by unsuspecting voters to seats in the Legislature. Within the legislative forum such men fought the battles of those who paid them. When two or three were engaged upon measures in the 161153same Legislature, each having a group of legislators at command, it was usually easy to effect a union of forces whereby the trading of votes secured more certain results for all. By no other theory is the opposition to woman suffrage by railroad lobbies, for instance, to be explained; and for many years railroad lobbies were a hostile factor that suffragists constantly encountered.

To illustrate: An investigation into railroad political activities by the New Hampshire Public Service Commission in April, 1916, was summed up in a public report. It revealed that men employed for the purpose of defending the interests of the Boston and Maine Railroad had also the secret purpose of opposing woman suffrage, and one of these men, while drawing a salary from the railroad, drew another from the State as delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1913, where he served as floor leader against woman suffrage. While the Investigating Commission was unable to present a complete account of the political activities of the railroad, since no minutes, contracts or financial reports could be found, and the railroad representatives refused to remember, yet enough was revealed to establish the fact that the Boston and Maine expended considerable money in the effort to prevent the submission of woman suffrage by the New Hampshire Constitutional Convention of 1912. The suffrage workers of the State reported at the time that three agencies opposed their measure, a railroad lobby, a liquor lobby and a manufacturers' lobby. The resolution to submit a woman suffrage amendment was defeated, 208 to 149. But not until the revelations of 1916, four years later, was the part taken in the campaigns by the railroad lobby made manifest.

After the State of Washington, in 1910, and California, in 1911, had slipped into the suffrage column, an apparent challenging of the national brewers' admonition to keep to an underground policy on woman suffrage appeared in many States and the liquor forces more 162154boldly displayed their hostility to woman suffrage. In the following year, 1912, when six States* had referenda campaigns on suffrage amendments, the trade so far abandoned its previous policy of “the still hunt” as to become the most conspicuous opponent in each State. Consternation was aroused in the liquor camps when the press headlines, the morning after the first election in which women had participated in Illinois, announced that woman suffrage had closed one thousand saloons. Public expressions of liquor resentment became instantly bolder.

At the annual meeting of the National Retail Dealers' Association that year, Neil Bonner, the president, said in his address:

“We need not fear the churches, the men are voting the old tickets; we need not fear the ministers, for the most part they follow the men of the churches; we need not fear the Y. M. C. A., for it does not do aggressive work, but, gentlemen, we need to fear the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the ballot in the hands of women; therefore, gentlemen, fight woman suffrage.”

In 1914 there were seven † State amendment campaigns, five of which were lost. It is noteworthy that all trade papers within those States openly opposed the amendments. The general character of their pronouncements may be set forth in a few examples.Progress, the official organ of the Wisconsin State Retail Dealers' Protective Association, published at Watertown, Wisconsin, and describing itself on its editorial page as “An educational Journal covering every phase of the retail, wholesale liquor and brewing industries,” devoted much space and energy in 1912 to the suffrage campaigns then in progress in Wisconsin and Michigan and was a fair 163155example of many liquor trade papers. One editorial caption was: “Give ballots to women and industry goes to smash.” The article continued:

“If women get the ballot it means prohibition. It means that the farmer must stop growing corn, must stop growing rye and must stop growing barley. It means that the breweries must suspend business, it means that the saloons must close.... The condition is serious. Woman suffrage means prohibition.

“It is the duty of all men of this State who love their home, their family, their liberty, their rights and their citizenship, to go to the polls on November 5 and vote against this constitutional amendment.”

The Champion of Fair Play, chief liquor organ of Illinois, kept a standing article urging every member of the Liquor Dealers' Association of that State to bring all possible pressure from every quarter to defeat the woman suffrage bill which passed in 1913. The National Forum of Butte, Montana, was particularly aggressive that year. In the April number an article, “A Little Plain Talk,” urged more activity against woman suffrage:

“Right now the question of woman suffrage is before the people of this State. If it carries, the saloons and breweries are doomed. If suffrage carries, the advocates of the movement will not be to blame. The blame will be at the door of the saloon man and brewer. It will not be a case of homicide, but it will be a clear case of suicide. Together we assist, and by united effort woman suffrage can be defeated, but divided, the saloons and breweries of Montana will be matters of history within a few years.”

Meantime the old policy of cloaked activity was not entirely abandoned. On January 14, 1914, H. T. Fox, Secretary of the United States Brewers' Association, wrote the Fred Miller Brewing Company of Milwaukee, in answer to an inquiry as to what was being done “in 164156regard to woman suffrage and the spring elections of Illinois”:

“In regard to the matter of woman suffrage, we are trying to keep from having any connection with it whatever. We are, however, in a position to establish channels of communication with the leaders of the Anti-Suffrage Movement for our friends in any State where suffrage is an issue. I consider it most dangerous to have the retailers identified or active in any way in this fight, as it will be used against us everywhere. The Illinois brewers had a meeting last week, and while I have no definite particulars, I understand that they have made plans for a very active campaign in connection with the Spring elections!”*

As the suffrage and prohibition campaigns whirled faster and faster, a change of position on suffrage was advocated for the liquor interests. In 1914, M. Michelson proposed to Hugh T. Fox, Secretary of United States Brewers' Association, plans for placing “the brewers squarely on the side of progress . . . the ally of the social reformer,” and proceeded, under the head, “woman suffrage,” as follows:

“Nothing, it seems to me, can be more short-sighted than the policy of the brewers in some States in actively opposing, and, therefore, arousing the hostility of what is undoubtedly the most fanatical of all groups in American politics today. . . .

“By leaving out of consideration its indirect power, there can be no question that suffrage will be extended to many more States within the next year. This means that the voting population of those States will be doubled. In some of the suffrage States prohibition will come and there will be the question of compensation to the brewer. Why arouse the antagonism of one-half the voters? Why not educate them—and before they have the vote? . . .

“I think the answer is to be found in the New Republic of August 21. The New Republic does not believe in the 165157methods employed by the Texas brewers who, masquerading under the name of Farmers' Union et al, attack woman suffrage. ‘The methods of the Texas Business Men's Association furnish an excellent example of how public opinion is poisoned against woman suffrage.’ . . .

“The New Republic is . . . quoted in newspapers throughout the country, is opposed to prohibition, yet publishes editorials that can be used by the prohibitionist, and refuses to get material from the brewers because of the position taken by the brewers towards woman suffrage. . . . It is true that in some States the Brewers may be able to successfully fight woman's suffrage for years, but those few should not be allowed to sacrifice the industry in other States where suffrage is strong. . . .”

M. Michklson.

The New Republic's reference to the Texas Business Men's Association, quoted above, bore on a line of antisuffrage activity that developed in 1915 and was especially directed to the four eastern States, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Jersey, where suffrage campaigns were in progress. Investigation revealed that in Texas a Farmers' Union had gained a large membership and then extended itself into a National Farmers' Union. Peter Radford and W. D. Lewis were successive presidents, and apparently engaged in a private enterprise by establishing a publicity bureau paid for by those who desired to distribute propaganda. A “Texas Business Men's Association” was operated by these same men and the publicity activities of the two organizations were interchangeable. The evidence made clear that contributions from railroads, brewers, retail liquor-dealers, telephone, telegraph, electric, oil, gas and packing companies supported the publicity. Free plate was issued to rural papers. It carried propaganda favorable to all its supporters and against woman suffrage. The investigation led to the repudiation of the men by the Farmers' Union. In a short time the same service 166158was again instituted under the name of the Agricultural and Commercial Press Service. Under different direction a National Council of the Farmers' Co-operative Association, with Headquarters in Nebraska, and a Grain Dealers' Association, with Headquarters in North Dakota, were instituted and issued similar press services.

The open campaign of self-defense conducted by the liquor forces can be respected as the unquestioned privilege and right of all who seek to convince public opinion. The point at issue is that the liquor interests did not rely upon open propaganda but upon secret maneuvers for results, and in this field no moral law, no democratic principle, no right of majorities was recognized. While its activities were suspected by all observers of political events, proof was lacking, and its power was so intricately bound up with partisan politics that none but the Prohibitionists, and not all of them, dared proclaim the truth.

The party machine was an instrument perfectly suited to the uses of the liquor trade and the “boss” was a powerful ally. The boss and the machine made the trade secure for many years and the trade lengthened and strengthened the rule of the boss and the machine. Together they disciplined parties and dictated platforms and tickets. No party dared inaugurate war on this power; to do so meant its own certain defeat, since the trade would make an inevitable alliance with its rival. Neither dominant party has ever endorsed either prohibition or its enforcement in a national platform.

The power of this gigantic political machine, allying itself with the Republican organization in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, with the Democratic organization in Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska, making connections with both in Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, New York, and choosing candidates from both tickets when no alliances could be made with party managers, recognizing loyalty to none and serving no cause but its own, 167158

No reform of government can be written into law in America until it has run a gauntlet of handicaps and hazards peculiar to this country. Some are inherent in the range and quality of our electorate; some are incidental to the operation of our laws, especially our election laws, as already written. In the case of woman suffrage each and all of them proved so particularly crippling as to be entitled to a chapter of their own.

To begin with, woman suffrage reached one of its first great moments just after the Civil War. The War had done two things to the immediate detriment of suffrage, along with all other idealistic causes. It had swept into their graves thousands of idealistic American men and it had opened the doors of America to thousands of unidealistic immigrants from Europe.

The appalling figures of the war show that one hundred thousand young men, the flower of the manhood of North and South, gave up their lives in the contest. The vacancies created in population and electorate were ultimately filled by immigrants, who, fleeing from European conscription and lured by the promise of high wages or profits, flocked to our shores in great numbers. Their muscles were as tense, their thrift as constant, their industry as profit-producing as those of the men who had gone. But there were differences which affected the entire history of the nation.

In the veins of many thousands of the dead, both North and South, flowed the blood of the heroes of the 170161Revolution. They were men who had been educated in American schools and knew the ideals and principles upon which the young Republic had been founded. Their idealism had been supported after the European uprising of 1848 by a considerable number of European exiles or disappointed idealists, who, possessing as intense a love of political liberty as any American, found refuge in the United States, and not only gave gallant service in the Northern Army, but made the supreme sacrifice. Such additions were helpful factors in a nation striving for democracy. So, too, was the fact that immigration immediately after the war came from the North of Europe, where education and movements toward political freedom had made most progress.

But later that tide from the North was checked, and another set in from the South of Europe where illiteracy was most prevalent. By the naturalization law, immigrants were granted the privilege of citizenship after a five years' residence. Male citizens became voters in all States when qualified by age and residence in accordance with their laws. Fifteen States, impatient to attain numbers and prosperity, offered to foreign-born settlers the inducement of a vote before citizenship had been acquired, the declaration of intention to become a citizen, or “first papers,” being the sole qualification required in addition to those of residence. Thus it came about that immigrant voters, who took the places of the men that had gone, had neither understanding of American principles nor a heritage which easily acquired it. Immigrants from each European nation generally joined the party advocated by earlier immigrants of their nationality, the Germans, Scandinavians and Italians usually allying themselves with the Republican party, and the Irish, Greeks and other southeastern nationals with the Democratic party.

The newcomers furnished so fruitful a field in which to recruit party voters that all parties yielded to the 171162temptation. The new voters were not tutored in American history, principles or traditions; they were not made to understand that votes mean responsibility for the common welfare; instead they were urged to support a party because that party would do most for the men of their nationality. The method used was to pay leading men, usually called key men, to round up their nationalities on election day. If the pressure was great and competition strong, votes were bought, yet a loyalty to the party chosen was often beyond purchase. An illiterate Italian bootblack in the national suffrage headquarters building in New York often said that he had been offered a political job as street cleaner, but, said he, “I didn't take it because I would have to vote the Democratic ticket.”

Until the closing years of the struggle, when the suffrage army grew vastly larger and was recruited from all classes, its leaders and members were women of American birth, education and ideals. A remarkable number were daughters of Revolutionary fathers and in their childhood homes had learned the meaning of political freedom and had inherited other ideas of progress. Such women, turning to the States to seek enfranchisement, were driven to beg their right to have their opinions counted from Negroes, newly emancipated, untrained, and from foreign-born voters, mainly uneducated, with views concerning women molded by European tradition. No other women in the world suffered such humiliation nor worked against such odds for their political liberty.

Yet the woman suffrage movement in the United States was a movement of the spirit of the Revolution which was striving to hold the nation to the ideals which won independence.

All women of other lands now enfranchised (1923) received their vote by act of a single parliament, with the exception of two provinces of Canada where the 172163question was put to referendum. In the United States, no State Legislature possessed authority to extend more than a restricted vote to women and some could not do that. Woman suffrage within the States meant approval by a majority, and in several States more than a majority, of the electors voting on the question. The necessary procedure was to secure an amendment to the State constitution by “striking out the word male.” Thousands of voters did not know what a constitution or an amendment meant and were easily persuaded that striking out the word male “would take the vote away from men and give it to women!”

In the year 1915, the suffrage committees of four campaign States, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Jersey, united in the publication of literature. One flier, setting forth simple principles, was illustrated by a cartoon in which a cradle labeled “political liberty” was being rocked by a big foot, labeled “the Spirit of '76.” In all four States these had to be withdrawn because of the voters who did not know the meaning of those phrases and interpreted the cartoon as meaning that when women vote men will have to rock the baby's cradle.

The enfranchisement of the black man by bayonet turned into the electorate a vote, enormous in some States, which in every referendum campaign became a solid bloc, under the direction of white men, with which to club back the advancing suffrage forces. The Negro vote proved to be an exceedingly venal one and even though Negroes usually voted the Republican ticket, they were often able to exact pay for their loyalty. A professor at Princeton, suspecting that a certain colored factotum sold his vote, said to him the day after election,—“Well, George, what did you get for your vote yesterday?”—“Five dollars, sah.”—“Well, which ticket did you vote for?”—“Republican, sah, but de Democrats offered me more.”—“Well then, why didn't you take the 173164highest bid?”—“Well, sah, I specs de Democrats be de corruptedest.”

The Negro should not be too much blamed for his political weaknesses; he was untrained and ignorant and leaned upon the advice of the white man who freed him from slavery, much as a child leans upon an elder. Those upon whom he leaned were not the great men who advocated human rights, but small men who lived by prostituting human rights.

With the enfranchisement of the Negro, the last man in the United States was enfranchised except the Indians living on reservations. As these were reclaimed from primitive habits and established in civilized customs, they too were enfranchised by the federal government and were given their chance to vote against extending the right of suffrage to white women, which they proceeded to do in several States.

After the war the Negro, and the foreign-born, together with the illiterate American voter, offered continual temptation to unscrupulous interests within and without the party, whose privilege or profit was affected by an election or the fate of a legislative bill. “Wherever there is money, there will be corruption,” says James Bryce,* and wherever there is a large portion of an electorate too ignorant to understand party differences or the nature of political issues, a combination is created which will never fail to produce an extreme variety of corruption. Prosperity after the war was stimulated by the protective tariff, by city, State and national franchises, and various commercial concessions. Questions involved in these matters became issues of campaigns, and men whose profits thus depended upon Legislatures or elections were induced to invest a portion of their profits in politics in order that more profits might be forthcoming. A corrupted minority of the monied interest, combined with a corruptible minority of the electorate, produced 174165the inevitable, and a balance of power was created which at times dictated legislation and won elections.

This vicious combination caused the State Legislatures to elect so many United States Senators in bold shamelessness that the dominant parties took up the challenge of the Populists and secured the adoption of a federal amendment providing for the popular election of Senators. This same combination ruled the large cities with such utter disregard for honor or honesty that campaigns by reform elements were constantly waged “to put the rascals out” and that, too, with more defeats than successes. Neither party was clean; the “shame of the cities” has been Democratic in New York and Boston, Republican in Philadelphia and St. Louis. Votes have been bought in elections by both parties, and, although the long struggle for the restoration of decency has removed the baser forms of corruption, the end is not yet. An occasional judge has been proved corruptible, juries have been often suspected and legislation not infrequently has borne the signs of purchase. Corporations, with need for political protection, made large contributions to parties and candidates, expecting political favors in return, until the public made so loud a protest that such contributions were forbidden by law. Individual stockholders could do what their collective corporation was forbidden to do, however, and thus the law was easily evaded. Manufacturers, railroads and the liquor trade kept sharp men on watch over all Legislatures and Congress, in order that no legislation inimical to their interests should be passed without their knowledge, and when measures affecting them came up, flocks of professional lobbyists descended upon the Legislature. A man thoroughly versed in all the intricacies of parliamentary law and legislative procedure, informed as to the history, the ambitions and the weaknesses of every legislator, affable, plausible, well-mannered, was an ideal chief for these lobbies. He was often a lawyer and usually a far 175166abler man than the majority of the legislators he was expected “to handle.”

The pay of legislators has always been so small that men ambitious for business success would not give the time necessary to legislative service. The State custom of selecting representatives from the residents of districts often limits the selection of candidates to people ill-fitted for the duties involved. Every Legislature is likely in consequence of these conditions to include a number of men low in mental and moral qualities, easily moved by flattery and tempted by money. “What sort of a Legislature have you got?” was asked in one State.* Quick came the answer, “As good as money can buy.”

In the second election of Abraham Lincoln in 1864, loyal men at the North, sincerely believing that the fate of the nation would be endangered should the election be entrusted to the free will of an electorate from which loyal men had gone to the front, leaving a disproportion of disloyal ones at home, bought votes to save the day, conscientious Christian gentlemen contributing to this end. The corruption thus begun, or continued from prewar days, was kept alive by elements which were wholly selfish and sordid. New Hampshire furnishes a wellknown example of the methods which robbed many States of all but the form of democratic government. Soon after the war a contest began between the Boston and Maine Railway and the Concord Railway for control of the State. It continued before the voters, the Legislature and in the courts for nearly twenty years. Legislators were bought in each succeeding Legislature, the price climbing higher each year, and when the contest grew most intense, agents of the two railroads selected candidates satisfactory to their respective sides, and bought votes at the polls to elect them. Even at that, they were obliged to pay for the loyalty of the successful candidate.

The bitterness of the contest overshadowed all partisan 176167interests. Electors, observing that others were being paid for their support, excused themselves with the philosophy that one railroad was bound to win and the winner ought to pay for the privilege, and joined the list of the purchasable. The Concord road was finally beaten in the struggle and its representatives made no secret of the fact that the contest had cost it a million dollars. The successful Boston and Maine never divulged the secret of the cost of its victory, but in after years was merged with other railroad interests, thus offering circumstantial evidence that it had impoverished itself in the contest. United States Senator William E. Chandler was outspoken in his condemnation of the methods employed, and was promptly punished by the loss of his seat. The electorate was utterly demoralized by this wholesale purchase of votes. In ordinary elections electors insisted upon being paid for their time, even when supporting the party of their choice. Other men were frankly for sale to the highest bidder. “Floaters,” as the purchasable voters were called, gathered around the polling places and refused to sell their votes until closing time approached, when prices went up.

“Why,” asked a suffragist of the Republican State Chairman, “do not the Republican leaders agree with Democratic leaders to buy no more votes and thus rescue the State from its shameful degradation?” With a whimsical smile, he replied, “It was tried once in the town of C—, and when the announcement was made that no votes were to be bought the floaters called a convention, nominated a ticket and elected it.” Thus had the right of voters to be bought been firmly established!

When in 1919 the National Suffrage Association sent women into New England to help the local workers in polling their Legislatures, preparatory to the ratification of the Federal Suffrage Amendment, several members quite frankly responded with the confession that they were not at liberty to promise their votes upon any question 177168without consulting the “man who put me in.” Similar demoralizing conditions were constantly found throughout New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and spasmodically in other Northern States. Few States, if any, have escaped this corrupting influence, which everywhere has lowered political standards and subverted democratic freedom of choice.

Yet at no time have honest majorities entirely surrendered to criminal minorities and many a hard battle between the two has been fought, and sometimes won. In response to public opinion, laws curbing the practices which had aided corrupt minorities have been passed, and although these have been difficult of enforcement, they have exercised a restraining influence.

“In the United States,” said Mr. Bryce,* “the swift growth of prodigious fortunes and the opportunities for increasing them by obtaining favors from the governments of States and cities had coincided with the building up of party organizations through whose help these favors could be obtained. The influence of what is called ‘Big Business,’ wealth concentrated in a few hands and finding its tools in politicians and party organizations, was for many years a fruitful source of mischief, exploiting the resources of the country for its selfish purposes. These abuses provoked a reaction. ‘Big Business’ began to be bitted and bridled, and though it still shows fight, can hardly recover the dominance it enjoyed thirty years ago, for public opinion has grown more sensitive and vigilant.”

The effect of corruption upon the political history of the nation has been to drive many of the best equipped men out of politics and to render those who accept office conservative and exceedingly cynical toward “the rights of the people.” Men have long warned women of the “dirty mire of politics” and many have been in truth 178169pessimistic concerning the permanency of self-government. “Wait,” they said, “until manhood suffrage has proved itself, money has been eliminated, and politics has become a fit place for women.” This plea was conscientious and sincere and served to discourage many women of their class from aiding the campaigns for the vote. “We know woman suffrage is just and that it will come, but this is not the time,” said men and women in large numbers in every suffrage campaign, and held themselves fastidiously aloof from co-operation.

Still other hazards, hazards of a legal nature, beset the path of suffragists and balked their efforts. For instance, an amendment to a State constitution must, in most States, pass two consecutive Legislatures, the campaign to secure submission thus covering a period of three or four years. Several States require more than a majority of the Legislature on the second passage. States requiring passage through one Legislature only usually call for more than a majority vote, three-fifths, three-fourths, two-thirds, being the usual provisions. And when a majority vote of one Legislature only is required for passage, additional handicaps are imposed over the election, it being usual to require the majority of all the votes cast at the election, instead of the majority cast on the proposition. The suffrage referendum in Oklahoma was the only one ever carried under this requirement. In many States a single vote in one House has prevented submission of suffrage amendments. In referenda elections illegal ballots have been counted in the total of which the suffrage amendment must secure a majority. If, therefore, the tricks of suffrage opponents failed to insure defeat in the Legislature there were always many others to be applied at the election.

Again, a referendum on a non-partisan issue has none of the protection accorded a party question. The election boards are bi-partisan and each party has its own machinery, not only of election officials but watchers 179170and challengers, to see that the opposing party commits no fraud. The watchfulness of this party machinery, plus an increasingly vigilant public opinion, has partly corrected the election frauds which were once common. When a question submitted to referendum is espoused by both dominant parties it has the advantage of the watchfulness of both party organizations and is doubly guarded. But when such a question has been espoused by no dominant party it is at the mercy of the worst forms of corruption, precinct election officers often aiding its defeat by running in illegal votes against it, or uniting to count it out.

Women have been eligible as watchers in few States. Moreover, non-partisan questions, even when submitted at elections, are not entitled to separate watchers. A suffrage amendment unsponsored by political parties, as was usual, had no protection within the election precinct and when unscrupulous enemies were on hand was sent to certain disaster. Under the theory of our government, election officials, respecting “the will of the majority” as the sovereign of our nation, are expected to maintain honesty in elections, but in suffrage referenda theory and practice were frequently unacquainted.

“If suffrage amendments are defeated by illegal practices, why not demand redress?” the novice in suffrage campaigns used to ask. There was the rub. In 25 States, no provision is made by the election law for any form of contest or recount on a referendum. Political corrupters could, in these States, bribe voters, colonize voters and repeat them to their hearts' content and redress of any kind was practically impossible. If clear evidence of fraud could be produced, a case might be brought to the courts and the guilty parties might be punished, but the election would stand. In New York in 1915, the question was submitted to the voters as to whether there should be a constitutional convention. The convention was ordered by the ludicrous plurality of 1801711,300 out of New York's millions of voters. On recount in a few precincts, it was estimated that about 800 fraudulent votes were cast. Leading lawyers discussed the question of effect upon the election, and the general opinion was that, even though the entire plurality, and more, was found to be fraudulent, the election could not be set aside. The convention was held.

The election law is vague and incomplete in most States and if fraud has been committed it is practically impossible to discover what an honest count of the vote would have been. Thirty-two States in clear terms disfranchise (or give the Legislature power to disfranchise) bribers and bribed, but few make provision for the method of actually enforcing the law, and, upon inquiry, the Secretary of State of many of these States reported that no man had ever been disfranchised for this offense. This was true of States which have been notorious for political corruption.

With a vague law of uncertain meaning to define his punishment in most States, and no law at all in 25 States, the corrupt opponent of woman suffrage amendments found many additional aids to his nefarious acts. A briber must make sure that the bribed carries out his part of the contract. Whenever it is easy to check up the results of the bribe, corruption may reign supreme with little risk of being found out. Ways of checking up on bribes have been the chief study of the corrupt politician. It was attained in Wisconsin in 1912 by using a small pink ballot for the suffrage ballot. In North Dakota in 1914 the regular ballot was long, the suffrage ballot, small and separate, although of the same color. In Iowa in 1916 the suffrage ballot was separate and yellow. In New York in 1915 there were three ballots. Party emblems easily distinguished the main ballot. The other two were exactly alike in shape, size and color, and each contained three propositions, one group coming from the Constitutional Convention and the other from the Legislature. 181172Party orders went forth to vote down the constitutional provisions and it was done by a plurality of 482,000, nearly 300,000 more than the plurality against woman suffrage. On the ballot containing the suffrage amendment, No. 1, there was No. 3, which all political parties wanted carried. Yet so difficult was it to teach ignorant men to vote “no” on suffrage, No. 1, and “yes” on No. 3 that, despite the fact that orders had gone forth that No. 3 was to be carried, it barely squeezed through.

In the early years of State effort so few referenda were secured that women did not learn the difficulty of securing honest elections. With experience, however, they knew that when their cause had overcome the obstacles imposed by the constitution it immediately entered upon the task of surmounting the infinitely greater hazards of the election law. They became aware that an unscrupulous body stood ready to engage the lowest elements by fraudulent processes to defeat suffrage. They learned that the place on the ballot, or the kind of ballot, exposed it to criminal manipulatíon; that there was no protectíon against fraud on election day for a measure unsponsored by a dominant political party, and that after the fraud was committed there was no redress.

Through the handicaps and hazards created by these indefensibly unjust conditions, women were forced to fight their way to political liberty. On the outside of politics, with no vote to help, they waged their battle against sharp, shrewd groups of men who, on the inside of politics, served no God but Mammon. To their aid such men called the foreign-born, the Negro, the Chinese, the Indian, mobilized into an army at their back, and in this position of vantage commanded just and liberal-minded men to silence, and many obeyed. There were men who nobly helped the suffrage cause, but in the main the decades came and the decades went, and the women went forward, but alone. No party whip was cracked, no bayonet was drawn in their behalf. They steered 182173their course by their unshakeable faith in self-government and its ultimate redemption from the menaces which threatened it. They despaired, not so much at the postponement of their own vote, as over the wild chaos which the strife of parties had wrought and into which their own enfranchisement would plunge them.

Why did they not give up? Many, very many, did; but the eternal destinies of the human race drove others on.

There was light ahead. The influence of the Populist Party had disappeared and politics had settled back into the old rut in the late '90's, but within the decade that followed there were premonitions of another outburst against “invisible government.” Old party bonds were straining again. Making the most of conditions, the National Suffrage Association focussed first on the State of Washington, where an intelligent, earnest campaign was conducted by the National Association's Washington auxiliary, assisted by organizers sent by the National. In the result the Legislature of Washington submitted a suffrage amendment in 1909, to be voted upon in 1910. In spite of a regional rivalry that split the State into two separate suffrage camps, one on its eastern slope, one on its western, the campaign moved straight forward to victory and astounded the nation with a 24,000 majority. A prominent liquor campaign manager in disgusted tone said the result “was solely due to the fact that the brewers were off guard, thinking there was no danger.”

A few contributions from individuals and State associations were sent to Washington, but the cost of the entire campaign did not exceed $6,000. The brewers were undoubtedly misled by the quiet character of the campaign. To their inaction and to the incipient political uprising the suffrage movement owes the first great impulse on the “home stretch.”

California was the next centre of activity. In 1910 a new political party was organized in California and was 184175called Progressive, the forerunner of the national party of 1912. Five parties, in consequence, had tickets in the field that year. Each carried a plank pledging submission of a woman suffrage amendment. The Legislature of 1911 carried out the political promises given and submitted woman suffrage, one of twenty-three propositions, the vote to take place at a special election on October 10, 1911. All parties supported it at the polls.

Northern and southern California, which like eastern and western Washington, do not always dwell in brotherly love, conducted each its own campaign. But the competition thus stimulated was friendly. Southern California, having been carried in the campaign of 1896, was on its mettle to save its record. Northern California, remembering that Sacramento and San Francisco had lost the State in 1896, was determined to prevent a repetition of that catastrophe. Inspired by the victory in Washington, all the liberal-minded elements of the State worked unitedly and effectively. The political parties, all women's and most men's organizations, the churches, the educational institutions, the press, all pulled together under the direction of an able and energetic central committee. The National Suffrage Association and its auxiliaries in other States helped with money, speakers and material. Every village had at least one meeting and the cities had a succession of rallies crowded to the doors, with overflows to take care of late comers. Millions of pages of literature were disseminated, hundreds of thousands of suffrage buttons were distributed, and plate matter was provided the press. In addition to suffrage news, the papers carried controversial articles on suffrage, while suffrage pennants and posters covered the State in every direction.

Ten thousand suffragists worked early and late throughout the six months of campaign, confidently carrying the slogan, “We are going to win,” to the remotest corners of the State. So omnipresent was the 185176insistent suffrage propaganda that the twenty-two other constitutional amendments were thrust into the background and thousands read and talked of woman suffrage only, day after day. No previous campaign had been so thorough-going, so triumphant in spirit from the first. Its participants to this day recall it with sparkling eyes and say, “Ah, it was a great campaign!”

Yet the victorious majority in the election was only 3,500.*

San Francisco again went heavily against the amendment, all voting Chinese being again rounded up against it as in 1896. The adverse city vote had to be, and fortunately was, overcome by the outlying districts. It was evident that no opponent had been “off guard” in California. When it was over, few took time to note the fact that Washington with a small campaign had won by a big majority, while California with a big campaign had won by a small majority.

Washington had given the suffrage movement a decided impulse. California gave it a veritable boom. Suffragists in all the States were amazed at the distinct change of attitude occasioned by the action of California. In November, 1912, suffrage amendments were submitted to the electors in six States (Arizona, Kansas, Oregon, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio) to be voted on. In several other States, where the action of two successive Legislatures was required, amendments passed the first stage.

When Arizona prepared for statehood the women had made a statewide and stirring appeal for either the inclusion of woman suffrage in the constitution, or the submission of a separate suffrage amendment. The vicious interests of the State held so decided a balance of power that the convention that was drafting the constitution refused both appeals. The women made their appeal to every Legislature thereafter, to no avail. Even the 186177Legislature of 1912, with a public sentiment much aroused by the action of its neighbor, California, the year before, followed its predecessors in refusing the women's petition. But when the initiative and referendum had once been established in Arizona, the women turned from the recalcitrant Legislature to this new weapon of democracy. The petitions for a referendum on woman suffrage were filed July 5, 1912. The election took place in November. Republicans and Democrats had persistently refused to endorse even the submission of suffrage, the Legislature had carried out the same policy of ignoring it, but there was a complete volte face after the National Progressive Party, with Theodore Roosevelt as its standard bearer, had adopted a suffrage plank. Both parties not only endorsed the amendment but rendered hearty support to the campaign. With every party carrying a plank in its platform, every county was carried and the State gave a majority of 7,240 for the amendment.

In Kansas, by 1912, the bitter partisanship of 1894 had long since disappeared, scars only showing where it had once raged to the undoing of the reason of the State. The women had continued voting in the municipal elections in numbers nearly equal to those of men. The Legislature, as a long overdue act of justice, submitted the suffrage amendment to vote in 1912. The campaign was a quiet, uneventful and modest one, but directed by able women whose self-sacrifice was conspicuous. The amendment was carried by a majority of 10,787.

Oregon had in all six referenda on woman suffrage. The campaign in 1906 had been desperately fought by all the vicious elements of the population. After that date the women took the matter into their own hands and secured a submission by initiative and referendum petitions in 1908, 1910 and 1912. In 1910 they decided to ask suffrage for tax-paying women, since under the State law a woman owning nothing but a suit of clothes could 187178pay a voluntary tax of a few cents on her clothes and thus make herself a voter. By mistake the amendment was so worded in the initiative petition as to cover full suffrage and neither the women nor the thousands of voters who signed the petition perceived it until a short time before election. Both suffragists and antis appealed to the officials to have the description of the amendment on the ballots made to conform to the fact, but in vain. It was printed as a full suffrage amendment with a tax suffrage heading. Had the amendment carried, it would have established full suffrage unless the courts had thrown it out. The women had believed that less hostility on the part of the combined vice interests would be shown to suffrage for tax-paying women, but the usual campaign was waged, each saloon getting out its regular quota. The following year, the women returned to the usual suffrage amendment.

In 1912, however, the suffragists of Oregon had a new argument. “Since Oregon is bounded on the north by Washington where women vote, on the south by California where women vote, on the east by Idaho and Wyoming where women vote, why should not the women of Oregon vote?” The voters answered at the polls with an affirmative majority of 4,161.*

There was great rejoicing over these three victories of 1912, both within and without the triumphant States. Church bells were rung, processions carrying tokens of victory passed through city streets, sermons were preached, speeches made, and a greatly enlarged sale of text books on government followed. In Pittsburgh, Kansas, 200 women gathered around a big bonfire to 188179celebrate, with thousands assembled to see the sight. At a given signal they threw old bonnets into the fire as a symbol of the passing of the old fashion in politics and the coming of the new.

The other three campaigns of 1912 met a different fate. The story of Ohio is so remarkable that it is told in a separate chapter. In Michigan and Wisconsin the campaigns were as ably conducted, as enthusiastically supported, the favorable sentiment as generally manifest through the press, resolutions of organizations, expressions of prominent men, quite as pronounced as in the winning States. But suffrage was defeated. A review will suffice to show what defeated it in both States.

From 1874, when the first referendum was submitted, suffragists of Michigan had continuously appealed to each successive Legislature for the submission of a suffrage amendment. The only variation was between the years 1883 and 1893 when an effort was made to secure municipal suffrage, which was granted in 1893, though the Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional before it was put into effect. Centering their efforts thereafter upon an amendment, the women had supported their demand in all the known ways of giving evidence of public sentiment—petitions of constituents, meetings, hearings, press and literature appeals. A petition of 175,000 had been presented to the constitutional convention of 1907-8 as part of an extensive campaign, but even that body, whose sole business it was to submit amendments to the constitution to the electors of the State, had denied the voters the right of an expression of opinion. The Legislature of 1911 had followed its predecessors with the same refusal.

A special session of the same Legislature, however, was called in March, 1912, and Gov. Osborn included in the call the recommendation that a constitutional amendment relative to the right of women to vote should be submitted to the electors. Meanwhile several other 189180States had submitted the question. Moreover, the coming schism in the Republican party was showing unmistakable evidence. The Republican Governor was a friend of woman suffrage. The Republican party had been in full control of the Legislature since the Civil War, and the Legislature now concluded that 38 years was an overlong record for continual refusal to allow the electors the right to express themselves upon the question. The same Legislature that had refused submission in 1911 granted it in 1912.

The campaign that followed was triumphant in character. No unfortunate or unpleasant incidents occurred. But when the time came to print the ballots an altercation arose as to method. It was the duty of each county clerk to print them for his county, always a dangerous provision, but in this case the opportunity for irregularity was much increased by two facts, one because the ballots were to be separate and the other because the Legislature had given three suggestions for printing the question, to one of which the ballots must universally conform. In response to queries from bewildered clerks and anxious suffragists, the Secretary of State issued instructions to all clerks to follow the uniform plan of printing the full text of the amendment on the ballot. The situation produced was well suited to political chicanery. Many clerks ignored and many jumbled the instructions. Suffragists familiar with methods of juggling election returns faced election day with dread.

The early returns showed favorable figures and the suffrage majority steadily climbed to 8,000. But many scattered precincts mysteriously withheld their returns without explanation. One by one these were released, cutting the majority to 5,000, where it seemed established and Michigan was announced to the world as another suffrage State. Then the delayed precincts began sifting in their returns, each with a suspiciously large adverse majority, until the favorable majority became 190181a slightly adverse one. Many weeks had been consumed in the process and nerve-racked suffragists, knowing precisely what was taking place, stood helpless before the deliberate theft of an election.

The well known method by which crooked politics counts out candidates and measures by withholding returns from controllable precincts, until returns from the rest of the State show how large an adverse vote is required to wipe out the favorable one, had been brazenly applied, the withheld precincts being finally released with a sufficiently large adverse vote to accomplish defeat. The better elements of the entire State arose in protest. Suffragists engaged counsel and filed petitions for recounts in suspected sections, notably the large cities. Though the hand that had performed the trick was well hidden, it became evident that some power in collusion with local election officials of both parties had accomplished by fraud what could not be done by an honest vote. Saloon-keepers, bar-tenders, pool-room managers, the puppets of political directors who had connived at the misprint of the ballots, now came forward with writs of mandamus to compel injunctions restraining the boards of canvassers from counting these ballots. Great irregularity was revealed in five counties. Without these counties the State had been carried by a large majority. Governor Osborn issued a ringing denunciation of the liquor interests which were clearly attempting to defeat the will of the people, in which he said:

“If the liquor interests defeat the amendment by fraud, proved or suspected, the people of Michigan will retaliate in my opinion by adopting statewide prohibition; the question seems to be largely one as to whether the liquor interests own and control and run Michigan.”

Thirteen precincts in Detroit were still withheld but after the Governor's charge of trickery, nine came in 191182with large adverse majorities. The count was still further delayed to get an opinion from the Supreme Court which finally declared that all the ballots must be counted as printed. A recount was now demanded by press and public. A conference of public men was called to consider the situation and was attended by prominent men from different parts of the State, including many eminent lawyers. The conference demanded a recount, but it also declared for a resubmission of the question by the Legislature, the election to take place at the spring municipal election in the event that the recount proved that the amendment was lost.

Despite the many obstacles imposed, the recount was finally secured, the entire nation watching the result, for it had now become less the question of woman suffrage than the honor of Michigan that was at stake.

So skillfully had the party election officers managed their frauds that the official count of Saginaw County, which on the original report showed 1,300 majority against, now increased it by 1,200; that of Ottawa County, first reporting 2,139 majority against, increased it by 561; and St. Clair County doubled her adverse majority of 530. The Wayne County (Detroit) recount showed 12,000 ballots not initialed by election officers as required by law and an application was made to the Circuit Court to determine the status of these ballots. The court denied the application to have them thrown out. A cry went up from all parts of the State to take an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Michigan was in a turmoil of political excitement. It was rumored that the county clerks would be arrested and tried on the charge of falsely printing the ballots with malicious intent. A story went the rounds that the saloons had been assessed in proportion to their sales and that the liquor interests had worked under common direction. In after years the brewers confessed that this had been long their established custom, but at the time 192183the liquor representatives loudly denied both charges and the Michigan public was still unconvinced that the politics of their State was under control of the wets. Many citizens, not suffragists, were convinced that the bipartisan election officials had connived at a miscount, whoever might have paid the bill, and joined in the demand for investigation.

Party politics also entered the lists. The Chairman of the National Progressive Committee, Senator Dixon, wired the national committeeman of Michigan, Henry M. Wallace, the “situation appears suspicious” and asked him to prevent the amendment from being defeated by corruption. Thereupon Mr. Wallace gave out a public statement charging that the Republican party controlled the election machinery and that “the same elements are now fighting the suffragists that opposed us. They are crooked business and crooked politics, the saloon element allied with machine politicians.” The Republicans replied with denials. Meanwhile the weeks passed by, the Legislature met and no end was in sight. It had become clearer each day that the discrepancies and irregularities were so numerous, yet so tangled, that the truth concerning the election would never be uncovered by recount or court decision and that the best plan was to hold another election.

The election returns finally agreed upon as official, although under the suspicion of fraud, were: Yes, 247,375; No, 248,135, an adverse majority of 760.

The State Suffrage Association held its annual convention in Lansing, January 16, 1913. The newly inaugurated Governor Ferres had urged resubmission in his message, and the Lieutenant-Governor and the Speaker of the House not only invited the convention to visit the Legislature but both Houses adjourned in order to receive it. The entire convention (150 delegates) accepted the invitation and its representatives addressed the Legislature “amid thunderous applause.”

The women had sworn statements of ballots not given out to voters; of ballots missing in the final count, of contents of ballot boxes burned before the recount could be taken; of suffrage ballots refused to voters when called for; of ballots marked both yes and no, of amendment ballots taken out and brought back two hours later, and that thirteen precincts in the city of Detroit had held back their count for one month. With such an arraignment of an election, few Legislatures would have taken the responsibility of refusing a resubmission. But suffrage opponents had frankly announced that they would be able to postpone any action by the Legislature until after the date of the April election, and legislators who had shared in the conspiracy to secure false returns in their constituencies now boldly advertised that, their constituency having gone against the amendment, they would vote against resubmission. Yet on February 20, the House resubmitted the amendment, 74 to 21; the Senate in March, 25 to 5. The vote was set for April 7, 1913, leaving a month for the campaign.

The State had been so completely aroused, the press and the people had so poignantly felt the disgrace of an election so clearly fraudulent, that the tired suffragists rested in a false security. Not so the opponents. Rumors were soon afloat that cash prizes were offered saloon men for increasing their quota of the anti vote, and the Republican and Democratic machines were suspiciously uninterested.

The German-American Alliance, Carl Bauer, President, in March, 1913, circularized the members of the “Staatsverbund Michigan” telling each “German brother” just how to vote no on the woman suffrage amendment on April 7. Said the leaflet:

“If the suffrage would be laid into the hands of the nativeborn American woman only, the results, which surely will follow, can easily be predicted. Narrow-mindedness will triumph everywhere; fanaticism will flourish; prohibitionists 194185and their refuse, the Anti-Saloon League, will easily set up for dictators in the State of Michigan.”

There is no allusion in the leaflet to the temperance issue and it showed no connection with the brewers whose decoy the Alliance was.

The returns from the April election were: Yes, 168,738; No, 264,882. The total vote in November had been 495,510; the total vote in April was 433,620. The number of “no votes” was increased by 16,747. The “yes votes” fell off to the astounding number of 78,637. “The wets had worked like mad,” the press said. The municipal election was of small interest to rural voters, which accounted for a considerable loss. Some rural precincts recorded no vote at all on any issue. The over-confidence of suffrage men that the amendment was certain of an enormous vote accounted for a further loss. Twenty-five counties had fewer “no votes” than in the first election and sixteen had not to exceed 100 increase in the “no vote.” Of the 16,747 increase of the “no votes,” 13,000 were gained in counties where a wet and dry contest was in progress. The wet interest in the question was evidenced by the fact that the next heavy vote fell 47,000 behind the total suffrage vote.

By what means the wets increased the adverse vote will never be known; but that it represented honest public opinion few believed. One point stood forth nakedly startling: All the frauds, irregularities and delays of the first election could not have been possible without the collusion of the local bi-partisan election officers, and these under direction of “higher ups.” Two questions were therefore raised—and never answered: 1. Did the State Central Committees of these two parties join in the conspiracy, or could a marauding band within the parties carry on its steal of an election without the knowledge or the reproof of their leaders? 2. Did not 195186the same boards, in charge in 1913 as in 1912, do the same things in the same way?

A grave suspicion remained in the minds of the public which went far to deepen the prevalent pessimism concerning the possibility of achieving honest campaigns and elections in this country.

Governor Osborn's prophecy was fulfilled and in 1916 prohibition was established in Michigan by popular vote, many voters being actuated by the patriotic desire to free the elections and legislation from control by the liquor traffic.

The State of Wisconsin stood second among the States in its output of malt liquors. The brewing industry was one of enormous importance to the State, the capital stock valuation being $85,000,000. Several cities were brewing centres with large populations dependent upon liquor prosperity, yet there as everywhere the prohibition movement was threatening the overthrow of the trade. These facts should have warned suffragists that Wisconsin was not an auspicious point for a referendum on their question, but they did not understand, and in 1912 continued the campaign of a generation to secure the submission of an amendment.

The Legislature that passed the question on to the voters discussed at length and with apparent sincerity the best means of securing a general expression of opinion on amendments, with the result that an order was passed providing that all future constitutional amendments should be printed on separate pink ballots. This project was introduced by a wet legislator and all wet members voted for it. The bill was passed before the suffrage amendment was actually submitted and the Attorney-General, who collaborated with the liquor interests, ruled that the suffrage amendment only should be printed on the pink slip as other amendments passed by the same Legislature, and to be voted upon at the same election, had been passed before the new order 196187had been voted! The isolation of the suffrage amendment on a ballot the most sub-normal voter could distinguish furnished corrupt agencies with an ideal weapon with which to compass its defeat.

The liquor trade did not rely upon election methods alone, however, but emphasized in the trade press of Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, through press communications and press advertisements, and by the word of mouth of numberless workers sent out to canvass voters, that all who did not want prohibition must vote against woman suffrage as women would be certain to bring it. More, every voter who did not want to see the absolute destruction of all the trades dependent upon the manufacture and sale of liquor, such as coopers, bottle and cork makers, farmers who grow the barley and corn used, must also vote against the amendment. They pictured thousands of men thrown out of employment, with starving families a charge upon charity. The effect of this propaganda was insidious and with many classes overpowering. There were cities in Wisconsin, so suffrage workers reported to the National Suffrage Association, where practically every man's business was dependent upon the good will of the big breweries and where “no business man dared allow his wife to come out for suffrage.”

The women waged the best campaign they could and spent time and money in the effort to acquaint all friendly voters with the fact that the suffrage ballot would be found on a pink slip. In Racine and vicinity where they expected the largest suffrage vote, they were filled with consternation when, on election day, they discovered that the suffrage ballot was not pink, but white. “The calibre of voting intelligence in many cases is not equal to straightening out such a complication,” wrote one observer.

The usual tricks which accompany the separate ballot were not forgotten by the opposition. The suffrage ballots 197188had not arrived when the early voters came to some polling places; they had been exhausted when the late voters came to others, and clerks forgot to hand them to voters in still others. The total votes thus lost were many. The responsibility for these irregularities was obscured in the mysterious maze created by the joint action of a bi-partisan board, each member disclaiming knowledge and referring the query to another official equally surprised and ignorant.

As Oscar Schmidt, Milwaukee brewer, said on October, 1913, to the Interstate Conference Committee and Board of Trustees of the United States Brewers' Association: *

“In the last campaign we had . . . woman suffrage, etc, which were all defeated; and I can say that can only be done by organization and the brewers being on the job all the time.”

The vote stood, Yes, 135,545; No, 227,024; adverse majority, 91,479. The pink ballot did it, reported the suffragists, but the federal investigation pointed to a power behind the pink ballot.

Thus the year 1912 closed with three victories to inspire suffragists, and three defeats to comfort opponents. All the world knew now that a political war was being waged which was not likely to end until women were the victors.

After 1912 woman suffrage prospered with the fortunes of the Progressive party. The Progressives in 1912 elected fifteen members of the House of Representatives, one United States Senator and many members of Legislatures, especially in the West. The division in the Republican party was credited with the election of the Democratic President, Woodrow Wilson. The year 1913 showed the effect of this break in party regularity by concessions to progressive demands in many directions. Seven States submitted woman suffrage amendments, with the vote set for November, 1914. And there were other significant victories, notable among which was the grant of suffrage in Alaska.

The first Territorial Legislature of Alaska met in Juneau in 1913. The National American Woman Suffrage Association had circularized each legislator with “Five reasons why Alaska should adopt woman suffrage,” and had corresponded with some of the leading men of Alaska. There was no suffrage organization in Alaska and no other campaign, yet the first bill introduced was one extending full suffrage to women, and it passed unanimously, one member only absenting himself from roll call. It was the first bill approved by the Governor and was signed March 21, 1913, thus becoming the first act of the newly organized Territory.

This victory at the North, however, was completely overshadowed by a greater one, the victory of the “Illinois law” in the great Middle West.

Two outstanding forms of limited suffrage characterized this law. One, municipal suffrage, had been in operation in Kansas since 1887, and its operation had been uniformly commended by all except the liquor sympathizers. Its constitutionality had never been tested. Michigan, in 1893, after ten years of continued effort on the part of the suffragists had passed a similar law but a case had been immediately filed to test its constitutionality and the Supreme Court had declared that “the Legislature had no authority to create a new class of voters.” After 1893 the legislators of no other State could be persuaded to extend municipal suffrage, the example of Michigan being held universally applicable.

The other form of limited woman suffrage covered by the Illinois law was presidential suffrage, the right to vote for the electors who vote for the president of the United States. Separately and in combination with municipal suffrage it was to play a great part in the ultimate triumph of full suffrage. Presidential suffrage inhered in Article II, Section 2, of the federal constitution. That section reads in part:

“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 the Congress.”

For years women had been growing more and more certain that under its terms a State Legislature had the power to give the women of the State the right to vote for the president of the United States, as well as for certain less significant officials. Indeed, woman suffrage for presidential electors was introduced in the Rhode Island Legislature for the first time in 1892, and a brief defending the claim that authority for such action existed in the federal constitution was ably and, as time proved, unanswerably prepared and presented. It was left to Illinois women to make the application.

While never failing to appeal for the submission of a constitutional suffrage amendment at every legislative session, Illinois suffragists had also striven to gain municipal and presidential suffrage, separately and combined. By 1913 they had begun to formulate the idea of adding to a combined bill for municipal and presidential suffrage a clause covering the right to vote for any State officers not especially named by the State constitution as to be voted for by male electors. As the Governor of Illinois refused to allow any but an initiative and referendum amendment to be submitted to the voters of 1913, there was no possibility that the suffragists could secure successful action that year except through some form of suffrage which could be granted women by the Illinois Legislature. In that body the Progressives, happily for suffrage, held at the moment a balance of power on all legislation.*

A bill was finally drawn up by women lawyers of the suffrage association and introduced in the Legislature. The chief of the wet lobby directed the opposition to the measure and every conceivable parliamentary maneuvre was resorted to in an effort to keep it from coming to vote. Hundreds of men came to Springfield from Chicago and other cities to entreat Speaker McKinley to prevent the bill from reaching a vote. “Haggard and worn,” he begged suffragists to give him a demonstration of sentiment on the other side. Immediately, letters, telegrams and telephone messages poured in upon him in such an avalanche that he was satisfied that the mandate of the State lay with the suffragists. The bill was allowed to go to vote, and when the vote came up women captains made themselves responsible for the presence of members of the Legislature, stayed on duty through the five hours' debate and saw to it that every pro-suffrage legislator was in his seat on the final count. The Senate voted, 201192ayes 29, nays 15. The House voted, ayes 83, nays 58.

Illinois women stood possessed of the right to vote for the president of the United States, for municipal officers and for those State officers not named in the State constitution as eligible by the votes of male electors only.

The effect of this victory upon the nation was astounding. Suffrage sentiment doubled over night. When the first Illinois election took place in April, the press carried the headlines that 250,000 women had voted in Chicago. The States thus far won were those of comparatively small population, but Chicago was the second city in size in the United States. In the previous presidential campaign it had been generally noted, without making much impression, that the women of the first four full suffrage States had helped choose seventeen members of the Electoral College, and that Washington and California had added twenty more electoral votes which the votes of women affected. It was noted again after the elections of 1912 that that year's victories had added eighteen more electoral votes to the women's list. Illinois, with its large electoral vote of twenty-nine, proved the turning point beyond which politicians at last got a clear view of the fact that women were gaining genuine political power.

The day following the Illinois municipal election, newspaper headlines announced that “women had closed more than a thousand saloons” in local option elections, chiefly in the small towns. The liquor trade papers threw “We told you so” at their readers, and showed their angry disapproval in hysterical injunctions to stop woman suffrage before it wrought any further damage. That brought prohibitionists over to the suffrage side by the thousands, and hundreds of thousands of the indifferent observed for the first time that two great movements were in progress and were unconsciously pushing each other forward.

The wets at once began a series of contests to declare 202193the Illinois law unconstitutional. It was estimated that fifty unsuccessful cases were brought in local option contests by the liquor interests, each based upon the constitutionality of the woman suffrage act. As these contests did not question the entire act but merely the right of women to vote for some specific officer or issue, the constitutionality of the entire law was not upheld by the Supreme Court until 1914. Failing to overturn the law in the courts, the opponents, now openly led by the liquor forces and allied interests, attempted to secure a repeal of the law by the Legislature, which necessitated another all-winter campaign on the part of the suffragists in order to keep what they had won.

The Illinois victory was not only tremendous in itself; it initiated a program of tremendous importance to the suffrage cause. Although the National Suffrage Association had urged presidential suffrage for twenty years, its State auxiliaries had not been able to persuade their legislators of its constitutionality. Now all was changed. Not only presidential but additional suffrage rights by legislative action became a possible aim in all States and, since the courts had established beyond doubt the right of women to vote under the Illinois law, that law became a model for other States to copy. An outstanding feature of the annual suffrage convention at Atlantic City in 1916 was a plan formulated by the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to secure presidential suffrage State by State as fast as possible. Delegates to the convention went home and put that program into telling effect, as will be seen later.

Meantime seven suffrage referenda took place in 1914. The States were Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri and Ohio. Of these two only were won—Montana and Nevada.

The liquor interests were particularly and vindictively active in Montana, as recorded elsewhere, and suffragists regarded the winning of the State as a brand 203194snatched from the burning. The young president of the State auxiliary to the National Suffrage Association, Miss Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to go to Congress, won the confidence of the voters by her campaign of “Tell the people.” Nevada's mining interests were aligned against suffrage, but the Nevada suffragists used a map showing the State colored black and the surrounding States white, for Nevada was now bounded by States where women voted, and the suggestive injunction, “Out, damned spot!” had a notable effect.

Yet the campaigns in these two States were probably not more efficiently conducted than those in the other western States where defeat was the fate of suffrage. In North and South Dakota the German-Russian vote was again organized against the amendment, although both Legislatures had readily submitted the amendments. In Nebraska the suffragists overcame legislative obstruction by resorting to the initiative and referendum law. The campaign followed the usual lines. It was ably conducted and supported by the best elements of the State. The German-American Alliance fought the amendment privately and publicly and the brewers made no secret of their opposition during the campaign nor, afterwards, of the fact that they had defeated it.

In Missouri the Legislature had proceeded to the date fixed for taking the vote on the suffrage amendment, when the amendment was mysteriously taken from the calendar, referred back to committee and pigeon-holed. The suffragists, however, had a weapon in reserve, and next invoked the initiative and referendum, filing on June 27th the necessary petition of 38,000 voters' names. Woman suffrage was, however, rejected at the Missouri polls.

The seventh State to vote on woman suffrage in 1914 was Ohio, which is another story, pointed enough to be told in a separate chapter.

There was a tedious similarity in all seven campaigns. 204195Some of them were more effective than others, and some were doubtless not big enough to overcome normal indifference when flanked by a secretly working, thoroughly organized and well-financed opposition. The decisive feature of each campaign was the mobilization of the foreign vote against suffrage under the direction and probable pay of the liquor interests, and with the collusion of local bi-partisan election officials, if not that of State central committees. Wherever there were Negroes to recruit, they were recruited. Mr. Andreae's allied organizations, supported by the brewers, were now in full swing. The German-American Alliance passed resolutions in its conventions, and circularized its membership, urging no man to fail in his duty on election day.

Despite the loss of five State campaigns, the year 1914 closed with spectacular suffrage activity throughout the nation, and climaxed in a spirited effort in Washington to secure the submission of the Federal Suffrage Amendment.

The States of Ohio and Iowa furnish a curious comparative study for the suffrage record. Ohio was a wet State wherein a powerful movement was urging its people to “go dry.” Iowa was a dry State wherein a wellnigh controlling force was urging it to “go wet.” In both, yearly political campaigns were waged by the prohibition forces and the liquor interests. In Ohio referenda were held under the county local option law which provided that when a majority of the voters had so indicated the county became dry. In Iowa the referenda were held under the Mulct law which provided that when a majority of the voters so declared the territory concerned might become wet.

Standing at opposing poles of their own contest, the two factors, wet and dry, had exactly the same effect in nullifying the woman suffrage appeal. The wets were opposed to suffrage, but trying to keep their opposition subrosa. The drys were in sympathy with suffrage but restraining their sympathy from open expression lest they overload their own question. Balancing between wets and drys swung the political parties, afraid, because of the large blocks of voters on each side, to be committed to any phase of the questions at issue between liquor forces and prohibition forces. So that the women of both States were reduced to the position of political supplicants with no organized bodies to support them. Their organized friends were all muzzled.

In Ohio, despite the desperate efforts of suffragists to 206197present their question to the public upon its own merits, it was so inextricably drawn into the more bitterly fought “wet” and “dry” contest that it was never possible to do so.

Ohio was referred to by both sides of the controversy as “the cradle of prohibition.” It was here that the woman's “crusade” was initiated, out of which issued the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (1874). The Prohibition party (organized 1869) had had an energetic branch in Ohio, and the first Anti-Saloon League was organized in Ohio in 1893, and for 25 years thereafter assumed directorship over all prohibition campaigns. While the two preceding temperance forces had been drawn almost entirely from the church, the Anti-Saloon League attracted large numbers of business men. before 1910, county, municipal and township local option laws had been enacted, local campaigns conducted, and a considerable portion of the State outside the urban regions had “gone dry.”

On the other hand, Ohio was one of the seven largest brewing States, standing fifth in the list.”* In 1912, when for the first time the wet and dry contest was sent to the voters of the State for arbitrament, Ohio listed 125 brewers, 14,210 retail liquor dealers (or one dealer to each 69 men in the State) and 4,742,665 barrels, as the State production of fermented liquors. These forces, united in support of a common plan, composed a powerful organization that could, and did, produce nearly a million and a half dollars for a year's campaign purposes.

It was in Ohio that Percy Andreae had first carried out the plan of the organization of allied interests which before 1913 had spent a million dollars to perfect an organization warranted to produce political results with “unerring accuracy.” It was here too that the brewers first aided the German-American Alliance to extend its 207198organized voting strength in support of the liquor cause.

The head of the brewers' State political committee reported, in secret session in 1908, that the liquor candidate for Governor had been elected, “the result of months of organized effort on the part of all our interests and the Ohio Personal Liberty League, the Manufacturers' and Dealers' Clubs of Cleveland and Cincinnati ... the Ohio Traveling Men's Liberty League. The result is very gratifying because it marks the collapse of the Anti-Saloon League as a factor in Ohio politics.”*

The Ohio constitution had not been revised since 1851 and in 1910 all factions and both dominant parties agreed upon the necessity of such revision. The Legislature submitted the question, the voters ordered the convention, the delegates were elected, and the convention was held in 1912.

Concerning that election, Mr. Beis of Ohio reported † at a secret conference of the brewers in 1915 as follows:

“In 1912 an election was held under a resolution which was introduced by our friends in the Legislature. . . . The Andreae organization so called was put into the field there. We selected a majority of the delegates to that convention. That convention wrote licenses into the constitution of the State. Something that no other State has done.”

Ohio dated its suffrage organization from 1850 and that portion of the State known as the Western Reserve was renowned for its liberal and progressive tendencies. Yet it was not until 1894 that Ohio women were granted school suffrage. An attempt to repeal even this law had been made in 1899 but had been thwarted through the influence of a petition bearing the names of 40,000 Ohio citizens.

Suffragists had made a thorough canvass of the State 208199and knew before the Ohio constitutional convention met in 1912 that very nearly a majority of delegates would support the submission of a suffrage amendment. The directors of the suffrage campaign declared that “interests, vicious and commercial, opposed the suffrage submission at every turn,” yet in the end it was accomplished, passing the convention by a vote of 76 to 34 on March 7, 1912. The paragraph defining voters in the original constitution read: “Every white male citizen, etc.” The proposed amendment eliminated the words “white male.” Although Ohio Negroes had not been denied the vote claimed for them under the Fifteenth Amendment, the word “white” had remained in the Ohio constitution, which thus nominally forbade what the federal constitution granted! The liquor lobbyists, in ugly temper because the suffrage amendment had been allowed to go to the voters, lost no time in planning a strategy to prevent a favorable vote.

Suddenly they became deeply solicitous for the rights of the Negro whom they found to be unworthily tied to the “women's apron strings,” and in the hope of entirely alienating the Negro vote from support of the suffrage amendment, not a difficult task, they secured the submission of a separate amendment that merely eliminated the word “white.” For their own purposes they were able to secure an amendment providing for the licensing of the sale of liquor. Their next effort was to place the suffrage amendment alone in a column next to the liquor amendment which, at the request of those promoting it, occupied a column by itself. Thus arranged, ignorant voters could have been easily instructed to mark one amendment for defeat and the other for victory. But the women were able to foil this plan, and the suffrage amendment was placed on the ballot with other amendments.

The convention also submitted an initiative and referendum amendment, which was supported by all 209200reform forces in the State and not vigorously opposed by anyone. through the submission of these four amendments, the convention had neatly balanced the distribution of political favors, granting two amendments the liquor forces wanted, and two that they did not want.

The vote was to be taken at a special election on September 3, 1912, and for three months prior thereto a vigorous and exciting campaign was waged by all interested groups.

The Ohio Woman Suffrage Association reported that it had just $23 on hand when the suffrage measure passed the convention, but it closed the campaign with $3,000 with which to “carry on.” “More than fifty workers came into Ohio and remained for varying lengths of time. . . . Picnics, county fairs, family reunions, circuses, teachers' institutes, summer schools, all furnished ready-made audiences, while tens of thousands of men and women were gathered together on street corners in the cities, on the public squares, in the small towns, before the general store at the country cross-roads, night after night, by our dauntless campaigners.”

The campaign developed such strength that predictions that the suffrage amendment would carry were generally made. One prominent politician, mayor of a large city, basing his estimate on careful investigation, predicted that the measure would carry by 40,000. The press and friends of the measure generally grew confident that the amendment would be carried.

But election returns revealed some curious facts. The amendment to eliminate the word “white” was lost, the wets having given it no election support. The anomaly resulted that by vote of the people “white” remained in the State Constitution as a qualification for voters, although in reality the right of colored men to vote was and remains unquestioned. The initiative and referendum amendment, being opposed by no one, and supported by many, was carried. The liquor license amendment was 210201carried by a majority of 84,536.* The suffrage amendment was lost by a majority of 87,456. Its total vote was 586,296—249,420 voting yes and 336,876 voting no. the total vote cast on the suffrage amendment was 124,000 votes more than the total vote cast on the liquor amendment. Had each of the 14,000 retail liquor dealers secured twenty-five votes, according to the usual plan, the total would have composed the 336,876 noes. With the aid of the allied forces, this “systematized voting” would not have been difficult of achievement.

The allied wets did not hesitate to accept responsibility for the result. “At a meeting of the German-American Alliance held in Youngstown, a short time after election, John Schwab, the president, in his address boasted as one of the achievements of the Alliance the defeat of the suffrage amendment at the special election September 3, 1912.”†

At the Fifty-third annual convention of the United States Brewers' Association held in 1913, President Ruppert repudiated the charge that the brewers were fighting woman suffrage, but acknowledged that Ohio was an exception.

After 1912 both suffragists and prohibitionists saw hope in the new initiative and referendum law, since they could now initiate a referendum of their respective causes to the voters without facing the problem of consent from a Legislature badly frightened by the big totals of votes rolled up on both sides of these two questions. In 1913, the president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association approached the president of the Anti-Saloon League with the plea that suffragists should be permitted to conduct a suffrage amendment campaign unembarrassed by any prohibition measure. the request was granted and suffragists hopefully undertook a house-to-house 211202canvass for the 130,000 voters' signatures required by the law to secure the referendum.

The law was new, and authorities differed as to the procedure. An attempt was made to secure an official opinion, but with delay here and obstruction there an entire year passed before the petitions approved in form by the Attorney-General were ready for circulation. More than the required 130,000 men voters wrote their names on the suffragists' petition, in the presence of a circulator who then on oath declared the signatures genuine. This work was done by women volunteers and every county was represented in the total. In July, 1914, the petitions were presented to the Secretary of State, a representative from each of the 88 counties bearing its petition. The work involved had been enormous—but the result was a free expression of public opinion.

When the liquor interests comprehended that woman suffrage was certainly going to the voters with no other entangling question, they hastily held a conference with Mr. Andreae at Cincinnati and determined to throw confusion into the election by initiating a repeal of the county local option law, under the title “Home Rule Amendment.”

The entire force in the Andreae department was withdrawn from various fields and thrown into the State. These workers, “augmenting the force already at the disposal of the Ohio campaign manager, secured 304,000 voters' signatures to the petitions* in less than thirty days' time.”

The Anti-Saloon League, considering that their pledge to the suffragists should not be kept under these circumstances, circulated petitions for a referendum on a prohibition amendment. Thus woman suffrage, full prohibition and repeal of county local option (called Home Rule Amendment) were placed on the same ballot 212203for 1914. An intensive campaign was conducted on each of the three amendments by its respective friends. the wets again waged their campaign against the two reform amendments with the same fund and the same workers, while suffragists and prohibitionists conducted as always an unconnected campaign. The prohibition and suffrage amendments were lost;* the Home Rule Amendment was carried by 46,000 majority.

In 1916 Ohio suffragists turned their attention to local campaigns, and after a hard campaign won municipal suffrage in East Cleveland on a referendum.

Meanwhile the national Republican and Democratic party platforms of 1916 had adopted suffrage planks and the two Ohio party conventions, never before brave enough to express an opinion on woman suffrage, confirmed the national platforms. Supported by these platforms, the Legislature of 1917 extended presidential suffrage to Ohio women. The dry House passed the measure on February 1 by a vote of 72 to 50. The wet Senate passed it on February 14 by a vote of 20 to 16. The action was at once recognized by the old foe as a dangerous wedge, and soon a curious thing happened: No other than the wet leader of the Senate introduced a bill providing for the submission of a full suffrage amendment. Now ensued an utterly anomalous situation: opponents of woman suffrage urging the Legislature to submit a bill for full suffrage for women, advocates of woman suffrage trying to block any such submission. None but those on the inside could possibly have understood the mystery of the motives at work. But on the inside there was no mystery at all.

The opponents of woman suffrage had two objects in view: one to obscure the issue; one, the ultimate rejection of the women's presidential suffrage bill. The suffragists, on their side, had a clear perspective. For fifty 213204years they had been trying to get the Ohio Legislature to submit a suffrage amendment, but now the time for it had gone by. Full woman suffrage was coming and coming fast by the federal route. In Washington a federal suffrage amendment was drawing near to victory in Congress. Ohio women wanted their energies left free to help speed ratification on its way. They did not want, at this critical moment in the federal fortunes of suffrage, to be engulfed in the whirlpool of political trickery within the State that always had engulfed them when woman suffrage was brought to the Ohio polls. Yet here were the wets proposing submission of a State suffrage measure. The women antis asked for a hearing. The women antis and the wet men occupied seats en bloc and both pleaded for submission; the suffragists opposed. The bill was passed in the Senate February 14, 19 to 17, but the opposition of suffragists stayed its course in the House.

Just within the time limit prescribed by the law, ninety days, petitions for a referendum were filed on presidential suffrage. The suspicious suffragists immediately began a thorough investigation of the petitions. The first to be examined were those of Trumbull County. Of fifteen petitions, containing 584 names, it was discovered that twelve were circulated by proprietors of saloons. Five of these men, not being able to write, had made their marks in attesting the petition. No petition was circulated in dry sections of the county, and many irregularities were discovered. This preliminary examination gave direction for other county investigations. Alert groups of women in forty-four counties searched the voters' rolls for names appearing on the petitions and took note of other possible sources of fraud. The petitions to the county courts of Common Pleas presented by these women showed a remarkable uniformity. Thousands of names signed to the referendum petition as registered voters were not to be found on the poll lists and 214205the same name was signed more than once. Affidavits that sponsors for petitions were volunteer workers when facts indicated that this was unlikely was a common charge. For example, “six petitions in Clinton County were circulated by a man who has no visible means of support, has frequently been employed by the wets, and had been arrested for bootlegging.”*

“Between 75 and 90 per cent of the petitions were circulated by saloonkeepers, bartenders, brewers, and recognized county wet leaders” was the testimony of the president of the Ohio auxiliary to the National Suffrage Association. Signatures were secured in saloons, German clubs and other wet centres. Hundreds of petitions were kept so closely within saloon circles that business men, lawyers, doctors, teachers, did not learn that they were in circulation, and they were finally filed without the name of a single representative man of the community.

All this chicanery resulted in one advantage for the women: it aroused Ohio opinion to a demand for a square deal to such an extent that when the women of Columbus appealed to the men voters for the municipal suffrage, they got it.

So notorious had become the control of both dominant political parties by wet influences, that dry Democrats held a special convention in Columbus in May, 1917, and the dry Republicans in June. Suffrage representatives attended both conventions for the purpose of calling attention to the fact that the petitions filed on presidential suffrage were “reeking with fraud.” The presentation of facts was unnecessary, as the press had already made them common knowledge. Resolutions were introduced by delegates and passed by both conventions, urging the rejection of the petitions.

Meanwhile the suffragists carried their evidence to 215206election boards, which, after examining the evidence, referred them to the county courts. They were able to secure a hearing in four counties only, Scioto, Trumbull, Mahoning and Cuyahoga. Out of 9,964 names in these counties, the courts threw out 8,661 as fraudulent! The women in charge of the investigation insisted that a similar portion would have been thrown out in every county. Yet for various excuses other courts would not grant the hearings. In the words of the Akron Times:

“If there is anything that should strengthen the cause of woman suffrage in Ohio it is the disclosure that the petitions of the antis for a referendum on the Reynolds Act abound in frauds. Fraud is a confession of a weak cause. It ought to condemn its perpetrators in the eyes of all fair-minded voters.”

An attempt was then made to lay the entire evidence before the Secretary of State. He too refused the suffragists a hearing and, to the lasting dishonor of Ohio politics, the question went to referendum upon a petition “reeking with fraud.”

In their circular to the voters of the State, the suffragists thus summed up their case:

“Do these petitions represent the people? No! They represent a special interest. Five hundred and eighty-one petitions were circulated by saloonkeepers and bartenders; 246 were circulated by employees of the breweries, the Personal Liberty League (a wet propaganda group) and by others more closely allied with the liquor interests. This referendum is the work of the organized liquor ring. Nearly one-quarter of all the names were obtained in Cincinnati alone (the great brewing city). Circulators had to resort to fraud and forgery to get the petitions filed. Though these petitions were formally filed by the Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, not one woman circulated a petition.”

By November 6, 1917, while over the boundary line 216207New York State voters were giving a tremendous majority for full suffrage for women, the wets had succeeded so well in organizing a vote against presidential suffrage in Ohio that they defeated it by 144,000 majority. The prohibition amendment was also lost, but with so small a majority as to fill the drys with hope and the wets with dread.

In 1918, the drys initiated a prohibition amendment. The wets, following their usual tactics of a countering proposition, initiated a constitutional amendment to the effect “that the people reserve to themselves the legislative power of the referendum on the action of the General Assembly ratifying any proposed amendment to the constitution of the United States.”

It may not be easily evident on its face but what this meant was that the Ohio people were to take precedence over the constitution of the United States. That constitution provides that the Legislatures of the different States shall have the power of accepting or rejecting any federal amendment submitted by Congress. Here was a state constitutional amendment proposing that a State's people and not its Legislature should have these powers of ratification. It was aimed, of course, at the federal prohibition and suffrage amendments, the first of which had by then been submitted by the Congress, while it was already apparent that the submission of the other would soon follow.

The Ohio Woman Suffrage Association recognized the significance of this measure and attempted to arouse prohibition opposition to it. But the prohibitionists were completely absorbed by the demands of their own campaign and refused to regard the referendum amendment as worthy of attention. The National American Woman Suffrage Association came to the aid of its Ohio auxiliary and financed the attempt to prevent the question from being placed on the ballot. The suit was brought in the name of a leading citizen of Columbus, Edgar L. Weinland, 217208who as taxpayer protested against the unnecessary expenditure of money for printing ballots and other costs to provide for putting the question to the voters, since it was clearly unconstitutional. The brief presented by the attorney for the National Suffrage Association, Mr. Frank Davis, Jr., set forth precisely the same plea which a year later led the Federal Supreme Court to declare this law unconstitutional, but the Ohio Supreme Court avoided a decision on the ground that it had “no jurisdiction in advance of the election.”

At the November election (1918) the State prohibition amendment won by a majority of 25,000; while the amendment making referenda on federal amendments possible won by a majority of 193,000.

With generous though secret contributions to political party funds and with their known ability to deliver votes of organizations one way or the other, as their interest was aroused, “the Liquor Ring” had for years intimidated political leaders but the long and bitterly contested prohibition victory brought relief to the political situation. Conscientious men who did not endorse prohibition, accepted it as a liberation from the tentacles of the liquor incubus and breathed easier after the winning of the prohibition amendment at the Ohio polls. The 1919 Legislature of Ohio at once restored the presidential suffrage lost to women by the referendum of 1918, so that in the event of the nation's failure to complete ratification before the presidential election of 1920, Ohio women would be qualified to vote for president.

The liquor forces, however, were still unconquered. They filed a referendum petition on ratification of the prohibition amendment under the authority of the State amendment they had carried the year before, bringing it to vote in the November election of 1919. They filed petitions also to repeal the State prohibition amendment; to authorize 2.75 per cent beer; to repeal the State Enforcement Act.

Another wet and dry struggle rocked the State of Ohio from capitol to boundary. The November election of 1919 recorded that ratification of the federal prohibition amendment had been lost by a wet majority of 500 votes. The repeal of the State prohibition amendment had been defeated by a dry majority of 41,849, but the Prohibition Enforcement Act, which alone could make it effective, had also been defeated by a wet majority of 26,838, while 2.75 per cent beer had been defeated by a dry majority of 30,000. The liquor forces had won two points and the temperance forces two, and again the electorate stood bewildered by its own acts.

The wets all over the nation were elated that the ratification of prohibition in one State had been repudiated on referendum. Apparently the four wet measures were considered a sufficient undertaking for one Ohio election, for though petitions to refer the Ohio Legislature's ratification of the Federal Suffrage Amendment and the grant of presidential suffrage were also circulated by the same wet army that circulated the others, the time of filing was carefully planned so as to fall short of the required sixty days before election. This was to bring the two suffrage referenda to vote in 1920, a fact which the wets hoped would prevent a proclamation of ratification of the Federal Suffrage Amendment before the presidential election of 1920.

The suffragists, tired and defrauded, set to work, not with cheerful hope but with grim determination, to prepare for a referendum if one should come, by enrolling the women who wanted the vote as a plea to the voters.

In the midst of these endeavors an event occurred that was scarcely noted in the midst of the political, industrial and social excitement at the time. A group of Ohio suffragists stole away to the little town of Newburg. Once Newburg had been a centre of that fiery devotion to free thought and human liberty which had marked the early settlement of the Western Reserve. 219210In it a vigorous suffrage organization had lifted up its voice in 1874. Women had refused to pay taxes there unless they were represented and had allowed the authorities to sell property to meet the bill. There they had offered their votes and had been refused. There this early group had planted an acorn in commemoration of their faith. The acorn had been growing for forty-five years and was now a sturdy oak. Under its branches the Newburg Memorial Association received the visiting suffragists, and together they held a service of honor for the women whose vision had seen the coming victory afar off. They listened to the stories of the fearlessness of those early workers, their hope and their faith. Led by the grandsons of the pioneers, they laid wreaths upon their graves. In the little chapel where President Garfield, Lucy Stone, Theodore Parker, Louisa M. Alcott, John B. Gough and Robert Collyer had spoken, they spoke.

Forty-five years of ceaseless work lay between that movement and the beginning of the suffrage movement in Ohio. Still unfinished; and still that faith!

Wearily the women returned to the tedious and uninspiring toil of rolling up numbers of women who wanted to vote, in the event the Ohio referendum should take place. Half-heartedly they did the work, for their thoughts now centered on Washington. While they worked they were hoping and waiting for the Supreme Court of the United States to speak and declare the unconstitutionality of the Ohio amendment that had given to Ohio voters the right to supersede the federal constitution at the Ohio polls.

Exhausted by their ten years of ceaseless campaigning, prohibitionists and liquor forces also turned to the Federal Supreme Court and awaited its fateful decision.

The woman suffrage campaign in Iowa is remarkable for what it failed to achieve. Its interest lies in the accomplishments of the foes of suffrage.

The State was populated by a people of high average intelligence, and a school system that dotted the prairies with schoolhouses in every four square miles was early established. All public institutions of higher learning were co-educational. The State was a staunch defender of the Union, as a soldiers' monument in nearly every county seat testifies, and its traditions made it normally a one-party State, its history recording only one Democratic Governor. The State motto, “Our liberties we prize, our rights we will maintain,” reflected in truth this high-spirited sense of freedom.

The suffrage agitation was begun in 1854, but in Iowa as elsewhere the movement paused during the Civil War. The submission of the 15th Amendment by the Congress in 1869 induced action on behalf of woman suffrage in Iowa, and a number of suffrage clubs under influential leadership were organized in the larger cities.

These new groups made an appeal to the incoming Legislature which ratified the 15th Amendment and passed a resolution providing for the submission of a woman suffrage amendment to the voters of the State. This action was widely commented on by the nation, as the Iowa Assembly had for the first time elected a woman engrossing clerk and it became her duty to carry the victorious suffrage resolution from the House to the 221212Senate, a fact which called forth many editorials upon the new opportunities of women, many warmly endorsing woman suffrage.

In the spring of 1869, delegates from the organized suffrage clubs met in convention and organized the Iowa State Woman Suffrage Association with the object of preparing for the expected referendum. Lecturers hastened hither and you, leaving suffrage societies behind them, which presented their plea at meetings and in interviews with clergymen, editors and politicians. The most historic of these was the Polk County Woman Suffrage Society, located at the capital. This society not only never failed to hold its monthly meeting from October, 1870, to August, 1920, when all suffrage work in the nation came to an end, but it served for many years as the director of the State legislative campaigns. It never failed to make its appeal to every Congress for the submission of the Federal Amendment and to each Legislature for suffrage action, usually the submission of a State amendment. Whenever the State organization threatened to collapse as the result of disgusted disappointment the Polk County group stood steadfast and bolstered it up again.

The Iowa Legislature meets biennially and the constitution provides for amendment by the submission of any proposition to the voters after its passage through two successive Legislatures. When the Legislature of 1872 met, the organization was ready, the press friendly, the leaders of the Republican party outspokenly favorable, the Governor announced his endorsement of the amendment and the House voted its second passage by 58 to 39. The Senate, after a spirited debate, voted to engross the bill for third reading, 26 to 20, and hopes ran high. Yet a few minutes later the final vote stood 23 to 23.

That record was the prototype of the fate of suffrage in various encounters with Iowa Legislatures to come: 222213First a legislative opinion reflecting an unmistakable public opinion in favor of suffrage, then a sudden over night shift that lost the pending suffrage measure by the scantiest margin, but lost it just the same.

The Republican State Convention of 1874 adopted a clear-cut pledge to submit to the voters a woman suffrage constitutional amendment. When, in 1876, the Legislature elected on this platform met, Governor Carpentier in his message said:

“When all America is celebrating achievements inspired by the doctrine that taxation and representation are of right inseparable, it is recommended that you give the people of Iowa an opportunity to express their judgment upon the proposed amendment at the ballot box.”

The House promptly passed the measure, 54 ayes; 40 nays. A careful canvass of the Senate, made by friendly Senators as well as by the women, showed a suffrage majority of ten on both polls. The vote was taken—and suffrage lost by one vote. Not a known enemy had appeared. No reason was given for the sudden change of front.

Undismayed, the women rallied for the legislative campaign of 1878 and Governor Newbold wrote a recommendation favoring submission in his message, but some unexplained influence induced him to suppress it. The House passed and the Senate defeated the resolution.

The Legislature of 1880 submitted to the voters a prohibitory amendment for the first time. The woman suffrage amendment was lost by an error on engrossment. From that time on suffrage was buffeted about in the fight of the wets and drys for the political control of Iowa, the wets fighting it subrosa, the drys masking their sympathy for fear of overloading the prohibition fight.

For years the State vacillated from one side to the other, now wet, now dry. A type of politician developed which was afterward familiar in many States, known as 223214the “damp dry” and the “dry wet,” a delicate difference existing between these two terms. Such men could be depended upon to vote neither dry nor wet if it were possible to avoid action. It was in this State that the term “stand pat,” afterwards adopted nationally, was inaugurated.

Meanwhile the suffrage association continued to be one of the ablest of those early days. The '70's and early '80's was a period of lectures and lecture courses and every man or woman who spoke on woman suffrage made the rounds of the State. The press was circularized over and over, as were the clergy. The press was extremely favorable and the churches of all denominations were remarkably liberal-minded on the question. Iowa “woman laws” by comparison were unusually fair.

Iowa claims the first woman dentist (1863) in the country and also the first woman to be admitted to the bar (1871). Woman physicians found hospitable welcome in the State, while forced in the East to bear little short of persecution from their male rivals. Many women ministers, also, who would not have been tolerated at the time in the East, presided over large and flourishing churches. In the early '80's, the Patrons of Husbandry grew with rapidity and at one time had 2,000 local granges. Each, being founded upon the principle of the equality of the sexes, was a centre of woman suffrage education among the farmers. The first woman county superintendent of schools was elected in 1869, and women superintendents were numerous thereafter. These and many similar facts demonstrate not only the liberal attitude of the people toward the woman question, but the fact that the State was a leader in the movement.

When politics was not involved the Legislature made quick response to this advanced public opinion by voting eligibility to women for the office of county superintendent of schools and Recorder of Deeds, when few States granted the first privilege and none the last. It made 224215women eligible to most State boards and commissions and defended their equal rights under the law in numerous ways. It is also claimed that the Republican party, dominant in the State, was the first to introduce the innovation of women campaign speakers. Yet among this public-spirited, progressive people where suffrage was advocated to a notable degree, forty-three years of unceasing work was necessary before a well-organized, intelligent suffrage association could get the question to the voters who alone possessed the right to render decision.

An extraordinary effort was put forth by suffragists in 1900 in order to convince the legislators that a public demand existed for submission of the question, and petitions numbering 100,000 signers were presented to the Legislature. The Committees of both House and Senate reported the bill favorably and unanimously. The House defeated the measure 44 ayes; 55 nays. Further work by suffragists secured a promise of reconsideration and the certain passage of the measure, provided the Senate should first pass it. This information was given the Senators. The resolution was lost in the Senate by one vote.

The women knew of nothing further that could be done to strengthen their demand. They had exhausted all methods known for giving a mandate to a Legislature concerning the desires of the people except through the expression of party platforms. The Republican party was as evasively friendly as the Legislature, the Democratic was frankly wet and “anti.” The State suffragists had not yet learned that the stronger the demand and the more efficient the organization, the smaller the chance of getting submission! Under the State suffrage motto “Never give up” the workers were again rallied, and in the hope that a new Legislature might prove to be a more liberal one they urged submission again in 1902. The bill was passed by the Senate and lost by 225216the House. In 1904 and 1906 the amendment was lost in the House and did not come to vote in the Senate.

The constitution being amended, the legislative year was changed from even to odd years, and the Legislature met again in 1907. It was now time to reverse political responsibility, so the measure was lost conveniently in the Senate, and did not come to vote in the House. In 1909 and 1911, for the first time in forty years, it was lost in both Houses.

In 1913, the Legislature, having the first dry majority in some years, passed the resolution, the Senate voting 31 ayes, 15 nays; and the House 81 ayes, 26 nays. In 1915, under similar conditions, the resolution was again passed by the Senate, 38 ayes, 11 nays; and by the House, 84 ayes, 19 nays. Thus after 24 campaigns stretching over 45 years, the Legislature, having no power itself to decide the matter, permitted the voters the right to express their opinion. The first suffrage leaders who, exalted by the spirit of liberty prevailing in the '60's, had begun the movement in expectation of early triumph, had long been gone. Those who had taken their places and led fearlessly forward for another generation were nearly all gone, too. Mary J. Coggeshall, who for thirty years had inspired the suffragists of the State, had died in 1911, leaving $10,000 to the National and $5,000 to the State Suffrage Association with which to “carry on.” Her friends in 1913 sorrowed that she was no longer there to share the joy with them when the first triumph broke the long strain of continual discouragement. Many of the faithful remembered how she, the bravest of them all, had turned away from the State House after the last adverse vote with pale face, broken look and trembling lip—a lifetime of work apparently of no avail.

The Legislature passed the amendment on to the voters for the primary election, June 5, 1916. So many times had the suffragists made ready for campaigns that never came that they had had no spirit for preparation 226217for this campaign of 1916, lest it again prove fruitless, and the neglect had left them much to do. While they were holding conferences to make their campaign plans and to compose a campaign budget, calling for a modest campaign fund, another conference was taking place in St. Louis of which they knew nothing.

Henry Thuenen, counsel for the Iowa brewers, gave a report of it to Mr. Andreae, chief of the National Political Committee: *

“Fred Kemmerle and I were in St. Louis yesterday to keep an appointment previously made with Mr. August A. Busch, President of the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association.

“This conference was in pursuance of our agreement and understanding with Mr. Andreae, and was asked in order to give us an opportunity to discuss the future of Iowa.”

Mr. Thuenen had already sent a long letter to the Interstate Conference Committee of the United States Brewers' Association,† setting forth the political situation and adding:

“We are of the opinion that woman suffrage can be defeated, although we believe that the liquor interests should not be known as the contending force against this amendment. Action of some kind should be taken to assure a real and active campaign against this measure. . . .

“As we view the situation there is a feeling that the fight which has been made by the brewers and the liberal interests of the State is very little short of marvelous in that it has deferred the evil day so long. . . . Our breweries will be closed and the revenue with which we have conducted our past fights will be removed. . . . To sum up, what Iowa needs at your hands, if you are disposed to interest yourselves in the State is: First, a contest on woman suffrage at the primary 227218in 1916; Second, a contest for liberal senators at the election in 1916, and if this fails, then Third, a contest at the polls on the Prohibitory Amendment in 1918 unless otherwise provided by the Legislature.”*

Before the primaries a mysterious but vigorous campaign for hard paved roads began to make itself seen and heard in Iowa. Nothing seemed more remote from the old familiar wet and dry controversy that had raged for more than a generation in the State than good roads. Farmers Tax-Payers' Leagues—apparently to be sincerely what they purported to be, that is, organized protests against extravagant taxation—had been vigorously urged by the Iowa Homestead, the chief farm paper of the State, with a pro-suffrage editor. In answer, such leagues had sprung up like magic, until nearly every county had one. The Homestead urged the nomination of W. L. Harding, whom the brewers had called “our man,” upon the sole ground that he disapproved of hard roads. The Register, chief Republican paper, was urging his defeat as earnestly because of his well known wet record. Many farmers read the Homestead only and, aroused to protest against taxation for hard roads, were won to the Harding standard.

As the campaign drew near its close and the hard roads controversy was at its climax, having been successfully pushed into the forefront of the political discussion of the moment, a connection between the two sides of the contest was made. A rumor—no one knew whence it came—grew into a definite charge, that it was the women in the towns who wanted the hard roads, estimated 228219to cost millions of dollars, in order that they might ride into the country comfortably in their automobiles! Were Mr. Harding nominated and elected there would be no hard roads—he would veto the bill. There followed a further rush of farmers to his support.

At this point the Republicans met in convention. With all the wets, plus a large number of farmers opposed to hard roads, supporting Mr. Harding, his nomination became daily more certain. Then came the final coup. Should Mr. Harding be nominated, and it was evident he would be, he could not be elected should women be enfranchised in the primary! First, they would vote against him because he opposed hard roads which they were alleged to want; second, the probable Democratic nominee was a highly respectable man with a well known dry record, a curious fact since his party was and always had been frankly wet. Women, said the rumors, would vote for the dry Democrat and against the wet Republican. The only remedy for Republicans therefore who did not want their party to go down to defeat was to kill the suffrage amendment!

The public saw no visible hand, no responsible moving power, yet little “ads” now began to appear in the country press. The last issue of the Homestead before the primary carried a page advertisement urging farmers to vote against woman suffrage if they did not want to pay for hard roads. No hint of wet or dry issue was made. When the long-professed suffrage editor was chided for this act of perfidy he could only say feebly, “I got $600 for the ad.”

Certain Republicans were insistent that this mysterious propaganda caused the adverse majority, although they professed not to know whence it came. Was it one of those exasperating cross currents that so often upset political prediction? Not at all. Henry Thuenen, counsel for the Iowa brewers, paid the bills for it; the 229220publicity man who conducted the campaign successfully designed to dupe the farmers said so! *

On primary day, June 5, 1916, the brewers scored three victories: 1. The woman suffrage amendment was defeated. Mr. Andreae's machine had again worked with “unerring accuracy”; 2. A liberal Senate had been nominated, and 3. The candidate that the brewers wanted for Governor had been nominated.

The results in the primary were not unexpected by suffrage leaders of the State or nation. Some weeks before primary day, the Republicans had met in convention at Cedar Rapids and there it had been decided either by the leaders or by a group within the party to kill the suffrage amendment quietly. From that convention there went home two men who had either reluctantly acquiesced in that plan or had protested in vain. One of these men told his sister of the decision, the other his wife. Both made their confession because the two women were working in the suffrage campaign to the very limit of their endurance, and they wished to soften the coming disappointment. Each man declared to his confidante that, should the fact leak out that he had told, he would swear that he was not the one who had betrayed party confidence.

But had there been no secret information the fact that the amendment had been scheduled for defeat was soon apparent. Like the sudden veering of the wind had come a change in the attitude of friendly Republican leaders. Organizers, speakers, local workers, knowing nothing of the friendly warnings and without knowledge of other points, reported the change as a local symptom. As far away as the New York suffrage head-quarters it was known that something sinister had happened. As barometrical changes indicate coming storms so signs as dependable may forecast political action.

The majority against the suffrage amendment at the 230221polls was only 10,341. Four German counties on The Mississippi River where the German-American Alliance was strongest and the wet sentiment had always been constant (Dubuque, Jackson, Clinton and Scott) gave a greater majority against the amendment than did all the rest of the State. The responsibility was thus clearly laid at the door of the brewers but the nature of the secret intrigue that had brought the result is only partially and probably will never be fully known.

Barrels and Bottles, published at Indianapolis, the headquarters of the bureau that pushed the organization of the German-American Alliance for the brewers, commented upon the outcome under the title “Listen, Sisters”: “This handicap (of wet opposition) has again and again prevented the granting of suffrage to women, just as it did in Iowa the other day when the suffrage amendment was defeated by a margin so small that it was manifestly only the unpopularity of that proposition in the larger cities, where prohibition is not favored, that prevented its adoption.”

Immediately after the election, a third Republican in the upper party ranks, in a moment of disgust, confided to another suffrage State officer that “the amendment would have won had the Republicans not agreed to count it out!” Then he added that should it leak out that he had said this thing he would deny it even though it meant to declare so estimable a lady as his confidante a liar!

Rumors of strange happenings at the polls were already spreading but lawyers advised that the election could not be declared illegal no matter what evidence was found. One lawyer, acting for the W. C. T. U., visited 44 counties, returning with 200 pages of affidavits which when summed up revealed many varieties of violation of the election law. A common defense was at once expressed by party workers that such errors occurred in all elections; but there were two which could not be explained 231222away. “The records,” ran the lawyer's report, “in the Secretary of State's office disclose that there were 29,341 more votes cast on the equal suffrage amendment than the total cast for all candidates for Governor!” All political experience establishes the fact that in a normal election the head of the ticket receives the largest vote in any given election and amendments or measures the smallest. Where did all these extra votes cast on the suffrage amendment come from?

The achievement could not be charged to the brewers alone. It required the co-operation of bi-partisan election boards in enough precincts to guarantee results. How was it brought about? Was it not the fear of a possible Democratic administration, carefully planted and nursed by the brewers' argument that W. L. Harding would be defeated in the election should women vote, that led to the decision at Cedar Rapids to kill it? Was it not Republican co-operation with wet Democratic election officers long trained in that State to defeat popular opinion at the polls that led the Republican official to use the words “counted out”? The investigator of that election will discover ample evidence of motive for falsifying the returns, and evidence that an honest public opinion was not expressed. What is wanting in the evidence is the testimony of witnesses who saw the compacts made or heard the instruction given. The absence of this conclusive evidence of political corruption has balked the cure of that unmitigated evil for generations.

Conviction was burned into the soul of every suffrage leader that the amendment had been defeated by trickery, but how had it been done? Friendly politicians were put on the grill and asked the question, “What were the tricks and how can we find them? ” Numerous lawyers were called upon by anxious deputations and asked another puzzling question:— “If we find the fraud in the election what can we do about it?” The politicians agreed that it was too late to discover actionable evidence 232223of fraud in the election and the lawyers said that were fraud found the law would not warrant the declaration that the election was void.

The law provided that the ballots cast at a special election should be held for six months “unless a contest is pending.” Therefore the W. C. T. U. brought an injunction-proceeding against the Executive Council, the Governor, the Secretary of State, the Auditor of State and Clerk of Public Documents, claiming that no legal election had been held. The motive for bringing the injunction was not revealed, beyond its obvious effect to prevent the destruction of the ballots, nor was the character or quantity of evidence given to the press.

It was the intention of the W. C. T. U. to petition the Legislature for an investigation into the conduct of the election and with the evidence collected to press for another election. The Iowa Suffrage Association joined in this request. The law of Iowa, as of many other States, had no suitable provision for a recount on amendments or measures. Frauds once committed were practically beyond discovery.

The situation was without precedent. Public opinion was greatly aroused but divided, many claiming the irregularities unearthed to be the outcome of innocent carelessness, others that they were indications of a statewide criminal conspiracy. It was clear that whether perpetrated by the innocent or guilty, the law offered no easy solution to the problem. No politician wanted an investigation into the election. The evidence proved that an almost unbelievable number of irregularities had been committed by election officials, but it did not reveal whether these had been due to gross ignorance and carelessness or to fraud as defined by the law. Nor did the evidence reveal how or by whom fraud had been committed if fraud there had been.

Iowa suffragists found the wet Legislature of 1917 in irritable mood and professedly resentful of the charge 233224that the men of the State had conducted an illegal election. The legislators made a counter charge that the women were “poor sports” who should know when they were beaten and ask no suffrage favors for a time. A lame compromise was at length agreed to; the women dropped their appeal for a new election and the Legislature resubmitted the amendment. Even this compromise action was secured only after a bitter fight, in the midst of which the wets, following their universal “red herring” policy, introduced an amendment to the constitutional amendment proposing submission of the question to the women for the purpose of sounding their views; and this amendment actually passed the Senate, although the proposal carried no pledge for action even if every woman in the State should vote aye! It was killed in the House and the resolution providing for submission of a suffrage amendment to the legal voters finally passed both Houses.

The dry Legislature of 1919, which had to concur in the submission, was also in unhappy mood. Difficult political problems were demanding attention. The prohibition amendment had gone to referendum in 1918 and had been defeated by a majority of 1,000. Thus the electors had voted down, as a State constitutional amendment, a law that had been on the statute books of the State for thirty-six years. Moreover the first question before the Legislature was ratification of the federal prohibition amendment! The attorney-general and the Governor were in conflict and a movement to impeach the Governor further disturbed legislative serenity. The Legislature, however, ratified the prohibition amendment on January 15, 1919.

When the suffrage amendment, passed by the 1917 Legislature, came up for final passage, it was discovered that no action could be taken because the public notice, as required by law, had not been given by the Secretary of State. The Secretary was a friend of suffrage and 234225professed deep regret for this oversight, the blame falling upon a clerk whose duty it was to attend to such matters. Whether this was another case of Iowa's incapacity for self-government, or whether it was connected with the wet conspiracy, remains as unraveled a mystery as those surrounding the amendments of previous years lost by improper engrossing. The Secretary of State declared, while apologizing for the error, “I have always thought there was something irregular in that election, and I feel that the women of Iowa did not receive fair treatment at the polls.” But again there was no redress. The Legislature made such amends as it could by passing again the resolution submitting a suffrage amendment, which when passed by the Legislature of 1921 would send it to the voters that year. It also willingly added lowa to the ever-increasing list of States that were by then extending presidential suffrage to women. Friendly members attempted to comfort the impatient women by assuring them that after waiting fifty years for the vote they could not possibly mind a little additional wait of two more years.

Governor Harding, nominated on the primary day on which the suffrage amendment had been defeated, had assured the suffrage leaders in 1917 that he knew nothing of the ruse played upon the tax-payers' leagues and he became conservatively friendly to suffrage. In 1918, he permitted his name to be added to the suffrage advisory committee already adorned by Republican and Democratic names high in party councils. The women declared that he never failed to be frank and honorable with them in every suffrage move thereafter.

In his annual message to the Legislature in January, 1919, he recommended the ratification of the Federal Suffrage Amendment, and when on June 5, 1919, that amendment was finally submitted to the States, he was among the first to respond to the National American Woman Suffrage Association's telegram urging all governors 235226to call special sessions for ratification. The Legislature met in answer to his call on July 2, 1919, at 10 A.M. and by 11:40 A.M. the resolution of ratification had passed both Houses.

The friendly, generous, liberty-prizing spirit of 1870, loosed from the political thralldom which had warped and crippled and held it fast for fifty years, had triumphed. Iowa was herself again.

So far the story of suffrage, victory and defeat, has been the story of State referenda. We have been covering the time when for years that state-by-state effort spun the main thread of suffrage activity. “Win more States to full woman suffrage,” had been the fell word that the suffragists of earlier days had encountered from friend and foe alike. “Go, get another State,” Theodore Roosevelt counseled as late as 1908.

I don't know the exact number of States we shall have to have, said Miss Anthony once in a musing hour, but I do know that there will come a day when that number will automatically and resistlessly act on the Congress of the United States to compel the submission of a federal suffrage amendment. And we shall recognize that day when it comes.

As has been seen, that dream of woman suffrage by federal amendment antedated all the efforts to win woman suffrage by the State route. And it is not to be forgotten that from the earliest days the will and the work to make the dream come true went along concurrently with the work for and in State referenda.

Before the Civil War it seems to have occurred to no one that suffrage for women might be gained through federal action. Public opinion in all parts of the country was strongly resentful of any unusual assumption of authority by the federal government and no precedent existed upon which to base a theory for such action. The Civil War welded the loosely federated States into an “indissoluble Union,” the word “nation” for the first 237228time found its way into the list of words frequently used as descriptive of the United States of America, and the Acts of Reconstruction represented a degree of centralized authority which before the war would not have been tolerated. Although apologists for the departure from previous custom explained the Acts of Reconstruction as military necessities and although the conflict concerning the distribution of power between federal and State authorities continues today, the fact remains that hostility to federal legislative supremacy was greatly modified after that period.

After suffragists had made their energetic and heroic struggle to prevent the enfranchisement of the Negro without the inclusion of women in the plan, and when, despite their protests, Negro suffrage was achieved with woman suffrage left out, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments at least furnished precedents for a federal woman suffrage amendment, and this at once became the ultimate aim of the women's campaign. Observing the frequency with which laws, both State and Federal, were set aside by court decisions, and observing, too, that the Fifteenth Amendment had been declared constitutional, the women of that day took pains to frame a woman's amendment in the same precise phraseology. A group, led by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, wrote the amendment, designated by the suffragists for many years as the Sixteenth, and it was introduced in the Senate by A. A. Sargent of California on January 10, 1878. Owing to the death of the friendly chairman of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, Senator Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, an adverse report was made, but a minority report, accompanied by a lengthy address, was presented by Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts in which he said:

“No single argument of its advocates seems to us to carry so great a persuasive force as the difficulty which its ablest 238229opponents encounter in making a plausible statement of their objections. We trust we do not fail in deference to our esteemed associates on the committee when we avow our opinion that their report is no exception to this rule.”

At that same date President Hayes received a deputation of suffragists, and a petition to the Congress was presented, with speeches on behalf of the amendment.

With so promising a beginning, suffrage hopes centered again on federal action. But between that date and June 4, 1919, when the amendment was finally passed by the Congress, lie forty years and six months, During that period the amendment was continuously pending, having been introduced in the same form in every succeeding Congress. In the Senate it was reported with a favorable majority in 1884, 1886, 1889 and 1893, and without recommendation in 1890 and 1896, and with a favorable majority again in 1913, 1914 and 1916. The House Committee gave favorable reports in 1883 and 1890, and adverse reports in 1884, 1886 and 1894, reported without recommendation in 1914, 1916 and 1917, and favorably in 1918, the Senate Committees making six reports only and the House Committees five in the thirty-five years between 1878 and 1913.

While other influences contributed to this record of inaction, the most outstanding cause was that Southern Democrats, although a minority, held the whip and controlled the suffrage situation. In 1878, when the woman suffrage amendment was introduced, the nation consisted of thirty-eight States and was accordingly represented by 76 United States Senators. The constitutional requirement of a two-thirds vote in the Congress for the submission of an amendment and action by three-fourths of the Legislatures for ratification made the support of fiftyone of these Senators and twenty-eight Legislatures necessary to its adoption. To secure this result the vote of five Senators and the ratification of five Legislatures 239230of secession, or border, States had to be obtained, in addition to the united support of all Northern and Western States.

During the earlier portion of this time, Senators from the seceding States would rather have committed hari kari than vote for any federal suffrage amendment, and the border States were little less pronounced in their vindictive denunciation of suffrage by the federal method. Three prospects only for success appeared: (1) An increase in the number of States, so that the total could outvote the South; (2) A change of attitude on the part of Southern Senators; and (3) A more insistent demand for action by Congress than the nation was then in a mood to give. None offered immediate hope, but in the end all three aids were secured.

The suffragists of 1878 could not believe that the nation would long allow its record of enfranchisement of illiterate men, fresh from slavery, and its denial of the same privilege to intelligent white women to stand unchallenged. They turned to the States, firm in the faith that they would soon furnish a mandate to which popular opinion would yield, and through which the congressional impasse would be broken.

Had Republicans recognized the indefensible discrimination against women created by reconstruction history and given party aid to State amendments, which obvious consistency demanded (without whip or bayonet), woman suffrage would have swept from West to East long before corporate interests had gained sway over party councils. The East and South would have yielded then to the momentum of the triumphant movement, as they did forty years later, and there would probably have been no need of a federal woman suffrage amendment. However, the Republicans, in full control of most Northern and Western States, blocked action in these States as effectually as the Southern Democrats did in the Congress and in Southern States.

So it came about that the dismayed suffragists had to gird on their armor in grim preparation for war with the nation's prejudice, should it take till the end of time. They determined to hold fast the demand established in Congress, to bring to its support such gains among the States as they could wrest from the well-nigh impossible conditions imposed, and then, when politics should indicate the hour, to concentrate their efforts again on a federal amendment with the aim of finishing the task by that method. Formulated at that early day, this remained the policy of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to the end.

When it became plain that no action could be secured in Congress from the committees to which national suffrage amendments were referred, the suffragists attempted to induce Senate and House to establish standing woman suffrage committees with more time and sympathy to give their cause. As a result of much labor for three years, a so-called select committee was obtained in both Houses, the Senate renewing this committee in 1883 and the House declining to do so. The Senate Committee in time became a standing committee and so remained until the end. In the House the amendment was usually referred to the Judiciary Committee. A further attempt to renew the suffrage committee in the House was made in 1884, at which time Miss Anthony said: “This is the sixteenth year that we have come before Congress in person, and the nineteenth by petition.”

The early Senate Committee did not prove to be an asset to the women's campaign. In the long list of committees, it was held to be of low rank and during the thirty-five years of Republican control the chairmanship was assigned to a Southern Democrat. Senators from the States of Missouri, North Carolina, Florida, Arkansas, Virginia, and Georgia, to whose people the idea of suffrage by federal act was infuriating, held the post during this period. Said one of these chairmen to a fellow Senator: 241232“There is no man living who can answer the argument of those women, but I'd rather see my wife dead in her coffin than voting, and I'd die myself before I'd vote to submit that amendment.”

Upon another occasion, Miss Anthony, bearing her threescore years and ten, closed the hearing with a review of the forty years of effort to secure justice for women and made so pathetic an appeal for action that the great room full of women, with faces drawn and tears running down many cheeks, involuntarily turned their eyes upon the chairman from Virginia. He was clearly perturbed and under the control of emotion. What would he say? What would he do? How could he refuse so unanswerable, so appealing a request? Presently they discovered the source of his emotion—he was in need of the spittoon! And no indication of more sympathetic interest did any of these Southern Democratic chairmen ever show.

During a portion of Grover Cleveland's administration, the Senate became Democratic. Then, the tables being turned, a Republican was given the chairmanship, and that fearless friend of woman suffrage, George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, being appointed, no time was lost in presenting a favorable report.

Based on this favorable report of the Committee in 1886, a vote on the amendment was secured in the Senate in 1887. The vote stood ayes 16, nays 34, absent 26. The debate is a distinct landmark, as Southern Senators laid out with care the argument upon which the Northern opposition was based through the coming years. Already the reaction had set in against the “wholesale and indiscriminate extension of the electorate” and the plea of all opponents for the next generation was “there are too many incompetent voters now, why double them? Let the extension of suffrage stop now.”

Said Senator Beck of Kentucky:

“We have been compelled in the last ten years to allow all the colored men of the South to become voters. There is a mass of ignorance there to be absorbed that will take years and years of care in order to bring that class up to the standard of intelligent voters. The several States are addressing themselves to that task as earnestly as possible. Now it is proposed that all the women of the country shall vote; that all the colored women of the South, who are as much more ignorant than the colored men as it is possible to imagine, shall vote. Not one perhaps in a hundred of them can read or write. The colored men have had the advantages of communication with other men in a variety of forms. Many of them have considerable intelligence; but the colored women have not had equal chances. Take them from their washtubs and their household work and they are absolutely ignorant of the new duties of voting citizens.... Why, sir, a rich corporation or a body of men of wealth could buy them up for fifty cents apiece, and they would vote, without knowing what they were doing, for the side that paid most.”

Said Senator Morgan of Alabama:

“We have now masses of voters so enormous in numbers as that it seems to be almost beyond the power of the law to execute the purposes of the elective franchise with justice, with propriety, and without crime. How much would these difficulties and these intrinsic troubles be increased if we should raise the number of voters from 10,000,000 to 20,000,000 in the United States? That would be the direct and immediate effect of conferring the franchise upon the women.... The effect would be to drive the ladies of the land, as they are termed, the well-bred and well-educated women, the women of nice sensibilities, within their home circles, there to remain, while the ruder of that sex would thrust themselves out on the hustings and at the ballot-box, and fight their way to the polls through Negroes and others who are not the best of company even at the polls, to say nothing of the disgrace of association with them. You would paralyze one-third at least of the women of this land by the very vulgarity of the overture made to them that they should go struggling to the polls in order to vote in common with the herd of men.”

No other vote was obtained in the Senate until 1914 and none at all during this period in the House. The years passed with hearings before the Committees of both Houses of every Congress and the circulation of the printed procedure of these hearings, interviews with members, occasional petitions, deputations to the presidents and, every year, a resolution from the national suffrage convention calling upon Congress to submit the suffrage amendment.

Until 1895 all the annual suffrage conventions were held in Washington, in order that suffrage delegates might plead with their representatives in Congress to submit the amendment, but after 1895 the conventions were held alternate years in other cities, meeting in Washington during the first session of each Congress only. There followed the period between 1896 and 1910 when the business of securing from the country a mandate on woman suffrage made such slow headway. The Congress was accepting the inaction of the country as a cue for inaction in Senate and House, and the inaction in Congress, composed as that body was of the leaders of political parties, was taken as the cue for inaction in the States.

In order to focus the attention of Congress once more upon woman suffrage and that of the country upon congressional obligation to the women of the land, it was voted at the annual suffrage convention held in Buffalo in October, 1908, to roll up another petition calling for the submission of the federal suffrage amendment. This method of agitation had been abandoned many years before, not only because petitions seemed to produce no direct result, but as it was no longer the custom to present such petitions publicly and with speeches, they were robbed of their publicity effect upon the country. It was now proposed to resume the plan, chiefly for its agitational value.

With the view of learning in advance how much effect 244235such a petition would have, the National Suffrage Association asked President Roosevelt to receive a deputation, which he did. The deputation asked whether a petition of a million signatures would influence him to recommend woman suffrage in his annual message to the Congress, as the Association wished to know before going to the labor and expense of such a petition. He replied with a courteous but extremely emphatic assertion that it would neither move him nor the Congress. Asked for advice as to the next step, he promptly gave his memorable dictum, “Go, get another State.” When reminded that Republican Legislatures would rarely submit amendments and that when they did his party would not support them at the polls, he failed to sense party responsibility. Reminded that his gubernatorial appointee had robbed the women of Arizona of the vote by veto in 1903, he expressed surprise, although vigorous appeals had been made him for intervention at the time, when he had declared himself powerless to rectify the wrong.

Despite the discouraging interview, the petition work was undertaken, but State suffrage leaders, upon whose interest success depended, had neither faith in the result, nor energy to give in addition to that required to meet the continual State legislative campaigns. An honorary committee of highly influential men and women allowed their names to be joined in the appeal and a nationwide educational campaign on behalf of the federal suffrage amendment was the result. Federal suffrage meetings were held, sermons preached and hundreds of editorials called for the submission of the amendment.

The petition, with 404,000 signatures, instead of the one million intended, was brought to Washington in April, 1910, where the annual suffrage convention was in session. Although there was regret that suffragists had been too much occupied to bring a larger number of names, they recalled that President Lincoln had considered 245236300,000 a sufficient mandate for the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure. In gaily decorated automobiles, each carrying the petitions of a State and bearing its name on spectacular banners, the procession moved from convention to Congress, where it was met by an honorary committee, and in the State marble room and the House Judiciary room the petitions were handed by each State president to her Senators and Representatives. The custom of no speeches was broken, and an eloquent address to the Senate upon the occasion was made by Senator LaFollette of Wisconsin.

At that convention, for the first time in suffrage history, a President of the United States, William Howard Taft, addressed the national gathering of suffragists, and, among other things, this is what he said:

“The theory that Hottentots or any other uneducated, altogether unintelligent class is fitted for self-government is a theory I wholly dissent from, but this qualification is not applicable here. The other qualification to which I call your attention is that the class should as a whole care enough to look after its interests to take part as a whole in the exercise of political power if it is conferred.”

A hiss was heard. Miss Shaw, who was presiding, arose with a quick “O my children!” Hushed quiet followed, but newspaper headlines carried the news, “Suffragists hiss the President,” to the remotest corner of the land. It was denied that the hiss had come from a delegate, and the next day the convention by resolution apologized for the unfortunate lapse in good manners.

Nevertheless delegates agreed among themselves that the word “Hottentot” in connection with their appeal had struck like a whip across their faces, and with this interpretation the press also received the news, some newspapers criticizing the President for his untactful use of words, and the suffragists, for the hissed protest, with equally caustic comment. The entire country found the incident worthy of discussion; editorials, resolutions, sermons, 246237sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, followed each other, and the wave of publicity started all over again several times. “Hottentot” did not help Mr. Taft but it did contribute indirectly to a curious revival of national interest in woman suffrage.

After the 1910 suffrage convention, once again a Congressional Committee of the National Suffrage Association opened Headquarters in Washington and began the first systematic and complete poll of Congress, including all old and new candidates for election in 1910 and 1912.

The impulse given to the movement that year by the gain of Washington with the astounding majority of 24,000, followed by the gain of California in 1911, emphasized the question in the public mind to a degree regarded as phenomenal, and had a notable reaction upon the Congress.

The Presidential campaign of 1912 was approaching. The National Suffrage Association had appealed to every dominant presidential convention for a suffrage plank since the first attempt in 1868. After 1900, campaigns had been more thorough, all delegates having been individually memorialized, and more urgent efforts had been made to secure the sympathetic co-operation of leading politicians. Hearings had been usually granted before resolution committees with more or less courtesy, but platforms had remained silent. Democratic presidential platforms carried no expression concerning woman suffrage from 1868 to 1916, and the Republican platforms had had no word since the “splinter” of 1872.

In 1912 there were three candidates for the presidency from the Republican ranks. They were Mr. Taft, Mr. Roosevelt, and Mr. LaFollette. All three were approached by the suffragists for the expression of an opinion on woman suffrage. Mr. Taft answered:

“I don't think we ought to take as radical a step as that without being certain that when we do it it will meet the 247238approval of all those or substantially all of those in whose interest the franchise is extended because if it does not meet their views and they don't avail themselves of the opportunity to exercise the influence which that would give them, then we should be in a bad way because we might lose a substantial proportion of the votes of those that would be for better things. Therefore I am willing to wait until there shall be a substantial, not unanimous but a substantial, call from that sex before the suffrage is extended.”

Mr. LaFollette carried a suffrage plank in the platform upon which he proposed to stand. Mr. Roosevelt qualified his statement with so many reservations as to make it as useful for one side as the other.

Amid great excitement and angry dispute over the seating of delegates, the Republican nomination was given to Mr. Taft by a vote of 561, Mr. Roosevelt receiving 107. The Roosevelt delegates, charging fraud in the seating of delegates, met immediately after the adjournment of the convention and nominated Mr. Roosevelt for the presidency—thus bringing into organized form the movement that had been growing in and out of Congress for three years—and called themselves the Progressive Party. A convention to adopt a platform was called for August.

Meantime the Democrats met in Baltimore June 25 to July 3 and nominated Woodrow Wilson. He had replied to the National Suffrage Association's inquiry as follows:

“Allow me to acknowledge with real appreciation your letter in which you put to me a very difficult question. I can only say that my own mind is in the midst of the debate which it involves. I do not feel that I am ready to utter my confident judgment as yet about it. I am honestly trying to work my way toward a just conclusion.”

Mr. Roosevelt is alleged to have written his own platform for the Progressive convention in August. A group 248239of supporters, paying him a visit, heard it and made loud protest against the suffrage plank it contained. That plank endorsed the principle of woman suffrage but pledged the new party to a practical support only when the question had been submitted to a referendum of the women of the United States. His friends persuaded him of the insult of putting upon women a test never made of men, and a straightforward declaration was substituted:

“The Progressive Party, believing that no people can justly claim to be a true democracy which denies political rights on account of sex, pledges itself to the task of securing equal suffrage to men and women alike.”

Many women attended the convention as delegates, several of the Southern States being so represented. Jane Addams seconded Mr. Roosevelt's nomination. State Progressive conventions followed in rapid succession, each endorsing the national platform. Women served on many State Central Committees and very many were listed by the Speakers' Bureau. The great advantage of having the endorsement of a party in the field was quickly manifest. Mr. Roosevelt himself was no longer doubtful, and other men long silent, encouraged by the work women were doing for the Progressive cause, boldly advocated woman suffrage.

The elections of 1912 resulted in “a sweeping Democratic victory by pluralities in so many States as to give that party's candidate the largest vote and largest majority in the Electoral College ever given a party candidate.”* Mr. Taft carried two States only, Mr. Roosevelt five. Congress was made Democratic and the Republicans lost the Legislatures of nine States. While the Democratic party offered little encouragement to suffrage, the Republican machine was broken or out of repair in most of the States where campaigns were pending and the 249240strong attitude of the new minority party presented a warning to both old parties to treat the suffrage question with fairness.

To emphasize this attitude three more suffrage States were won in the 1912 election, and a controversy, almost as effective, was aroused as to whether three more might not have been added to the suffrage list by an honest count.

Inevitably the new Congress showed far keener interest in the suffrage question. Six representatives insisted upon the privilege of introducing the usual resolution. The Democrats, in concession to changed conditions, gave the chairmanship of the Senate Suffrage Committee to one of their own party, Senator Charles S. Thomas of Colorado. The Committee was favorable. In the Senate body there were now eighteen Senators elected by constituencies wherein both men and women voted.

It was about this time that the suffrage struggle in America began to be complicated by the influence of earlier developments in the suffrage struggle in England. Since 1906 a militant campaign had been raging in Great Britain with demonstrations manufactured by the women to bait the police, the consequent arrests of women duly enlisted to go to prison, followed by imprisonment with hard labor, hunger strikes, forcible feeding and temporary releases for hospital treatment. This shocking story daily repeated had carried an important message to Americans. Many learned for the first time that women in Great Britain had long been voters and only lacked the parliamentary vote to make their suffrage privileges equal to those of men. They learned that no parliamentary suffrage measure could pass unless it became part of the government program and that Premier Asquith, supported by his Cabinet, refused to grant it that assistance.

Women familiar with the home struggle in America perceived that the crux of the British and American suffrage 250241problem was the same, a minority, holding control of a party, was checkmating the majority in that party who were willing to move forward. American men, seeing the injustice of British men, began to apply reason to the home attitude upon the same question. Condemning the women who were deliberately creating the turmoil, and the politicians who met every seemingly ridiculous move of the women with one equally ridiculous, they nevertheless began to think.

Although the militant movement had divided opinion in that country as in all others,* it taught many suffragists the world around that spectacular events carried suffrage message to the masses of the people as suffrage appeals to reason never could, and immediately such features, shorn of militant character, were introduced into State campaigns in America. Many American suffragists including Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, then president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, had marched in London suffrage parades and were familiar with the helpful as well as the harmful effects of militant tactics. When, therefore, after the annual suffrage convention of November, 1912, Miss Alice Paul, an American who had done prison duty in the English campaign, approached the National Suffrage Association, of which Dr. Shaw was the president, with the suggestion that she be permitted to organize a suffrage parade at the Presidential inaugural in March, 1913, and offered to raise the necessary funds, the Board gladly accepted the offer, gave her the prestige of the chairmanship of its Congressional Committee and provided her with stationery 251242of the Association and the list of its usual contributors.

The Washington suffrage parade was organized with the assistance and co-operation of the entire National Suffrage Association. The preparations were well and elaborately made and between eight and ten thousand women marched. Public interest can be measured by a press story that was carried to the far corners of the nation. “Where,” asked one of the incoming President's staff upon the arrival of the presidential party in Washington, “where are all the people?”—“Watching the suffrage parade,” the police told him.

As it fell out, the treatment given the parade proved of far more importance to woman suffrage than the parade itself. In the city governed directly by Congress the marching women were shockingly used. “Women were spat upon, slapped in the face, tripped up, pelted with burning cigar stubs and insulted by jeers and obscene language too vile to print or repeat.”—“Rowdies seized and mauled young girls.”—“A very gray-haired college woman was knocked down.”—“The parade was continually stopped by the turbulence of the crowd.”*

Assistance was called from Ft. Meyer and soldiers brought to the rescue. The parade, however, was largely spoiled. The thousands of men and women who gathered on the sidewalks to see the much advertised spectacle were robbed of a view of the novel floats and colorful costuming, but the failure of the police to maintain order, and not the procession itself, gave the chief contribution to suffrage progress.

Many Senators and Representatives with wives and friends, marched in the procession and saw the treatment accorded the marchers. The Senate promptly voted an investigation and the findings filled a volume. The press united in the declaration that Washington was disgraced, and as an outcome the Chief of Police was dismissed. 252243The dissemination of the news of these events day after day brought discussion on the subject of woman suffrage to every hamlet in the land, but more important than all else it brought debate, live, earnest debate, to the cloakrooms of Senate and House, where it flourished until the end.

In December, 1913, the annual suffrage convention met in Washington and the delegates heard the report of its Congressional Committee with mingled feelings of satisfaction at the lively campaign that had been steadily conducted and surprise over certain facts recorded. Much has been erroneously said and written concerning the breaking away of a smaller body of suffragists from the larger parent body which marked this period. Throughout the last years of the suffrage campaign it was a daily feature of anti-suffrage tactics to scout the National Suffrage Association's oft-repeated assertions that all connection with the new organization had been severed and to try to direct toward the parent body the antagonism aroused by the militant tactics of its offspring. Politicians, too, found it convenient to insist that all suffragists and all suffrage tactics were, subrosa, of the same parent organization, and thereupon used the expedients of the militants as a smoke screen of excuse for opposition to the very principle of suffrage. The facts with regard to the dissociation of the small body of militants from the large body of non-militants in the American suffrage struggle were as follows:

While officially connected with the National Suffrage Association, in charge of its congressional work, and writing on its stationery, the Association's congressional chairman had created a new organization on the plan of the English militant society. The new group called itself the Congressional Union and had launched a paper as its organ. Yet the program of work and disbursements of the Committee of the National had been so interwoven with the work and disbursements of the 253244new organization that the joint chairman of both declared that it was impossible to separate them. After due consideration the Board of the National Suffrage Association decided that it was inadvisable to reappoint Miss Paul chairman of the Congressional Committee unless she resigned as chairman of the Congressional Union. The constant confusion of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association with the Congressional Union, an organized society, was making such action inevitable. But Miss Paul refused to accept these terms.

It had long been predicted that a militant movement similar to that of Great Britain would be reproduced in the United States. Many suffragists hoped to avert this division by adopting the new methods which had helped and discarding those which had clearly harmed the movement. Many delegates to that suffrage convention in 1913 saw in the attitude of the chairman of the Congressional Committee a dark conspiracy to capture the entire “National” for the militant enterprise. Others recognized the inefficiency of disintegrated forces in the closing days of the long struggle and made earnest efforts to prevent a division by persuading the young militants to work under the old banner, but to no avail.

The Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association was a standing committee and thereafter the work went on with renewed energy under a new chairman. The Congressional Union also continued to work with Congress as an independent body, thus making two committees in Washington working for the same thing but with no plan of co-operation from that time forth.

The Congressional Committee opened a new headquarters in Washington and took a complete poll of Senate and House. The handicaps inevitable when two separate committees are trying to accomplish the same end were soon manifest. To illustrate: The revival of 254245the movement to establish a suffrage standing committee in the House had been begun in 1913 with the approval of the executive board of the National Suffrage Association. Now came the Congressional Union with a petition to the Democrats to caucus on the subject. Vainly the Congressional Committee sought to persuade the Union from thus aligning the Democrats against the project. Aligning the Democrats against the project was exactly what the Union wished to accomplish in order that the Democrats should be put on record as a party in opposition. The Union, following its English model, was preparing to “hold the party in power responsible.” In vain did the Committee expostulate that no party can be “the government” in this country as it is in Great Britain, since one party may conduct the national administration and the other control the Congress; one may control the entire national business, executive and legislative, and the other many State Legislatures.

The Democrats were easily enough persuaded to caucus and “not only voted against a standing committee on woman suffrage but Mr. Heflin of Alabama amended the resolution before the caucus so that the members of the caucus were enabled to vote definitely that the woman suffrage question was one to be determined by the States and not by the national government.”*

The three main differences of policy between the National Suffrage Association and its young offshoot, the Congressional Union, soon developed. The Congressional Union (1) opposed congressional candidates because they belonged to the “party in power” regardless of their personal stand; (2) it opposed an entire “party in power” because some of its individual members of Congress were hostile to woman suffrage; (3) it used so-called militant methods which the National did not endorse.

In accord with this policy it now announced its intention of campaigning against all Democratic candidates in 255246the States where women were enfranchised. Meanwhile, the Congressional Committee, in full realization that the Senate would not give a majority, forced a vote on suffrage on March 19, 1914, resulting in a record of yeas 35, nays 34. Western Democrats were thus given the opportunity to make a public record of their individual attitudes.

The year witnessed the proclamation of the Sixteenth Amendment, the first in forty-three years, authorizing the income tax, and the suffrage amendment lost the place its leaders had so anxiously hoped their amendment would fill. The suffrage amendment was thereafter for a time called the Seventeenth but when the Seventeenth Amendment, dealing with the election of Senators, was adopted, it became plain that the progress of suffrage in the Congress was too slow to hold a numerical place on the amendment schedule, so the suffrage amendment was thereafter called the Federal Suffrage Amendment by the National Suffrage Association.

Shortly after the Senate vote a bomb was thrown into the national suffrage camp by its own Congressional Committee. The poll of the Senate indicated that not only foes but many friends of suffrage were insisting that the question was one that the States should settle, and the Chairman of the Congressional Committee, assisted by her co-workers, conceived a plan to meet this objection. State workers were complaining that they could not secure referenda from Legislatures, and could not win them when submitted, if a majority of votes cast at the election were required. So a new amendment was drawn up, proposing that when an initiative petition, signed by eight per cent of the electors voting at the preceding general election, should request the submission of woman suffrage, such question should be submitted, and a majority of those voting should be sufficient for its adoption.

The object was to increase the number of suffrage 256247States and the measure was intended by its authors as a support to the pending Federal Suffrage Amendment. The national suffrage board reluctantly permitted its introduction, although when Dr. Shaw retired from the presidency, she announced that she had never approved it. The amendment was introduced in the Senate by Senator Shafroth of Colorado and in the House by Representative Palmer of Pennsylvania, and was promptly voted out of the committees to which it had been reported. It bore influentially on the annual suffrage convention in November, 1914, where it was voted that every means within the National Suffrage Association's power, in the future as in the past, should be used to further the Federal Suffrage Amendment and “such other legislation as the National Board may authorize and initiate” in support of that amendment. At the mid-year conference of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in June, 1915, a motion to drop work on the so-called Shafroth Amendment was defeated, 21 ayes, 57 nays.

Misunderstanding and confusion in the ranks, occasioned by the charge of the Congressional Union that the National Suffrage Association had substituted a referendum amendment for that which it had been supporting for a generation; the clamor within and without the National Suffrage Association for repudiation of the anti-Democratic policy of the Union; continual complaint from campaign States that Union sympathizers were pulling off workers because “there was an easier way” brought a complexity of troublesome problems which tremendously increased the strain of suffrage leaders and workers.

The Shafroth Amendment was withdrawn just in time to prevent a definite split in the National Suffrage Association. Many suffragists believed that while it had precipitated an agony of differences, on the whole the proposal had been good interim strategy, for the arguments for and against had served to bring the question of 257248suffrage by federal amendment still more prominently to the front. Moreover, State suffrage auxiliaries had been solidified in their allegiance to the National Suffrage Association's policy by the agitation.

The campaigns against Democrats, waged by the Union in the West, aroused the antagonism of voters in the Eastern State campaigns, and many Democrats excused themselves for voting “no” at the polls because women voters in the West were being urged to oppose Democratic candidates. Workers in all referenda campaigns were convinced that this influence swelled the opposition to a considerable degree. On the other hand, the campaign of the Union did not suffice to put the party in power out. Instead of the eighteen Democrats from the suffrage States in the 1913-1914 Congress there were nineteen in the 1915-1916 Congress.

That Congress was reopened in an irritated state of mind. All Republicans and Democrats in Senate or House were outspoken in their condemnation of the “party responsible” plan, and the National Suffrage Association's Congressional Committee was obliged to soothe before attempting to persuade.

But the campaign in Washington went vigorously forward, hearings, interviews and home pressure forming the main aims. The Chairman of the Judiciary was determined that the Amendment should not come to vote in the House; the Democrats caucussed and determined to prevent a vote. Nevertheless, the question was at length brought to vote by Representative Mondell of Wyoming, on January 12, 1915, after a ten hours' debate, and resulted in 174 ayes, 204 noes. Eighty-six Democrats and eighty-eight Republicans and Progressives voted yes; 171 Democrats and thirty-three Republicans voted no.

Meanwhile the State campaigns were awhirl with activities undreamt of in earlier days. November recorded the defeat of the suffrage referenda in four Eastern States, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and 258249New Jersey, but the fact that 1,234,000 Eastern men had voted yes was not overlooked by the Congress.

Then, too, by that hour the great and terrible agency which brought about the downfall of much of the old social and political order and made way for much that was new was having a tremendous effect on woman suffrage by revolutionizing the whole sphere of women. That agency was the world war. From overseas the news kept coming that women, as always in war time, were taking the places of men on farms and in factories, but more than that now, they were doing the work in munition plants, running the railways, keeping the post offices, and managing hospitals. The National American Woman Suffrage Association allowed no Congressman or legislator to remain in ignorance of these facts, should he overlook them in the press. He was reminded of them in conversation, at dinners, and on tennis courts; they were handed to him in typewriting, sent him through the mails and told him by his fellow members in the cloak-rooms. They were to prove a salient part of the education of the American Congress on the subject of the American woman's sphere.*

As a presidential election was on its way for the autumn of 1916, early in the year the National Suffrage Association, of which Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt had become president in 1915, began work to get endorsement of the Federal Suffrage Amendment as a plank in the platform of the two dominant parties. The sentiment of the country was such that a declaration favoring the principle of woman suffrage was not only possible but probable in both platforms, yet careful investigation showed suffragists that neither party intended to endorse the Amendment, the South being politically-minded to block an attempt in the Democratic convention, and the East being like-minded in the Republican convention. The danger was that both conventions would definitely refer the question to the States, thus dismissing responsibility for the nation and the national parties, and continuing upon suffragists the burden and delay of securing action by the State route only.

Under the leadership of the National Suffrage Association's Congressional Committee an appropriate plank for each platform was written, endorsing woman suffrage without reference to the method of securing it. These planks were approved by those Republican and Democratic members of Congress who would be the leaders of their respective conventions. All delegates to the two conventions who were elected in sufficient time for such action were memorialized by letter three times, and the presidential candidates were interviewed, but the major emphasis of the campaign was placed on the work of 260251State suffragists with their own people. As one woman said, “It is harder to dodge home folks.” So in each and every State deputations bearing the proposed suffrage plank waited upon the leaders of political policy and visited delegates. Hundreds of pledges of support were thus secured and every delegate knew the question would come before him, and the form of the plank he would be asked to support. The help of the press was urged and hundreds of newspapers joined the suffragists in their demand. Resolutions of State associations of various kinds were secured and presented to the State delegates. Women delegates were numerous in the conventions, and their special activity was sought. To spectacularize the appeal, a suffrage procession, with floats, banners and costuming, was planned for Chicago where the Republicans and Progressives met on June 14, and a golden lane, or “walkless parade,” for St. Louis where the Democrats met two weeks later. A public suffrage conference was held in connection with both. In Chicago a memorial to the Republican convention was adopted, to remind the delegates that the women of twelve States were voters, and that the women of six of those had their party affiliations yet to make.

On June 7, for which date the parade of 25,000 women was scheduled, rain descended in torrents and the heavy clouds lifted for no moment during the entire day. Thousands of women pledged to march did not venture forth, but 5,500 did. Those who could secure rubber coats and shoes, did so; those who could not braved the storm without them. The Chicago Herald thus described that Rainy Day parade:

“Over their heads surged a vast sea of umbrellas extending two miles down the street. Under their feet swirled rivulets of water. Wind tore at their clothes and rain drenched their faces. Unhesitatingly they marched in unbroken formation, keeping perfect step. Never before in the history of Chicago, 261252probably of the world, has there been so impressive a demonstration of idealism, of consecration to a cause.”

Along the route the hotel windows were filled with Republican delegates, dry and comfortable. The procession, neither colorful nor picturesque, with music making discord in the noisy downpour of rain, moved on, carrying its message as no fair weather parade could have done. One delegate to the Republican convention came to the suffrage headquarters to say: “I watched it from a window where men stood eight and ten deep and many had tears in their eyes. They said, these women really mean it and we might as well make up our minds to it.” Young and old, “these women” really meant it. As a young girl passed in the procession, a man on the curbstone called, “You ought to be home with your mother.” And she called back, “Mother is here, marching with me.”

The parade's objective was the Republicans' convention hall and as the women reached it there occurred a coincidence priceless in suffrage annals. Inside the hall a session of the Resolutions Committee of the Republicans was the only convention activity in progress. Its members, seated on the great central platform, were giving a hearing to a group of anti-suffrage women, one of whom was just reaching an effective climax of appeal with, “Women do not want the vote.” As if timed to the instant, through the doors of the hall came the drenched and bedraggled marchers for suffrage. They pushed up to the platform, they massed down below it, they scattered out over the hall, and still they came pouring through the doors. To the everlasting honor of a politician's sense of humor let it be recorded that, as the shock of surprise yielded, several of those on the platform smiled in understanding amusement, as if the incongruity of that outworn charge had at last been comprehended.

Meanwhile, the National Suffrage Association's political 262253committee, aided by strong friends of the Republican convention, with no food or rest, kept watch over the Resolutions Committee and lost no opportunity to stress the suffrage claim. At midnight, the night before the parade, a sub-committee had voted down the suffrage plank and refused consent for any mention of suffrage in the platform by a vote of 5 to 4, Senators Lodge of Massachusetts and Wadsworth of New York leading the opposition. But neither the women nor their men allies gave up. Senators Borah of Idaho and Smoot of Utah led the suffrage forces. In an effort to turn the tide, the Republican women delegates gathered together and a staunch appeal signed by them all and urging a suffrage plank was presented to the Resolutions Committee. After hours of work and debate, by a vote of 26 to 21 the committee repudiated its sub-committee's recommendation to shelve suffrage. Within an hour defeat again threatened, for seven absentees demanded a reconsideration. Marion Butler of North Carolina led the opposition and was supported by Murray Crane and Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania, and James Wadsworth of New York. These men held a special conference in the next room to consider how to prevent any mention of woman suffrage in the platform. Out of the acrimonious discussion, in which North Carolina joined hands with Massachusetts in a determined struggle against a solid West where women were already enfranchised, a compromise emerged. Even this was not achieved until fifteen minutes before the Resolutions Committee was called to report to the convention. The compromise was the price demanded by Senator Lodge of Massachusetts for consent to any kind of suffrage plank. The final vote was 35 to 11 and the plank read:

“The Republican party reaffirming its faith in ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people,’ as a measure 263254of justice to one-half the adult people of this country favor the extension of the suffrage to women, but recognize the right of each State to settle this question for itself.”

The resolution was the one written and presented by the National Suffrage Association with the State's rights rider added.

The Progressive Party meeting at the same time, with women delegates present from nearly all States, adopted a stronger plank than that of 1912. It read:

“And we believe that the women of the country, who share with the men the burden of government in times of peace and make equal sacrifice in times of war, should be given the full political rights of suffrage both by State and federal action.”

The National suffragists were disappointed at the results obtained, for the Rep