VI PRESSURE ON CONGRESS

The Suffragist of January 24, 1914, carried the following editorial. In it is repeated the policy which the Congressional union had in the beginning adopted—that of holding the party in power responsible.

The policy of the Congressional union is to ask for a Woman Suffrage Amendment from the Party in power in Congress, and to hold them responsible for their answer to its request.

This policy is entirely non-partisan, in that it handles all Parties with perfect impartiality. If the Republicans were in power, we would regard them in their capacity as head of the Government as responsible for the enfranchisement of women. If the Progressives or Socialists should become the majority Party, and control the machinery of Congress, we would claim from them the right to govern ourselves, and would hold them responsible for a refusal of this just demand.

Today the Democrats are in power. They control the executive office, the Senate, and the House. They can, if they will, enfranchise women in the present session; their refusal to do so establishes a record which must necessarily be taken into consideration by women when the Party seeks the re-indorsement of the people at the polls.

This policy simply recognizes the effect of our American system of Government. Ours is a government by Parties. The majority by secret caucus, by the control of committees, by the power of patronage, by their appeal to Party responsibility, by the interest of Party solidarity, control the legislation of the House. The present government recognizes this method of administration with especial, and indeed admirable, frankness. It owes much of its popularity today to its willingness to assume full responsibility for all the legislation enacted in Congress; for whatever is done, and what is not done. The two great measures of the last session, tariff and currency, passed rapidly and successfully through both Houses by the frank use of Party discipline.

50Let us by all means deal directly with the people who can give us what we want. The Democrats have it in their power to enfranchise women.... This is not only our most logical method of work, but it is also the most economical and expeditious. Assuming that the Democrats yield nothing in the present session, we can, when Congress closes, concentrate our forces on those points where the Party is weakest, and thus become a force worth bargaining with. At the present moment, the Senate is the weakest point in the Democratic armor. To defeat even a few Democratic Senators in November, 1914, would make a serious breach in the Party organization.... If, on the other hand, we set out to attack every anti-Suffragist in Congress, we should have hundreds to defeat, and every man would be safe in whose constituency we did not organize. Imagine that, if at the end of arduous labor, we had contrived to defeat a number of Democratic anti-Suffragists, and an equal number of Republican anti-Suffragists, we should by immense sacrifice have completely nullified our own efforts, and left the strength of the Parties just where it was before....

What should we do in our enfranchised States, if we confined ourselves to the plan of supporting individual Suffragists and attacking individual anti-Suffragists, irrespective of their Party affiliations? All the candidates for office in the enfranchised States are Suffragists. Is it suggested that we be inactive in the only places where we possess real political power? Our problem at the present moment is to use the strength of women’s votes in national elections so as to force attention to the justice of our claim from the present administration....

But the Congressional union cannot make it too clear that we are not opposed to any Party today. We are asking the Democrats to help us; we are awaiting their answer. We will frame no policy for or against them or any other Party until this session closes, and the great opportunity of the present Administration has come to an end. We entertain steady and undiminished hopes that the Administration will recognize the justice and expediency of women’s claims to self-government. The movement is making immense strides in every part of the country; our present voting strength is great, and will undoubtedly be increased in the present year. It takes no great imaginative reach for the ordinary Congressman to foresee the day when Woman Suffrage will be an established fact throughout these United States.

There is already a strong sentiment in the Upper House for Woman Suffrage, and a rapidly-growing interest in it in the Lower House. We have no reason to expect wilful obstinacy 51from our American Congressmen. We Americans are adaptable and imaginative, and can shape ourselves with peculiar ease to coming events. The Democratic Party, if it is wise, will pass our Amendment through Congress in the present session.

The first-year Congressional Committee, consisting of Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Mary Beard, Crystal Eastman, and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, continued their work in 1914 with the Congressional union under the name of the Executive Committee of the Congressional union; but it was increased by the addition of Mrs. William Kent, Elsie Hill, Mrs. Gilson Gardner, Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, and Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont.

The year opened with a meeting at the home of Mrs. William Kent in Washington. Plans for the coming year were submitted at that meeting. Among them was one for a nation-wide demonstration on May 2, in which resolutions supporting the Federal Amendment were to be passed. This was to be followed by a great demonstration in Washington on May 9, at which those resolutions should be presented to Congress. Among them also was another plan for the appeal to the women voters of the West for political action in support of a Federal Amendment, if that Amendment had not been passed before the next election. Nine thousand dollars were pledged on the spot for these undertakings. The work on the great demonstration of May 2 began at once, and was pushed rapidly during the opening months of the year.

In the meantime the work on Congress was continued. It will be remembered that a proposal for the formation of a Suffrage Committee in the House had been before the Rules Committee since April 7, 1913, that it had been the subject of two hearings arranged by the Congressional union. The first action in regard to this was simple and decisive. The Democratic Members of the Rules Committee, who constituted a Majority Committee, met first, apart from their Republican and Progressive colleagues, and, by a vote of four to three, decided against the formation of a Suffrage 52Committee. They then went through the form of a meeting with the Republican and Progressive Members on January 24. The resolution, creating the Suffrage Committee, was lost by a vote of four to four.

The Congressional union, however, realized that the final power with regard to Congressional action was with the Democratic Caucus. They determined therefore—in order that the responsibility for inaction or opposition might be placed on the Democrats as a Party—immediately to appeal to that Caucus to overturn the decision of the Rules Committee. The necessary signatures were secured to a petition calling for the Democratic Caucus of the House to take up the question of the formation of this much-desired Suffrage Committee. The Caucus met on February 3, 1914, to consider this subject. The Democratic Party had a choice of two courses. It could order the Rules Committee, which it of course controlled, to give a favorable report to the House on the resolution creating a Suffrage Committee. Or it could give no order at all of this kind; in which case it revealed itself as responsible for the adverse action of the Rules Committee.

What it did was to adopt a substitute resolution for the resolution providing for the creation of a Committee of Woman Suffrage.

That substitute resolution was: “Resolved, that the question of Woman Suffrage is a State and not a Federal question.”

This was the first time in the history of the country that either of the two great Parties had ever caucused on Woman Suffrage.

Editorially the Suffragist put the situation pithily to the women of America:

This is the definite lining up of the Democratic Party against Woman Suffrage as a national measure.... Unless the Democratic Party reconsiders its present position, Suffragists must necessarily regard that Party as an obstruction in the path of their campaign.... They (the Democratic Party) have 53three votes to lose in the Senate and they lose control of this government. There are nine States in which women vote for United States Senators. The result in the Senatorial elections in these States will undoubtedly depend largely upon the action on Suffrage taken by the Democratic Party.

Although the Congressional union welcomed any simplification of the Congressional machinery as by the creation of a Suffrage Committee, its object was to secure action on the Suffrage Amendment. Since April 7, 1913, the Amendment had been before the Judiciary Committee in which it had been introduced by Representative Mondell. The Congressional union asked for a hearing on the Amendment before this Committee. March 3, 1914, was set for that event.

Thitherto, these hearings had been dreary occasions, sparsely attended. There was the half-circle of Committee members, a trifle perfunctory in its attitude, the scattered, tiny audience, very little interested or stirred; the few Suffragists pleading—eloquently, it is true—but pleading; using the inevitable Suffrage arguments, unanswerable, but threadbare. The hearing of March 3 was very different. The Committee was electrically alert.... They listened intently.... For the first time at a Congressional hearing, propagandistic argument did not appear. The Suffragists appealed to the Committee to report the Suffrage Resolution to the House—not as a matter of justice to women—but as practical politics. They pointed out to the Committee that the women voters of the West would hold the Democratic Party responsible for the refusal of this Committee to make that report.

In the meantime, highly important things had been going on in the Senate. It will be remembered that the Suffrage Resolution had been placed upon the Senate Calendar in June, 1913. Ever since that date, it had been awaiting a vote. It could be voted on any time up to the close of the Sixty-third Congress (March 3, 1915).

54At the beginning of the year 1914, more votes were pledged in its favor than had carried the Income Tax in the Senate, and sentiment in its favor was steadily increasing among the Senators. Moreover, the prospect that the Referendum elections of the coming autumn would add to the number of Suffrage States promised an increase of Suffrage strength in the Senate. There remained—as it transpired—a whole year before that Congress adjourned, in which the work of obtaining the vote could have gone on. These features of the situation made the Congressional union most desirous that the Resolution should not be voted upon until every possible vote was won. However, Senator Ashurst, who had reported the Bill to the Senate, had it made “unfinished business” on March 2, 1914. It is the spirit of “unfinished business” that it must be brought up and voted on. In spite of the vigorous protests of the Congressional union, and of many Suffragists in all parts of the country, it was brought to the vote on March 17. A two-thirds vote was necessary to carry it. It received thirty-five; a majority, it is true, of one vote; but failing of the necessary two-thirds majority by eleven. The Congressional union blamed the Democratic leaders entirely for this premature vote, as they were fully informed that a vote at that time would mean defeat.

However, this was a memorable moment. It was the first time since 1887 that Suffrage had been voted upon in the Senate. And from the moment on March 2 when it was made “unfinished business” until March 17, when the vote was taken, the Senate debated it almost continuously.

On that same day—March 2—Senator Shafroth of Colorado introduced a resolution providing for a new Suffrage Amendment to the Federal Constitution. This was to become famous as the Shafroth-Palmer Resolution. It offered a path to the enfranchisement of women incredibly cluttered and cumbered. It reads:

55Section 1. Whenever any number of legal voters of any State to a number exceeding eight per cent of the number of legal voters voting at the last preceding General Election held in such State shall petition for the submission to the legal voters of said State of the question whether women shall have equal rights with men in respect to voting at all elections to be held in such State, such question shall be so submitted; and if, upon such submission, a majority of the legal voters of the State voting on the question shall vote in favor of granting to women such equal rights, the same shall thereupon be deemed established, anything in the constitution or laws of such State to the contrary notwithstanding.

Compare this with the simplicity and directness of the original Susan B. Anthony Amendment:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. Congress shall have power by appropriate legislation to enforce the provisions of this article.

The National American Woman Suffrage Association immediately rallied to the support of the Shafroth-Palmer Amendment; they continued to give to it their undivided work for two years.

But the Congressional union—I quote the vigorous words of the Report of the Congressional union for the year 1914:

The Congressional union immediately announced its determination to support only the original Amendment, known popularly as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, and in Congress as the Bristow-Mondell Amendment. It maintained that to work at the same time for two Suffrage amendments to the National Constitution would enable the enemies of the bill to play one against the other. Believing that one amendment only must be supported, it felt that it was wise to support the amendment which would give Suffrage itself rather than an amendment which, after the same expenditure of effort would give only another method of obtaining Suffrage—that is, would merely establish the initiative on the Suffrage question. The union, moreover, feeling that the bane of the Suffrage cause at present was too many and not too few referendums, held that to pass 56a Federal Amendment—which would inaugurate thirty-nine referendum campaigns would involve the movement in a dissipation of resources such as its enemies would most deeply desire. Finally, it held that the passage of one Suffrage amendment to the National Constitution would make it extremely difficult to pass another; so that if the Shafroth Bill became a law, it would probably indefinitely postpone the passage of the Anthony Amendment, and doom the movement to years of referendum campaigns.

Not at all daunted by the action of the Senate in defeating the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, nor by the introduction there of the Shafroth-Palmer Amendment, the Congressional union at once secured the re-introduction in the Senate of the defeated Amendment. The measure was out of the Senate only twenty-two hours. The following day, Senator Bristow introduced a resolution identical with the one which had been lost. On April 7, it was again reported from the Woman Suffrage Committee, and took its place on the Calendar of the Senate. This was just a year from the date of its original introduction to this Senate. It was the second favorable report of the Senate Committee in one Congress.

Here we leave the work with Congress for a while, and take up the matter of the education of the President. We must go back a few months.