IX THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE WOMEN VOTERS

In the meantime, the Congressional union had been forming an Advisory Council which continued to Support the Congressional union—and later the Woman’s Party—with advice and work during the rest of its history. The personnel of the Advisory Council has changed from time to time; but always it has been a large body and an able one.

The list of membership has included many famous names; women political leaders; women trades-unionists; women of wealth and position; women active in their communities. It included professional women of every sort; doctors, lawyers, clergymen. It included artists of every description; actors, singers, painters, sculptors. It included publicists of every kind; fictionists, poets, dramatists, essayists. It included social workers of every class. And these women have represented all parts of the union.

On August 29 and 30, this newly-formed Advisory Council met at Newport. Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont did everything to make the occasion a success. She threw open Marble House which, hung with the great purple, white, and gold banners of the Congressional union and flooded with golden light, made an extraordinary background for the deliberations of the Conference. In every way possible for her she used the beauty and social prestige of Newport to give the occasion dignity, prominence, and publicity. Her daughter, the Duchess of Marlborough, had joined the Congressional union just previous to this Conference. Little she thought and little the Congressional union thought that as an English woman, she would be a voter, would be elected to the London City Council before her mother, an American woman, was enfranchised.

74Here, for the first time, the plan of holding the Democratic Party—the Party in power—responsible for the slowness with which the Suffrage work was progressing, and, in consequence, of working against it, was adopted as a program actually to be carried out.

Lucy Burns made a magnificent speech on that occasion. She pointed out that the Democratic Party was in complete possession of the National Government, controlling the Presidential chair, the Senate, possessing an overwhelming majority in the House. She analyzed the working of Congress: she showed that our government is a government by Party: that no measures of importance had passed through the Sixty-third Congress without the backing of the Party in power: and that no measure could pass that Congress if opposed by that Party.

She amplified this thesis. She showed that the President, the leader of the Party, had seven times refused his powerful aid to the movement. She showed that in the Senate the Democratic leaders blocked the Suffrage measure by bringing it to a vote at a time when they acknowledged it would be defeated. She showed that in the House, the Rules Committee had consistently blocked the Amendment, both by preventing the creation of a Suffrage Committee and by preventing consideration of the Amendment in the House. And she proved by the words of the acting chairman of the Rules Committee that that Committee had in its keeping “the policy of the Democratic Party.” She showed that the Democratic Caucus had taken definite action against the Suffrage Amendment. It had declared that Suffrage was not a question for national consideration and so it had refused to sanction the creation of a Suffrage Committee.

Alice Paul, first asking the press to withdraw, outlined the proposed election program. She asked the members of the Conference not to reveal it until the middle of September when the Congressional union would be ready to put it into practical operation. This is her speech on that occasion:

75From the very beginning of our work in Washington, we have followed one consistent policy from which we have not departed a single moment. We began our work with the coming in of the present Congress and immediately went to the Party which was in control of the situation and asked it to act. We determined to get the Amendment through the Sixty-third Congress, or to make it very clear who had kept it from going through. Now, as has been shown, the Democrats have been in control of all branches of the Government and they are therefore responsible for the non-passage of our measure.

The point is first, who is our enemy and then, how shall that enemy be attacked?

We are all, I think, agreed that it is the Democratic Party which is responsible for the blocking of the Suffrage Amendment. Again and again that Party has gone on record through the action of its leaders, its caucus, and its committees so that an impregnable case has been built up against it. We now lay before you a plan to meet the present situation.

We propose going into the nine Suffrage States and appealing to the women to use their votes to secure the franchise for the women of the rest of the country. All of these years we have worked primarily in the States. Now the time has come, we believe, when we can really go into national politics and use the nearly four million votes that we have to win the vote for the rest of us. Now that we have four million voters, we need no longer continue to make our appeal simply to the men. The struggle in England has gotten down to a physical fight. Here our fight is simply a political one. The question is whether we are good enough politicians to take four million votes and organize them and use them so as to win the vote for the women who are still disfranchised.

We want to attempt to organize the women’s vote. Our plan is to go out to these nine States and there appeal to all the women voters to withdraw their support from the Democrats nationally until the Democratic Party nationally ceases to block Suffrage. We would issue an appeal signed by influential women of the East addressed to the women voters as a whole asking them to use their vote this one time in the national election against the Democratic Party throughout the whole nine States. Every one of these States, with one exception, is a doubtful State. Going back over a period of fourteen years, each State, except Utah, has supported first one Party and then another. Here are nine States which politicians are thinking about and in these nine States we have this great power. If we ask those 76women in the nine Suffrage States as a group to withhold their support from this Party as a group which is opposing us, it will mean that votes will be turned. Suppose the Party saw votes falling away all over the country because of their action on the Trust question—they would change their attitude on Trust legislation. If they see them falling away because of their attitude on Suffrage they will change their attitude on Suffrage. When we have once affected the result in a national election, no Party will trifle with Suffrage any longer.

We, of course, are a little body to undertake this—but we have to begin. We have not very much money; there are not many of us to go out against the great Democratic Party. Perhaps this time we won’t be able to do so very much, though I know we can do a great deal, but if the Party leaders see that some votes have been turned they will know that we have at least realized this power that we possess and they will know that by 1916 we will have it organized. The mere announcement of the fact that Suffragists of the East have gone out to the West with this appeal will be enough to make every man in Congress sit up and take notice.

This last week one Congressman from a Suffrage State came to us and asked us if we would write just one letter to say what he had done in Congress to help us. He said that one letter might determine the election in his district. This week the man who is running for the Senatorial election in another Suffrage State came to us and asked us to go out and help him in his State—asked us simply to announce that he had been our friend. Now if our help is valued to this extent, our opposition will be feared in like degree.

Our plan is this: To send at least two women to each of those nine States. We would put one woman at the center who would attend to the organizing, the publicity and the distribution of literature. We would have literature printed showing what the Democratic Party has done with regard to Suffrage in the Sixty-third Congress. We would have leaflets printed from the Eastern women appealing to the Western women for help, and we would have leaflets issued showing how much the enfranchised woman herself needs the Federal Amendment because most important matters are becoming national in their organization and can only be dealt with by national legislation. We could reach every home in every one of those nine States with our literature, without very great expense. One good woman at the center could make this message, this appeal from Eastern women, known to the whole State. The other worker would 77attend to the speaking and in six weeks could easily cover all the large towns of the State.

Why Is the Girl from the West Getting All the Attention?
Nina Allender in The Suffragist.

This is the plan that we are considering, and that we are hoping to put through. We would be very much interested to hear what you think about it and want, of course, to have your co-operation in carrying it through.

The Conference voted to unite behind the Bristow-Mondell Amendment in Congress and to support an active election campaign against candidates of the Democratic Party. It raised over seven thousand dollars to meet the expense of this campaign.

The details of the election campaign project were immediately worked out; organizers were selected and after a farewell garden party on September 14, they started for the nine enfranchised States. Headquarters were opened in San Francisco under Lucy Burns and Rose Winslow; in Denver, Colorado, under Doris Stevens and Ruth Noyes; in Ph?nix, Arizona, under Jane Pincus and Josephine Casey; in Kansas City, Kansas, under Lola C. Trax and Edna S. Latimer; at Portland, Oregon, under Jessie Hardy Stubbs and Virginia Arnold; in Seattle, Washington, under Margaret Whittemore and Anne McCue; at Cheyenne, Wyoming, under Gertrude Hunter; at Salt Lake City, Utah, under Elsie Lancaster; at Boise City, Idaho, under Helena Hill Weed.

In these centers, open-air, drawing-room, and theatre meetings followed each other in rapid succession. In many districts, the campaigners canvassed from door to door. Window-cards, handbills, cartoons, moving-picture films, and voiceless speeches, calling upon the women voters to refuse their support to the Party which had blocked the National Suffrage Amendment, appeared everywhere from Seattle to Ph?nix. A pithily worded Appeal to the Women Voters was placed in the hands of the women voters. Press bulletins describing the campaign against the Democratic candidates for Congress and reiterating the record made by the Democratic 78Party on the Suffrage question, were issued daily. Literature dealing with the record of the Democratic Party and with the value to the woman voter of a national Suffrage Amendment, were sent to innumerable homes in every Suffrage State.

The Suffragist, which teemed with reports of what these vigorous campaigners were doing, presents pictures which could have occurred nowhere in the world but the United States, and nowhere in the United States but the West. The speakers were interesting, amusing, full of information and enthusiasm. With a sympathy and understanding typically western, men and women responded immediately, responded equally to this original campaign.

All the time, of course, these speakers were educating the people of the United States in regard to the work of Congress. This was a new note in Suffrage campaigns; but it was the policy of the Congressional union at all times whether campaigns were being waged or not.

From the Suffragist of September 19, I quote from a report of the enterprising Jessie Hardy Stubbs, who actually began her work on board the North Coast, Limited:

Here we are—all bound for the field of battle. Miss McCue, Miss Whittemore and I are together. Miss Whittemore joined us at Chicago full of earnestness and zeal. We have put up signs in each car that there will be a meeting tonight in the observation car, and that we will speak on the record of the Democratic Party in Congress and Women Suffrage. There is much interest. We have sold ten Suffragists today on board the train, secured new subscribers to the Suffragist, and contributions for the campaign.

Doris Stevens writes in the Suffragist of October 3:

Friday afternoon, Mrs. Lucius M. Cuthbert, a daughter of ex-Senator Hill, gave us a drawing-room meeting in her beautiful Denver home. She invited representative women from all Parties to come and hear of the work of the union, to which invitation about one hundred women responded. One Democratic lady came up to me after the meeting and said, “I had no idea 79you women had been so rebuffed by my Party. I am convinced that my duty is to the women first, and my Party second.” Another: “You have almost convinced me that we women must stand together on this national issue.” And so it went. And, as our charming hostess pointed out, the applause was often led by a prominent Democratic woman. Offers of help, loans of furniture, and general expressions of eagerness to aid were made on every side. The meeting was a splendid success, judging from the large number of women who joined the union and the generous collection which was given.

In the Suffragist of October 10, Lola Trax writes:

The meeting at Lebanon was especially well advertised. The moving picture shows had run an advertising slide; the Wednesday prayer meeting had announced my coming, and the Public Schools had also made announcements to their pupils. The Ladies’ Aid Society invited me to speak in the afternoon, while they were quilting; and thus another anti-Suffrage argument was shattered; for quilting and politics went hand in hand.

At Phillipsburg the meeting was on the Court House green. It is fifty-seven miles from Phillipsburg to Osborne and the trip has to be made by freight. I was on the road from six-thirty o’clock in the morning until three P.M. About a dozen passengers were in the caboose on the freight, and we held a meeting and discussion which lasted about forty-five minutes. Upon reaching Osborne at three o’clock I found about one hundred people assembled for an auction sale in the middle of the street. Cots, tables, and chairs were to be offered at sacrifice prices. The temptation to hold a meeting overcame fatigue. I jumped into an automobile nearby and had a most interested crowd until the auctioneer came. I had been unable to secure the Town Hall because a troupe of players were making a one night stand in the town. The meeting at night was also in the open air.

In the Suffragist of October 10, Jessie Hardy Stubbs continues:

On Tuesday evening, September 28, I spoke in the Public Library, explaining our mission in Oregon. Mr. Arthur L. Moulton, Progressive Candidate for Congress from the Third District presided, and made a very clever introductory speech. Many questions were asked by Democratic women which brought out a spirited defense on the part of several of those present. 80One Democratic woman maintained that it would be a most ungrateful position on the part of the Oregon women to vote against Chamberlain, who had always been a friend of Suffrage, whereupon a distinguished-looking woman arose and said: “Oh, no. It would merely be a case of not loving Chamberlain less, but of loving Suffrage more.”

I spoke before the Sheet Metal Workers’ union last night, and expect to address every union before the campaign is over. There are only two women’s unions here; the garment workers and the waitresses. We intend to make a canvass of the stores and meet the clerks personally and to get into all the factories, as far as possible, where women are employed, and urge these western women voters to stand by the working women of the East. Tonight we have our first open-air meeting.

In the Suffragist of October 31, Gertrude Hunter writes of the campaign in Wyoming:

The meeting last Saturday night was most encouraging. It was a stormy night, and we went in an auto twenty miles from here, through snow banks, and every other difficulty to a rally at a branch home. This was at Grand Canon, and a strongly Democratic precinct. Every one was wildly enthusiastic over the meeting, even the Democratic women telling me how much they appreciated our position. We had a dance immediately after, and I danced with the voters (male) until one-thirty in the morning, when we were all taken to the railroad station in a lumber wagon and four-horse team, a distance of a mile and a half, and came in on a train at two-thirty A.M. I sold twenty Suffragists and could have disposed of more if I had had them with me.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights we have big meetings scheduled.

We are now at Egbert on our regular schedule, and in such a snowstorm as I never saw before. However, we have had a good morning in spite of it.

This town is like the others, consisting of a station, a store, and post-office. Not a residence in the place. The people all drove from miles around in a high wind and most unfavorable weather to attend the meeting.

We had the thirty-five mile drive to make to a neighboring town for another meeting and we did it every mile through a high wind and torrents of rain, that flooded the trail with water, as we went over prairie and plowed fields. We did it, however, 81with only one blow-out, and two very narrow escapes from being completely turned over, getting in at two this morning.

Tomorrow night I shall go to Campstool, where there is a big supper and dance.

I had another very interesting meeting this week at a town fifty miles from here. The “town” consists of a station, the post-office, general store, and a little restaurant; no houses, and only one or two families living there. The meeting was in the schoolhouse and the voters came from miles and miles to attend, at least one hundred and fifty of them, on horseback, in wagons, buggies, and autos. Every one was much interested. The minister, at whose house I was entertained for the afternoon, lived two and one-half miles out in the country, said afterward that the meeting was a thrill to most of them, who had never heard a Suffrage speech in their lives.

These are the solid voters of the community. Many are from the eastern States who are homesteading here. I distributed the literature to every one.

I will probably reach the same number of voters every day this week, or perhaps a few more, as the next town we are going into, Burns, is a trifle larger than Hillsdale.

Miss Brandeis is going from house to house in Cheyenne, distributing our literature and soliciting memberships.

The campaign over, four of these victorious campaigners were welcomed home on the afternoon of November 15, by an enormous audience at the Columbia Theatre in Washington:

Mrs. Latimer said:

The very first thing they said to us in Kansas was, “Well, you are a long way from home!” and we thought so too.

Kansas, as you know, is a very large State and is an agricultural State, and the consequence was that we had to get in touch with all the farmers and so it was necessary for us to do a great deal of traveling.

After we had established our Headquarters we interviewed the Kansas City Star, one of the largest papers in the State. After we had talked with the associate editor and told him what our plan was, that we intended to send a daily bulletin to the eight hundred and eight papers in the State of Kansas, that we were going to every one of the large towns in the State of Kansas, and have just as many meetings as possible, and that we would 82distribute fifty thousand pieces of literature, he looked at us and said, “Do you realize that this will take eight men and eighteen stenographers?” I said, “Possibly, but two women are going to do it.” And two women did do it. The result of that interview was a two and a half column editorial on the editorial page of the Star. It was the first time that an interview with a woman had ever appeared on the editorial page, and they told us that even Mr. Bryan had not received two and a half columns on that page. All of our bulletins were very well published after the Kansas City Star had taken up our cause. The women of Kansas co-operated with us, and the Progressives and Republicans invited us to speak at their big rallies. Strange as it may seem no one seemed to think we were on the wrong track but the Democrats.

After we had been there for a while we found that the main contest was the Senatorial fight, and so we figured out just how we could keep Mr. Neely out of the Senate. Every one said that as Mr. Murdock was running as a Progressive, and Mr. Curtis as a Republican, it would divide the vote and give the victory to the Democratic Party. We knew that Mr. Neely had received a very large vote from his own district when he ran for Congress—over four thousand majority. So we made up our minds that the thing to do was to reduce the vote in his own district. We thought that this would help to defeat Mr. Neely, and it did. He received from his own district a majority of only eight hundred; that is, the Democratic majority went down to eight hundred from four thousand. In many of the other districts, his majority was still lower. Mr. Taggart, who had a three thousand majority two years ago, went down to three hundred, and Miss Trax was largely responsible for that. We have letters from many of the leading politicians of Kansas saying that our work has been most effective. We have felt all through Kansas that our work was very encouraging.

We had many interesting things happen. The second day we were in the Seventh District we held seven meetings. Six meetings had been planned, but after we reached Dodge City we found there was a political meeting in progress out on the prairie and they telephoned in and asked one of us to come out there and speak to them. If any of you have ever been to Kansas, you know they have schools everywhere, though for miles and miles you never see a house and you wonder where the children come from to go to the schools. At eleven o’clock at night we arrived at the schoolhouse where the meeting was held, and found three hundred people waiting to hear a Suffrage 83speech. After the meeting the women came up and said, “That is just what we need. We are glad to help the Eastern women, but we do not know anything about it. We are so glad you have come to tell us these things because we did not know them.”

The men in the West feel the same way. When I was waiting for a freight train about five o’clock in the morning, a man came up and said, “My wife was at your meeting yesterday afternoon, and I thought I would tell you that I have voted the Democratic ticket for forty years, but I have voted it the last time.” That is the spirit of the men. Because they respect their women out there, they do not like to feel that the men in the East and the Democratic Party do not consider the woman movement. People would come in and say, “Well, you are on the right track now,” and that seems to be the spirit everywhere in Kansas.

Miss Pincus said:

I am sorry I cannot come to you with the air of a conquering hero, but I am sure that any person who understands the situation in Arizona will acknowledge that the purpose of our campaign was accomplished. Despite the fact that the Democrats were in control—had all the money in the State and owned nearly all the newspapers—a Democratic leader came to my office one day and told me that the Democrats were absolutely sure that the women of Arizona would defeat Smith. He said the Democratic Party was scared to death. It was most amusing. Every candidate who was running, even for State and County offices, felt it necessary to declare that he had always believed in Woman Suffrage, that his mother had believed in Woman Suffrage and that his grandmother believed in it. I suppose you know what action our friends Senator Smith and Congressman Hayden took. Both of them telegraphed from Washington to the Democratic State Convention in session at Ph?nix and pledged themselves absolutely to support national Woman Suffrage. Mr. Hayden stood up on the floor of the House and filled three pages of the Congressional Record on his attitude on Woman Suffrage and Arizona was simply flooded with this copy.

The women, we found, were very open to reason, and one thing I had not expected to find was how chivalrous all the men were. I have never been so overwhelmed with courtesy and chivalry as I was out in Arizona. Every candidate from every county came into our Headquarters to shake hands and say what a nice day it was and how he had always been in favor of Woman 84Suffrage. Each political Party in Arizona claims absolute credit for Woman Suffrage out there. To me, coming from a plain campaign State, New York, it was most encouraging to find all the men such good Suffragists, and I would like to turn all anti-Suffragists into a Suffrage State to let them see how women are treated at election time.

Mrs. Helena Hill Weed said:

I am very glad to be able to report that no Democrat will come to the United States Senate or House of Representatives from Idaho—and the Congressional union had a hand in it.

We do not claim entire responsibility for the large Republican victory, but we do claim the credit for turning many hundreds of votes from the Democratic Party. When I reached Idaho I found the question simmered down to the Senatorial race. The two candidates were Senator Brady, Republican, and ex-Governor Hawley, who was running on the Democratic ticket.

I began by sending out copies of all of our literature and the current number of the Suffragist to every editor, club woman, minister, or other person of influence. I began with a meeting which was organized by the working women in the hotel where I was stopping. I told them of our work and what it meant. Many of the women had worked in the East and they knew what conditions were among the laboring women there, and they said they never before realized that they could do anything to help the women in the East. About three days after the meeting a woman came into my office and said, “I want to tell you, Mrs. Weed, that that meeting is going to bring out at least two hundred Republican votes in my ward which are never cast, and is going to turn many more.” I positively could not fill the requests that were made to speak and explain the Congressional union policy. Men and women of the labor unions were much enthused over our work and we won hundreds and hundreds of votes simply because our policy was non-partisan.

We put it straight up to Mr. Hawley that an indorsement of President Wilson’s administration meant the indorsement of the administration’s refusal to allow a discussion and a vote on Suffrage. We put it up to him that it made no difference how good a Suffragist he personally might be, if he ran on a platform which contained, as did his, a blanket indorsement of all of President Wilson’s policies, including his refusal to allow a discussion and a vote on Suffrage. We pointed out to him that his personal belief in Suffrage was of little avail to us if he could 85not or would not bring the Party which he was supporting to cease its hostility to our Amendment. We reminded him of the Democratic Congressmen from Suffrage States who had sat in the Sixty-third Congress and who had professed a deep interest in Suffrage but who had accomplished nothing as far as actually bringing Suffrage to pass was concerned, because of the continued hostility of the Democratic Party which was in control of all branches of the Government. We told him that we felt duty bound to make known to the women voters the hostile record of his national Party on Woman Suffrage, and to ask them to refuse their support to that Party until it ceased blocking our Amendment.

They understood the point very quickly and saw that as far as the individual was concerned there was nothing to choose from between Mr. Hawley and Senator Brady—both were equally good Suffragists, as far as their personal stand was concerned. It was only when it came to considering their Party affiliations that one could discriminate between them. We always emphasized the fact that we were not indorsing the Republican, the Progressive, the Socialist, or the Prohibition Party, but were merely asking the women to refuse support to the Party which had the power to give Suffrage and which up to the present had used its power only to block that measure. We explained that we would have opposed any of the other Parties, had they possessed the power which the Democratic Party possessed, and had they used that power in the same obstructive way.

I am absolutely sure that the Congressional union has the right policy for us to follow and that through this policy we are going to win the passage of the Federal Amendment.

Incidentally the referendum in 1914 in Nevada and Montana gave Suffrage to women.

Although the Congressional union never deviated from its policy of devoting itself to the Federal Amendment, yet it was deeply interested in the success of these referendum campaigns and gave aid when it seemed needed. The Congressional union sent Mabel Vernon, a national organizer, to help in the Nevada campaign. At the close of the campaign an enthusiastic audience welcomed Mabel Vernon home.

Miss Vernon said:

In the West they do not have the feeling that Suffrage is an old, old story. They were very willing to go to a Suffrage meeting, 86particularly in the mining camps, where to advertise that a woman is going to speak is almost enough to cause them to close down the mines in order that they might hear her. This summer Miss Martin, the State president, and I went all over the State in a motor, traveling about three thousand miles. We would travel sometimes one hundred and twenty miles in order to reach a little settlement of about one hundred people, sixty voters perhaps. We had the conviction that if Suffrage was going to win in Nevada, it was going to win through the votes of those people who lived in the remote places. We knew Reno. We knew it well. We knew it was not to be counted upon as giving any majority in favor of Suffrage. That was the object of the motor trip this summer.

We traveled for miles and miles without seeing one sign of life. There was only the sand, the sage-bush, and the sky. Even though we did not arrive until ten o’clock at night at the place where we were to speak, we always found our crowd waiting for us. There was one mining camp, one of the richest camps there now, where the men said, “We will give you ninety per cent, ladies, there is not a bit of doubt about it.” When the returns came in from that camp, there were eleven votes against it and one hundred and one for it. The politicians laughed at us because we were so confident. “Don’t you appreciate that many men who promised to vote for you just want to make you feel good and haven’t any intention of doing it?” they would say. When the returns came in I took a great deal of satisfaction in showing them that the men had kept their promises.

The position that Nevada has geographically had a great deal to do with it: We made a house-to-house canvass to find out if the majority were in favor of Suffrage and we found that women out there would say, “Of course I believe in Suffrage; I used to vote myself in Idaho.” One woman told me, “I feel very much out of place here in Nevada because I haven’t the right to vote. I voted for years in Colorado.” It would have been an easy thing to prove that at least seventy-five per cent of the women in Nevada were in favor of Woman Suffrage. When the men said, “We are willing that Nevada women shall have the vote when the majority of them want it,” we could say that the majority of the women in the State of Nevada do want it.