Chapter 27

More Pressure

Our immediate task was to compel the President to secure a reversal of two votes in the Senate. It became necessary to enter again the Congressional elections which were a month away.

By a stroke of good luck there were two senatorial contests—in New Jersey and New Hampshire—for vacancies in the short term. That is, we had an opportunity to elect two friends who would take their seats in time to vote on the amendment before the end of this session. It so happened that the Democratic candidates were pledged to vote for the amendment if elected, and that the Republican candidates were opposed to the amendment. We launched our campaign in this instance for the election of the Democratic candidates. We went immediately to the President to ask his assistance in our endeavor. We urged him personally to appeal to the voters of New Jersey and New Hampshire on behalf of his two candidates. As Party leader he was at the moment paying no attention whatever to the success of these two suffragists. Both of the Democratic candidates themselves appealed to President Wilson for help in their contests, on the basis of their suffrage advocacy. His speech to the Senate scarcely cold, the President refused to lend any assistance in these contests, which with sufficient effort might have produced the last two votes.

At the end of two weeks of such pressure upon the President we were unable to interest him in this practical endeavor. It was clear that he would move again only under attack. We went again, therefore, to the women voters of the west and asked them to withhold their support from the Democratic Senatorial candidates in the suffrage states in order to compel the President to assist in the two Eastern contests. This campaign made it clear to the President that we were still holding him and his party to their responsibility.

And as has been pointed out, our policy was to oppose the Democratic candidates at elections so long as their party was responsible for the passage of the amendment and did not pass it. Since there is no question between individuals in suffrage states—they are all suffragists—this could not increase our numerical strength. It could, however, and did demonstrate the growing and comprehensive power of the women voters.

Shortly before election, when our campaign was in full swing in the West, the President sent a letter appealing to the voters of New Jersey to support Mr. Hennessey, the Democratic candidate for the Senate. He subsequently appealed to the voters of New Hampshire to elect Mr. Jameson, candidate for Democratic Senator in New Hampshire.

We continued our campaign in the West as a safeguard against relaxation by the President after his appeal. There were seven senatorial contests in the western suffrage states. In all but two of these contests—Montana and Nevada—the Democratic Senatorial candidates were defeated. In these two states the Democratic majority was greatly reduced.

Republicans won in New Jersey and New Hampshire and a Republican Congress was elected to power throughout the country.

The election campaign had had a wholesome effect, however, on both parties and was undoubtedly one of the factors in persuading the President to again appeal to the Senate.

Immediately after the defeat in the Senate, and throughout the election campaign, we attempted to hold banners at the Capitol to assist our campaign and in order to weaken the resistance of the senators of the opposition. The mottoes on the banners attacked with impartial mercilessness both Democrats and Republicans. One read:

SENATOR WADSWORTH’s REGIMENT IS FIGHTING FOR DEMOCRACY ABROAD.

SENATOR WADSWORTH LEFT HIS REGIMENT AND IS FIGHTING AGAINST DEMOCRACY IN THE SENATE.

SENATOR WADSWORTH COULD SERVE HIS COUNTRY BETTER BY FIGHTING WITH HIS REGIMENT ABROAD THAN BY FIGHTING WOMEN AT HOME.

Another read:

SENATOR SHIELDS TOLD THE PEOPLE OF TENNESSEE HE WOULD SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT’S POLICIES.

THE ONLY TIME THE PRESIDENT WENT TO THE SENATE TO ASK ITS SUPPORT SENATOR SHIELDS VOTED AGAINST HIM.

DOES TENNESSEE BACK THE PRESIDENT’S WAR PROGRAM OE SENATOR SHIELDS?

And still a third:

GERMANY HAS ESTABLISHED “EQUAL, UNIVERSAL, SECRET, DIRECT FRANCHISE.”

THE SENATE HAS DENIED EQUAL, UNIVERSAL, SECRET SUFFRAGE TO AMERICA.

WHICH IS MORE OF A DEMOCRACY, GERMANY OR AMERICA?

As the women approached the Senate, Colonel Higgins, the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate, ordered a squad of Capitol policemen to rush upon them. They wrenched their banners from them, twisting their wrists and manhandling them as they took them up the steps, through the door, and down into the guardroom,—their banners confiscated and they themselves detained for varying periods of time. When the women insisted on knowing upon what charges they were held, they were merely told that “peace and order must be maintained on the Capitol grounds,” and further, “It don’t make no difference about the law, Colonel Higgins is boss here, and he has taken the law in his own hands.”

Day after day this performance went on. Small detachments of women attempted to hold banners outside the United States Senate, as the women of Holland had done outside the Parliament in the Hague. It was difficult to believe that American politicians could be so devoid of humor as they showed themselves. The panic that overwhelms our official mind in the face of the slightest irregularity is appalling! Instead of maintaining peace and order, the squads of police managed to keep the Capitol grounds in a state of confusion. They were assisted from time to time by Senate pages, small errand boys who would run out and attack mature women with impunity. The women would be held under the most rigid detention each day until the Senate had safely adjourned. Then on the morrow the whole spectacle would be repeated.

While the United States Senate was standing still under our protest world events rushed on. German autocracy had collapsed. The Allies had won a military victory. The Kaiser had that very week fled for his life because of the uprising of his people.

“We are all free voters of a free republic now,” was the message sent by the women of Germany to the women of the United States through Miss Jane Addams. We were at that moment heartily ashamed of our government. German women voting! American women going to jail and spending long hours in the Senate guardhouse without arrests or, charges. The war came to an end. Congress adjourned November 21st.

When the 65th Congress reconvened for its short and final session, December 2nd, 1918 [less than a month after our election campaign], President Wilson, for the first time, included suffrage in his regular message to Congress, the thing that we had asked of him at the opening of every session of Congress since March, 1918.

There were now fewer than a hundred days in which to get action from the Senate and so avoid losing the benefit of our victory in the House.

In his opening address to Congress, the President again appealed to the Senate in these words:

“And what shall we say of the women—of their instant intelligence, quickening every task that they touched; their capacity for organization and coöperation, which gave their action discipline and enhanced the effectiveness of everything they attempted; their aptitude at tasks to which they had never before set their hands; their utter self-sacrifice alike in what they did and in what they gave? Their contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal. They have added a new luster to the annals of American womanhood.

“The least tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals of men in political rights, as they have proved themselves their equals in every field of practical work they have entered, whether for themselves or for their country. These great days of completed achievement would be sadly marred were we to omit that act of justice. Besides the immense practical services they have rendered, the women of the country have been the moving spirits in the systematic economies in which our people have voluntarily assisted to supply the suffering peoples of the world and the armies upon every front with food and everything else we had, that might serve the common cause. The details of such a story can never be fully written but we carry them at our hearts and thank God that we can say that we are the kinsmen of such.”

Again we looked for action to follow this appeal. Again we found that the President had uttered these words but had made no plan to translate them into action.

And so his second appeal to the Senate failed, coming as it did after the hostility of his party to the idea of conferring freedom on women nationally, had been approved and fostered by President Wilson for five solid years. He could not overcome with additional eloquence the opposition which he himself had so long formulated, defended, encouraged and solidified, especially when that eloquence was followed by either no action or only half- hearted efforts.

It would now require a determined assertion of his political power as the leader of his party. We made a final appeal to him as leader of his party and while still at the height of his world power, to make such an assertion and to demand the necessary two votes.