The effect of this campaign—the first of the kind in the history of the United States—was as though acid had been poured into the milk of the Democratic calm and security. Within a few days of the appearance of the Congressional union speakers, the Democratic papers were full of attacks on the Congressional union. The following from the Wyoming Leader of October 6 is typical of the way the Democratic papers handled the Congressional union workers:

Monday afternoon, they desecrated a charitable gathering of the Ladies’ Hospital Aid.... If it was nothing more than the harmless effort of a couple of women to earn some Congressional coin, it might be overlooked, and these two women with fatherly tenderness, told to go back home. But it involves an insult to the intelligent citizenship of this State. It attempts to compromise and bring into disrepute the practical workings of Woman Suffrage in this, the original Suffrage State. It proposes to prostitute religion, charity, fraternity, and society itself, to the ambition of a place-and-plunder-hunting politician. These women go into gatherings to insult and outrage harmony and good-will among women who themselves avoid politics in their meetings.

They could not have selected a meeting at which it was so plainly out of place as a meeting of hospital workers. These women had gathered together to promote the good work of mercy and charity in our community. They were Republicans, Progressives, and Democrats in their preferences....

The editor of the Leader has met and talked with these two women and believes they do not realize the insult they are offering to the women of Wyoming.

88The Republican papers of course instantly came to the rescue of the Congressional union organizers. The Cheyenne Tribune said editorially on October 16:

Democratic newspapers like the Wyoming Leader are finding fault with the Woman Suffrage Congressional union for sending representatives into this State to work against the Democratic candidate for Congress.

This is a free country, and Wyoming a Woman Suffrage State, and if worthy, respectable women come into Wyoming, the first State to grant the franchise to women, and conduct a decent campaign for the principles of Woman Suffrage, they should be treated courteously and given a respectful hearing.

They rightly hold the Democratic Party responsible for its self-evident opposition to the cause of Woman Suffrage, and rightly are seeking to defeat Democratic candidates for Congress by endeavoring to get woman voters to vote against them.

As to the actual effects, I quote from the report of the Congressional union for Woman Suffrage for the year 1914:

One of the strongest proofs of the results accomplished in Washington was given when Judge W. W. Black, Democratic candidate for the United States Senate, called at the headquarters of the Congressional union in Seattle, and urged the organizers in charge, in the words of the Seattle Sunday Times, “to go home and wage a campaign for female Suffrage, and let the Democratic Congressional candidates in this State alone. Judge Black disclaimed personal interest,” continued the Seattle Times, “and insisted that his is merely a fatherly concern for the two young Suffrage leaders. To demonstrate that he was not concerned personally, Judge Black told the two workers that he was going to be elected, anyway.”

Shortly before election day, Democratic leaders in Colorado formed a Democratic woman’s organization for the purpose of actively combating the Congressional union’s work among the women voters.

Further striking evidence of the importance which the Democratic leaders of Colorado attached to the union’s activities was furnished by a leaflet sent far and wide through the State, issued from the Colorado Democratic State Headquarters, under the names of Wellington H. Gates, Leo U. Guggenheim, and John 89T. Barnett, National Democratic Committeemen. The leaflet began: “Permit us to call your attention to the apparent aims and purposes of the organization calling itself The Congressional union.”

It then devoted four pages to letters and statements opposing the policy of the union, and ended with an appeal to the women voters to elect the Democratic candidates for Congress “with larger majorities than ever before, to show the world that the Democratic women of Colorado are not only loyal, but consistent, voters.”

This was the last leaflet sent to the voters by the State Democratic Committee. From the first word to the last, it dealt only with the Congressional union. Could better evidence be desired of the important part which the Democrats themselves felt that Suffrage was playing in the election?

Nowhere did the Congressional union election work arouse greater opposition than in Utah. “Intimidation, coercion, and what were equivalent to threats of political banishment from the State of Utah,” said the Republican Herald of Salt Lake City (October 15), “were exercised toward Miss Elsie Agnes Lancaster, the New York Suffragist, by W. R. Wallace, the Democratic generalissimo, and his gang of political mannikins.”

“They invited Miss Lancaster,” the Herald continued, “to come to Democratic State Headquarters, and there kept her on the grill for two and a half hours. This term of cross-examination, during which she was under fire of cross-questioning and denunciation from practically all of the Democratic politicians present, was a vain endeavor to have her bring to an immediate close her campaign against the Democratic nominees for the United States Senate and Congress. For two hours and a half, the hundred pounds of femininity withstood the concentrated cross-fire of the ton of beef and brawn represented by the dozen or more distinguished Democrats who acted as attorney, judge, and jury all in one. After they had finished, she went her way, telling Mr. Wallace that neither he nor his hirelings could swerve her from her duty in Utah as a representative of the Congressional union for Woman Suffrage.

“The greatest outburst of Generalissimo Wallace,” concludes the Herald, “was when, in a moment of rage, he brought his fist down on the table and threatened to advertise Miss Lancaster the country over by means of the Associated Press as being in league with ‘sinister influences’ in Utah.”

One of the candidates for Congress from Kansas (Representative Doolittle) called at the Washington Headquarters of the 90union shortly after the inauguration of work in Kansas, and urged the union to withdraw its campaigners from his district, at least, if not over all the Western States. Finding the union determined to continue its opposition through the women voters, as long as his Party continued its opposition to the National Amendment, Mr. Doolittle delivered a speech in the House of Representatives (occupying more than a page of the Congressional Record), denouncing the union, and assuring the members of Congress that its appeal to the women voters was not authorized by the Suffragists of the country.

Representative Hayden of Arizona also endeavored, in a speech in the House, to answer the appeal of the Congressional union to the Western women to cast their votes against him, together with the other national Democratic candidates. Nearly three pages of the Record was consumed by Mr. Hayden’s speech, which he reprinted, and sent far and wide through the State of Arizona in an attempt to counteract the havoc which it was apparently believed was being wrought by the Congressional union workers.

A prominent Democratic candidate for the Arizona Legislature testified to the fear which the union campaign had aroused among the Democratic element in that State by an appeal to Dr. Cora Smith King, a member of the Advisory Council of the Congressional union, urgently imploring her to use her influence with the union to terminate its election activities in Arizona. Dr. King replied: “The more the local Democrats complain, the more they advertise the slogan of the Congressional union, that the Democrats put Suffrage second to Party. Do, for Heaven’s sake, raise the Democratic roof in Washington for involving you in this dilemma.”

Among the concrete results showing the effectiveness of the Congressional union election activities was the inclusion of a Federal Suffrage Amendment plank in the platforms of each of the State parties in Colorado, the first time that this occurred in that State, and the inclusion of a similar plank in the Arizona Democratic platform.

Another result was the conversion of Senator Smith of Arizona to a belief in the Federal Amendment. On September 28, Senator Smith and Representative Hayden, the two Democratic candidates who were running for Congress from Arizona, sent the following telegram to Mrs. Frances Munds, candidate for State Senatorship on the Democratic ticket: “Our record in Congress shows that we are for National Woman Suffrage. If you think best, offer as plank in State platform the following: ‘We 91pledge our candidates for United States Senator and Representative in Congress to vote at all times for National Women Suffrage.’”

The Democratic Committee adopted and strengthened this platform.

All candidates, indeed, seemed to develop a marked increase in the fervor of their allegiance to the Suffrage Amendment. Senator Chamberlain of Oregon, in his last edition of street-car cards before election day, headed his poster with a declaration of his support of National Woman Suffrage as the leading argument for his re-election.

Not only the Congressional candidates, but minor Democratic workers, suddenly developed unsuspected interest in the cause of Woman Suffrage. Said the Examiner of Yuma, Arizona (October 24, 1914), in commenting on the situation: “We view with amazement the efforts of the Democratic bosses to be in favor of Equal Suffrage.”

And so in each of the States.

No more conclusive proof of the support given by the women voters to the union’s campaign could be afforded than the readiness with which they became members and active workers.

In undertaking the election campaign, the union had expected that in the beginning only............