The House of Representatives passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment on January 10, 1918, by a vote of two hundred and seventy-four to one hundred and thirty-six. The work of the Woman’s Party was now concentrated on the Senate. They needed only eleven votes there, and many Suffragists were optimistic—they thought victory a matter of but a few weeks. The Woman’s Party knew better. However, in the siege of the Senate, they continued their policy—to work downwards through the President, and upward through constituents and political leaders from the people.

In summing up the situation in the Senate, Alice Paul said:

If the Republicans had the vision to see that it was a wise Party policy to secure the credit for the passage of the Amendment in the House, and the Democrats believed it an unwise Party policy to be responsible for its defeat—the same argument must hold for the vote in the Senate, for while more than two-thirds of the Republicans had already promised their votes, only half the Democrats are at present pledged in the Senate.

The effect of the passing of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in the House was, however, not only profound, but immediate. In February, the Republican National Committee met in St. Louis for the selection of a Chairman. Abby Scott Baker appeared before the committee, urging a favorable stand on the Susan B. Anthony amendment. Two women representing the anti-Suffragists were also to speak. However, when the anti-Suffragist speakers presented themselves before the Committee, they found that it had already voted a resolution commending the stand of the Republican members 341of the House of Representatives in favor of the Suffrage Amendment. This was the first favorable expression of the National Republican Party on the question of Federal Suffrage.

Minnie Bronson said of the anti-Suffragist members:

I looked round for the thirty members who last night were opposed to Suffrage. I wonder what changed them over night.

Lucy Price, also an anti-Suffragist, asserted:

Your action without even hearing us was worse than a betrayal of us who are opposed to Suffrage. It was an admission that Party pledges are meant to be broken.

The Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee, which met that same day in Washington, held a telegraphic referendum of their entire national committee on the question of the Amendment. It is interesting to note that this was done at the insistence of the Democratic woman who had charge of the Democratic campaign among women in 1916, when the Woman’s Party made Suffrage the great issue. This telegraphic referendum showed more than a two to one desire for the national committee to take action that would put it on record as “urging the support” of the Amendment. The Executive Committee, therefore, adopted the resolution, endorsing the Federal Suffrage measure, and by a vote of five to two, calling upon the Senate to act at once favorably upon it.

For months thereafter, the Woman’s Party concentrated on obtaining the necessary eleven votes in the Senate. It was a period of comparative calm. There was no militant action of any kind. The pickets had all been released in December, and, although the appeal cases were coming up in the courts at intervals, picketing seemed an abandoned weapon.

In her Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist, Maud Younger describes very delightfully how the first nine votes were obtained:

342“We should get Senator Phelan now,” said Miss Paul. “He opposed Federal Suffrage because the President did. Now that the President has come out for it, Senator Phelan should do so. Send for him.”

I sent in my card and he came at once, very neat in a cut-away coat, his eyes smiling above his trimmed sandy beard. “Of course I’ll vote for the Amendment,” he said, as though he had never thought of anything else. He was plainly glad to have an excuse for changing his position.

“That leaves ten to get,” said Miss Paul. “Let’s go and see Senator McCumber.” The Senator from North Dakota is sandy and Scotch and cautious, and, like many other Senators, thinks it would be weak and vacillating to change his opinion.

“I voted against it in 1914. I cannot vote for it in 1918,” he said. “I cannot change my principles.”

“But you can change your mind?”

“No, I could not do that.”

“Then you might change your vote,” said I, urging progress. He, too, saw progress, but was wary of it. Looking cautiously around the room and back of us, he said slowly, “If the legislature of my State should ask me to vote for it, I would feel obliged to do so.”

That same night Beulah Amidon telegraphed to North Dakota,—her own State—to the Chairman of the Republican Party and the Non-Partisan League that controls the Legislature; to her father, Judge Amidon, and to others. The Legislature immediately passed a resolution calling on Senator McCumber to vote for our Amendment. Miss Amidon went to see him at once, with the news.

“But I haven’t seen how the resolution is worded yet,” said Senator McCumber cannily.

When the resolution arrived some one else went to see him.

“I want to look it over carefully,” he said. When he had looked it over carefully, he admitted, “I will vote for the Amendment. But to show loyalty both to constituents and principle,” he added hastily, “I will speak against it, and vote for it.”

“That leaves nine to get,” said Miss Paul, counting Senator McCumber off on her little finger and turning to a list of other legislatures in session. The difficulty was that the legislatures in session did not fit the Senators whose votes we must get. Mildred Glines, our Rhode Island chairman, was at our Headquarters, and Senator Gerry of Rhode Island was at the Capitol, and not for our Amendment. So Mildred Glines set out at once 343for Rhode Island, where she had a resolution presented and passed, and returned with it to Senator Gerry.

Then I went to see his colleague, Senator Colt. A scholarly-looking man, he sat at his desk deep in some volume of ancient lore. Arguing with himself while I sat listening, he stated the case for Suffrage and Senator Gerry. “But on the other hand,” he said—and then stated the other side.

“Yes,” he concluded deliberately, but with a twinkle in his eye, “Peter will vote for it.”

“That leaves eight to get,” said Miss Paul, very thoughtfully. “Have you seen Senator King lately?”

Though Senator King is not unpleasant to talk with, if one does not broach subjects controversial, persons who appealed to his reason had succeeded only in ruffling his manners. He smiled blandly and, leaning back in his chair, began what he believed to be a perfect case. “I’ve always been opposed to national Suffrage. I said so in my campaign, and the people elected me.”

We must appeal to his constituents. But how? His Legislature was not in session. Alice Henkle went post-haste to Utah, and at once newspapers began to publish editorials; all sorts of organizations, civic, patriotic, religious, educational, social, began to pass resolutions. Letters poured in upon Senator King. But always Miss Henkle wrote us, “They tell me everywhere that it’s no use; that Senator King is so ‘hard-shelled’ that I might as well stop.”

“Go to the Capitol and see,” said Miss Alice Paul.

I had just entered the revolving door when Senator Sheppard, hurrying past, stopped to say, “Do you know King is coming around! I think we may get his vote.”

So Miss Paul wired Alice Henkle that night: “Redouble efforts. They are having good effect.” Four weeks later, three Senators told me that Senator King had said in the cloak room, “I’m as much opposed to Federal Suffrage as ever, but I think I’ll vote for it. My constituents want me to.”

“That leaves six to get,” said Miss Paul, “counting Senator Culberson too.” For while we had been busy in Washington, Doris Stevens and Clara Wolfe had been busy in Texas on the trail of Senator Culberson.

The national committees of both political parties had taken a stand for Federal Suffrage in February. Also, Colonel Roosevelt and other Republican leaders were writing to Senators whose names we furnished, urging their support.

“Now,” said Senator Curtis, smiling, “I think we’ll get 344Harding and Sutherland. They both want to vote for it, but their States are against it. I’ll go see them again. Keep the backfires burning in their States.”

Senator Curtis has the dark hair and skin of Indian ancestry, and perhaps his Indian blood has given him his quick sense of a situation and his knowledge of men. Without quite knowing how it happened—it may have been his interest in listening or his wisdom in advising—he had become the guiding friend, the storm-center of our work on the Republican side of the Senate.

“Colonel Roosevelt has written to Senator Sutherland too,” I thought hopefully, while I sat waiting for him in the marble room. He came out, and said almost at once, “I’ve just had a letter from Colonel Roosevelt asking me to vote for your Amendment!”

“Have you?” said I.

“Yes. But I wish he had told me how I can do it, when the overwhelming sentiment of my State is against it.” I spoke of something else, but that night I reported this remark to Doris Stevens and Abby Scott Baker. Both of them immediately wrote to Colonel Roosevelt. Later, I again saw Senator Sutherland. He had evidently forgotten our former conversation.

“I’ve had a letter from Colonel Roosevelt about your Amendment,” he said. “It’s the second time he has written to me about it. He wants me to come to Oyster Bay so he can give me reasons for voting for it.”

“I should think it would be awfully interesting to go,” I encouraged gently. And soon we checked off Senator Sutherland’s name on our lists, and said, “Five more to get.”

“Do you think we can get Borah?” I asked Senator Curtis. “He’s one of the fathers of the Amendment. He introduced it in 1910.”

“He says he did that by request.”

“It doesn’t say so in the Record. Doesn’t a man always say so when it is so?”

“That is usual,” said Senator Curtis, stroking his mustache and not meeting my eyes, and I knew he said only half of what he thought.

“I think I’ll go and see him at once.”

Senator Borah is a most approachable person, but when you have approached, you cannot be sure you have reached. You see him sitting at his desk, a large unferocious, bulldog type of man, simple in manner. You talk with him, and you think he is with you through and through.... But you never quite know.... Sometimes you wonder if he knows.

345In April, Senator Gallinger told Miss Paul that the Republicans counted four more votes for Suffrage—Kellogg, Harding, Page, and Borah. “We understand Borah will vote for the Amendment if it will not pass otherwise. But he will not vote for it if it will pass without him. But if his vote will carry it, he will vote for it.”

Thus far we had come on our journey toward the eleven, when Senator Andreus Aristides Jones of New Mexico, Chairman of the Woman Suffrage Committee, rose in the Senate and announced that on May 10 he would move to take up the Suffrage resolution. There was great rejoicing. We thought that now the Administration would get the needed votes.

Indeed, with only two votes more to get, everything looked promising.

In May, members of the Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense were received by the President and Mrs. Wilson.

Florence Bayard Hilles, State Chairman in Delaware for the National Woman’s Party, who had campaigned for the Liberty Loan throughout her State, and was then working in the Bethlehem Steel Plant, as a munition maker, said to the President:

Mr. President, it would be a great inspiration to all of us in our war work if you would help towards our immediate enfranchisement.

Behind Mrs. Hilles came Mrs. Arthur Kellam, who is Chairman of the Woman’s Party in New Mexico, who said:

Mr. President, we, women of the West, are growing very restless indeed waiting for the long-delayed passage of the Federal Suffrage Amendment. Won’t you help to secure this recognition of citizens? The women of New Mexico and many other States have no redress save through the Federal Amendment. They are eagerly waiting for action on this measure in the Senate. Will you help us?

The President, with marked cordiality, answered:

“I will. I will do all I can.”

346In the meantime, the President was receiving picturesque groups of many descriptions: Pershing’s Veterans went to the White House; the Blue Devils of France. Finally a group of women munition workers from the Bethlehem Plant, led by Florence Bayard Hilles, came to Washington to see the President in regard to Suffrage. They were: Catherine Boyle; Ada Walling; Mary Gonzon; Lula Patterson; Marie McKenzie; Isabel C. Aniba; Lilian Jerrold; Mary Campbell; Mildred Peck; Ida Lennox. The experience of the war workers was amusing. They wrote at once asking for an interview with the President. Mr. Tumulty responded saying that the President bade him to tell them that “nothing you or your associates could say could possibly increase his very deep interest in this matter.”

Mrs. Aniba despatched an answer, again asking for an interview. She said among other things:

The work I do is making detonators, handling TNT, the highest of all explosives. We want to be recognized by our country as much her citizens as soldiers are.

Every day this little group went to the White House and sat, waiting. They made a picturesque detail in the exceedingly picturesque war flood surging through the White House, wearing bands printed with the words, munition workers on their arm and their identification badges. They knitted all the time. At first, one of the secretaries explained to them, “You are very foolish. You may have to wait for weeks. Even Lord Reading had to come back four times before he saw the President!”

Later, an under-secretary said: “You are becoming a nuisance. Other people have more consideration than to keep coming back; but you persist and persist.”

“Even Lord Reading had to come back four times before he saw the President,” quoted one of the munition girls.

They waited two weeks, but in the end they had to go back to work. They wrote a letter to the Senate, however, which was read there.

347May 10 approached. I resume Miss Younger’s narrative:

When the proper time arrived next day, Senator Andreus Aristides Jones arose in his place. The galleries were packed. Our forces were all present except the three missing votes. There was Senator Smith of Michigan, who had come from California; Senator Smith of Arizona, who had left a sick relative to be present for the vote; and there were others who had come from far and wide. Senator Jones in the hush of a great moment, rose and announced that he would not call up the Amendment that day.

Our opponents looked at him and, grinning, taunted: “Haven’t you got the votes?” “We want to vote today.” “We’re ready now.”

Finally the women............