Section 1. the Right of Citizens of the United States to Vote Shall

not be denied or abridged by any State on account of sex.

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

On that same day—April 7, 1913—resolutions were introduced in the House to create a Woman Suffrage Committee similar to that in the Senate. This was only a tiny gain; for that Committee was not actually created until September, 1917. But a little later occurred what was a decided gain—the Senate created a Majority Committee on Woman Suffrage. The Woman Suffrage Committee in the Senate had been a Minority Committee thitherto. That meant that, as its Chairman belonged to the Minority Party, its existence was purely nominal.

* * * * *

All these four months, the five women who constituted the Congressional Committee had been working at a tremendous speed. They had been made into a Committee on the understanding that the Committee would itself raise the money necessary for its work. Four months’ experience had convinced them that the work of securing a Federal Amendment required a much greater effort than five women, working alone, could possibly give to it. The various State associations composing the National American Woman Suffrage Association were engrossed in their State campaigns. Little could be expected from them in the way of personal service or financial aid. When the Congressional Committee appealed to individuals, they found that these individuals were giving their time and service to the particular State in which they lived. The Congressional Committee realized that they must have an organization back of them to assist with work and money, whose sole object was national work. The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage was therefore formed by the Congressional Committee, with the approval of the President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

The Congressional Union described itself as “a group of women in all parts of the country who have joined together in the effort to secure the passage of an Amendment to the United States Constitution enfranchising women.” It offered its members the privilege of making the offices at Washington their headquarters while in the city. It adopted colors—at the happy suggestion of Mrs. John Jay White—of purple, white, and gold. The Union grew rapidly, and was later admitted as an auxiliary to the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The Congressional Committee acted as the Executive Committee of this Congressional Union. Throughout the year the Union was of great assistance to the Committee. It reinforced its work in every possible way.

* * * * *

The Suffrage resolution was now before the Committees in both Houses. The Congressional Union concentrated on securing a hearing before the Senate Committee. Every effort was made to focus the attention of Suffragists and of the country at large on the situation. A hearing was arranged before the Committee, at which Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, presided. In addition to this public hearing, the members of the Senate Committee were interviewed. And pursuing its course of keeping Suffragists in touch with what was happening at Washington, the Congressional Committee circularized Suffragists all over the country with letters which informed them that the resolution was before the Senate Committee, and asked them to write to this Committee urging a favorable report.

After six months of work occurred the first political triumph of the Congressional Union. On May 13, the Senate Committee voted to make a favorable report upon the Suffrage resolution. There, however, matters rested—with a favorable vote, but still in the Committee. The Suffragists, however, besieged the Committee with requests to make the report and finally, on June 13, the report was made to the Senate—the first favorable one in twenty-one years. This put the measure on the Senate Calendar.

Immediately the Congressional Union turned its attention to proving to the Senate how widespread was the support of this measure in the United States.

A petition was circulated in every State in the Union. It asked for the passage of the Amendment, and was addressed to the Senate. Thousands of signatures were obtained. During June and July, these petitions were collected and brought to Washington. Their arrival at the Capitol on July 31 was the occasion of the third great demonstration. The petitioners came from every State, and they came in every possible way. They came by train, by motor, by caravan. They held meetings and collected signatures to the great petition in the districts through which they passed. All the delegations converged in the little town of Hyattsville, outside Washington. There—at the village grandstand, they were met by members of the Congressional Union and of the Woman Suffrage Committee of the Senate. The reading clerk of the House of Representatives announced the members of the delegations as they arrived in their several motors. Members of the Senate Committee addressed them on behalf of the Congressional Committee of the Congressional Union. The Mayor of Hyattsville delivered to them the key of the town. Mary Ware Dennett replied for the delegates, and accepted the key of the town from the Mayor. The automobiles then formed into a procession, of which the first motor carried the members of the Senate Committee. The long line of cars, fluttering flags, and pennants, and each bearing the banner of its State delegation, proceeded from Hyattsville along the old Bunker Hill Road to the Capitol. There, the petitions were handed to the various Senators. Three Senators spoke against Suffrage, but twenty-two in presenting the petitions spoke in favor of it.

This was the second triumph of the Congressional Union. Suffrage was debated in Congress—the first time since 1887.

* * * * *

The Congressional Committee now turned its attention to the work of convincing Congress of the interest in the Amendment of the women voters of the West. A Convention of the National Council of Women Voters was held in Washington on August 13, 14, and 15. Emma Smith Devoe, National President of the Council, and Jane Addams, National Vice-President, presided. Upon a motion by Jane Addams, the Council passed the following Resolution, strongly indorsing the Amendment:

Whereas at the present time one-fifth of the Senate, one-seventh of the House, and one-sixth of the electoral vote comes from equal Suffrage States; and

Whereas, as a result of this political strength in Congress, due to the fact that four million women of the United States are now enfranchised, there is great hope of the passage in the near future of the Federal Suffrage Amendment; therefore be it

Resolved, That the National Council of Women Voters concentrate its efforts upon the support of this Federal Amendment.

The Rules Committee of the House of Representatives on August 14 then gave the Council a hearing on the question of creating a Suffrage Committee in the House.

The Convention ended in a mass-meeting at the Belasco Theatre, which, in spite of the midsummer heat of Washington, was crowded to the doors. The platform was filled with Congressmen from Suffrage States. The women speakers iterated and reiterated the demand of the women voters of the West for immediate action by Congress, and the Congressmen supported them.

In addition to these—processions, pilgrimages, petitions, deputations, and hearings, hundreds of public meetings organized by the Washington Headquarters—were held everywhere. A constant series of deputations from their own constituencies besieged the members of the Senate. All this was making its inevitable impression on Congress. Those days of the Sixty-third Congressional Session were crowded ones. The President had told the Suffragists that so much time must be given to the tariff and the currency that there would be none left for Women Suffrage. Yet more time was devoted to the Woman Suffrage question than ever before. On September 18, Senator Wesley L. Jones of Washington delivered a speech in the Senate, in which he urged that the Suffrage Resolution should be passed. In the House, a number of Representatives formerly opposed to the resolution now declared that they would support it when it came before them.

* * * * *

In the meantime, the tariff and currency had finally been disposed of. A new Congress was to convene on December 1. Ever since his inauguration, Suffrage agitation of a strong, dignified, and convincing character had been brought to the President’s attention. Suffragists hoped, therefore, that the President would feel that he could recommend the Suffrage Amendment to this new Congress. They decided, however, to present the matter to him in a forcible way. A fourth deputation of seventy-three women from his own State of New Jersey came to Washington in the middle of November.

This delegation arrived on Saturday afternoon, November 15. Until Monday morning, they tried in every possible way to arrange for an appointment with the President at the White House. Representative McCoy of New Jersey endeavored to assist them in this matter. Their efforts and his efforts were fruitless.

Monday morning, at 10 o’clock, Alice Paul telephoned the Executive Office that, as it was impossible to find out what hour would suit the convenience of the President, the delegation was on its way to the White House. She explained that they would wait there until the President was ready to receive them, or would definitely refuse to do so. The clerk at the Executive Office declared over the telephone that it would be impossible to see the President without an appointment. He assured Alice Paul that such a thing had never been done. Representative McCoy called up Headquarters, and reported his failure to secure an appointment. On being told that the delegation was going to call on the President anyway, he protested vehemently against its proceeding to the White House without the usual official preliminaries. Alice Paul’s answer was a single statement,—“The delegation has already started.”

In double file the seventy-three New Jersey women marched through Fifteenth Street, through Pennsylvania Avenue, past the Treasury Department, and up to the White House grounds. And, lo, as though their coming spread paralyzing magic, everything gave way before them. Two guards in uniform stood at the gate. They saluted and moved aside. The seventy-three women marched unchallenged through the grounds to the door of the Executive Office. An attendant there requested them courteously to wait until after their two leaders should be presented to the President by his Secretary.

The request that these seventy-three New Jersey women made to President Wilson was that he should support the Constitutional Amendment enfranchising women. President Wilson replied: “I am pleased, indeed, to greet you and your adherents here, and I will say to you that I was talking only yesterday with several Members of Congress in regard to the Suffrage Committee in the House. The subject is one in which I am deeply interested, and you may rest assured that I will give it my earnest attention.”

It is to be seen that the President’s education had progressed—a little. To previous delegations, he had stated merely that the tariff and currency would take so much of the attention of Congress that there would be no time for the Suffrage question. In advocating a Suffrage Committee in the House, he had made an advance—tiny, to be sure, but an advance.

* * * * *

In the last month of 1913 occurred in Washington the Forty-fifth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The Convention opened with a mass-meeting at the Columbia Theatre. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw presided. Jane Addams and Senator Helen Ring Robinson were the principal speakers. At the opening meeting of the Convention, Lucy Burns repeated the warning of the Congressional Union to the Democratic Party:

The National American Women Suffrage Association is assembled in Washington to ask the Democratic Party to enfranchise the women of America.

Rarely in the history of the country has a party been more powerful than the Democratic Party is today. It controls the Executive Office, the Senate, and more than two-thirds of the members of the House of Representatives. It is in a position to give us effective and immediate help.

We ask the Democrats to take action now. Those who hold power are responsible to the country for the use of it. They are responsible, not only for what they do, but for what they do not do. Inaction establishes just as clear a record as does a policy of open hostility.

We have in our hands today not only the weapon of a just case; we have the support of ten enfranchised States—States comprising one-fifth of the United States, one-seventh of the House of Representatives and one-sixth of the electoral vote. More than three million, six hundred thousand women have a vote in Presidential elections. It is unthinkable that a national government which represents women, and which appeals periodically to the Suffrages of women, should ignore the issue of their right to political freedom.

We cannot wait until after the passage of the scheduled administration reforms. These reforms, which affect women, should not be enacted without the consent of women. Congress is free to take action on our question in the present Session. We ask the administration to support the Woman Suffrage Amendment in Congress with its full strength.

On December 4, a second meeting was held before the Rules Committee of the House on the creation of a Woman Suffrage Committee in the House of Representatives. Ida Husted Harper reminded the Rules Committee at this hearing that nine States and one Territory had enfranchised their women, and that nearly four million women could vote at a Presidential election. Mary Beard showed by an analysis of the vote which sent President Wilson to the White House that the Democratic strength was already threatened, and how it could strengthen itself by espousing the Suffrage Cause.

Notwithstanding the appeal of the seventy-three New Jersey women, the President’s message to Congress on December 2 failed to make any mention whatever of the Suffrage Amendment.

In consequence, a Committee representing each State in the Union was appointed by the Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to wait upon the President and protest. President Wilson was prevented by illness from seeing any visitors during the week the Convention met. The Convention, therefore, authorized the appointment of a Committee of fifty-five delegates, who should remain in Washington until the President was able to see them. The interview took place the following Monday at 12:30. This was the fifth deputation to President Wilson. The President said, according to the Washington Post of December 9:

I want you ladies, if possible—if I can make it clear to you—to realize just what my present position is. Whenever I walk abroad, I realize that I am not a free man; I am under arrest. I am so carefully and admirably guarded that I have not even the privilege of walking the street. That is, as it were, typical of my present transference from being an individual with his mind on any and every subject, to being an official of a great Government and, incidentally, or so it falls out under our system of Government, the spokesman of a Party. I set myself this strict rule when I was Governor of New Jersey and have followed it as President, and shall follow it as President, that I am not at liberty to urge upon Congress policies which have not had the organic consideration of those for whom I am spokesman.

In other words, I have not yet presented to any legislature my private views on any subject, and I never shall; because I conceive that to be a part of the whole process of government, that I shall be spokesman for somebody, not for myself.

When I speak for myself, I am an individual; when I speak for an organic body, I am a representative. For that reason you see, I am by my own principles shut out, in the language of the street, from starting anything. I have to confine myself to those things which have been embodied as promises to the people at an election. That is the strict rule I set for myself.

I want to say that with regard to all other matters I am not only glad to be consulted by my colleagues in the two Houses, but I hope that they will often pay me the compliment of consulting me when they want to know my opinions on any subject. One member of the Rules Committee did come to ask me what I thought about this suggestion of yours of appointing a special committee for consideration of the question of Woman Suffrage, and I told him that I thought it was a proper thing to do. So that as far as my personal advice has been asked by a single member of the Committee, it has been given to that effect. I wanted to tell you that to show you that I am strictly living up to my principles. When my private opinion is asked by those who are co-operating with me, I am most glad to give it; but I am not at liberty until I speak for somebody besides myself to urge legislation upon the Congress.

Dr. Shaw stepped forward to address the President within the circle of deeply attentive hearers, spoke very quietly and firmly in her clear and beautiful voice.

“Of the two—the President and Dr. Shaw,” said one of the spectators afterward, “Dr. Shaw spoke with greater authority, as if with the consciousness of a perfectly just cause. The President was less assured, more hesitating.”...

“As women are members of no political Party, to whom are they to look for a spokesman?” Dr. Shaw asked.

“You speak very well for yourself,” said the President, laughing.

“But not with authority,” said Dr. Shaw earnestly.

The deputation then left the President’s Office.

Editorially in the Suffragist of December 13 appears:

The rule that President Wilson has so strictly set for himself, is a rule not laid down in the Constitution nor in the practice of preceding Presidents, nor in the President’s own acts, nor in his own words.

Nevertheless, the statement of President Wilson to the President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association is of great value to the Suffrage movement. The President therein declares that he is only the spokesman of his Party and that he will initiate only legislation which has been endorsed by his Party. He puts the whole question of Federal legislation for Woman Suffrage directly up to the Democratic Party in Congress, and instructs Suffragists throughout the country to hold that Party responsible for the fate of the Constitutional Amendment enfranchising women. He has outlined for us, therefore, the policy of bringing effective pressure to bear on the national Democratic Party from all parts of the country, in an effort to make them realize soon what they must recognize finally, that it is more expedient for them as a Party to advocate Suffrage than to ignore and resist it.

Nevertheless, the President’s education had progressed another step. For the first time, he felt the necessity of explaining—and by implication—of excusing himself.

This visit to the President completed the principal work of the year 1913 on the part of the Congressional Committee and the Congressional Union.

Many things had been done in this year, in addition to what has already been indicated. A district of Columbia Branch of the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage was organized; this was composed largely of Congressmen. Lectures, receptions, tableaux, benefits, teas had been given, and a Suffrage School opened in Washington. Seven large mass-meetings, exclusive of Convention meetings, were held at Washington. An uninterrupted series of indoor and outdoor meetings, numbering frequently from five to ten a day, constantly reminded Congress of the Suffrage question. A summer campaign, carried on by Mabel Vernon and Edith Marsden, covered the resort regions of New Jersey, Long Island, and Rhode Island, and extended into the South.

Twenty-seven thousand dollars had been raised at the Washington Headquarters, and spent. And there were results. The chief one was that it focussed the attention—not only of Suffragists themselves—but of politicians and the country at large on the Federal Amendment.

June, 1913, brought Presidential Suffrage to the women of Illinois. Only Presidential Suffrage; but that was very important. Astute women everywhere were watching the situation; drawing their own and independent conclusions.

Toward the end of the year, the Congressional Union established an official weekly organ, the Suffragist, edited by the well-known publicist, Rheta Childe Dorr. The first issue appeared on November 15, and it has been published ever since.

Lucy Burns, whose editorials were marvels of ironic logic, of forceful condensed expression, succeeded Mrs. Dorr. Then came Vivian Pierce, a trained newspaper woman; Sue White, well-known to Suffragists for her splendid work in Tennessee; Florence Boeckel, able, efficient, untiring. Pauline Clarke, Clara Wold, Elizabeth Kalb contributed supplementing editorial work.

The Suffragist has reported the activities first of the Congressional Union, and next of the Woman’s Party. It is an extremely entertaining periodical, always interesting, often brilliant, essentially readable. It contains editorials, reports, sketches, verse, cartoons. Many famous people have contributed articles. The reports of the workers in the Woman’s Party make much the most interesting reading however. Many famous artists have given it drawings. The most pertinent, though, are those contributed by a member of the Congressional Union—Nina Allender.

Mrs. Allender’s fertile and original pencil has traced during the entire eight years of its history a running commentary on the progress of the Woman’s Party. She has a keen political sense. She has translated this aspect of the feminist movement in terms that women alone can best appreciate. Her work is full of the intimate everyday details of the woman’s life from her little girlhood to her old age. And she translates that existence with a woman’s vivacity and a woman’s sense of humor; a humor which plays keenly and gracefully about masculine insensibility; a humor as realistic, but as archly un-bitter as that of Jane Austen. It would be impossible for any man to have done Mrs. Allender’s work. A woman speaking to women, about women, in the language of women.

There is no better place than here to emphasize the work of the Press Department. It will be apparent to the reader, as the story of the Woman’s Party unrolls itself, that the work of this department was very difficult and very delicate. The problem was twofold—to keep the action of the party always in the public eye and to bring out the underlying policy. This was not easy when the demonstrations of the Woman’s Party were of the kind whose initial effect was to antagonize. Nevertheless, the Press Department minimized that antagonism and minimized by a propaganda which was as restrained in expression as it was vivid in description. Newspaper men generally felt that they could depend on the Woman’s Party for news. Florence Brewer Boeckel, who has been press chairman since 1915, is responsible for this magnificent press campaign. But she has not lacked help. Eleanor Taylor Marsh, Alice Gram, Beulah Amidon, and Margaret Grahan Jones, have given her steady assistance.

* * * * *

Early in the year 1914, the Congressional Union resigned from the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The constitution of the National Association permitted a Suffrage body to join it in one of two ways. By one, a new clause imposed a five per cent tax in dues upon its budget. By another, it paid annually one hundred dollars dues. The Congressional Union felt that a five per cent tax upon its budget would seriously cripple its work. The Union offered to become an associated body. The National Association refused this offer, and the Congressional Union, therefore, became an independent organization.

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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.

Let 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 from 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 Committee. 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 three 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).

At 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: