Part 54 (1/2)

and ”age-long conviction deeply matured,” party limitations, party concert of action, and what not. He saw in suffrage the ”tide rising to meet the moon,” but waited and advised us to wait with him. But we did not want to wait, and we proceeded to try to make it impossible for him to wait, either. We determined to make action upon this issue politically expedient for him.

When the President began to perceive the potential political power of women voters, he first declared, as a ”private citizen,”

that suffrage was all right for the women of his home state, New Jersey, but that it was altogether wrong to ask him as President to a.s.sist in bringing it about for all the women of the nation.

He also interested himself in writing the suffrage plank in the Democratic Party's national platform, specifically relegating action on suffrage to the states. Then he calmly announced that he could not act nationally, ”even if I wanted to,” because the platform had spoken otherwise.

The controversy was lengthened. The President's conspicuous ability for sitting still and doing nothing on a controversial issue until both sides have exhausted their ammunition was never better ill.u.s.trated than in this matter. He allowed the controversy to continue to the point of intellectual sterility.

He b.u.t.tressed his delays with more evasions, until finally the women intensified their demand for action. They picketed his official gates. But the President still recoiled from action. So mightily did he recoil from it that he was willing to imprison women for demanding it.

It is not extraordinary to resent being called upon to act,

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for it is only the exceptional person who springs to action, even when action is admitted to be desirable and necessary. And the President is not exceptional. He is surprisingly ordinary.

While the women languished in prison, he fell back upon words- beautiful words, too expressions of friendliness, good wishes, hopes, and may-I-nots. In this, too, he was acting like an ordinary human being, not like the statesman he was reputed to be. He had habituated himself to a belief in the power of words, and every time he uttered them to us he seemed to refortify himself in his belief in their power.

It was the women, not the President, who were exceptional. They refused to accept words. They persisted in demanding acts. Step by step under terrific gunfire the President's resistance crumbled, and he yielded, one by one, every minor facility to the measure, always withholding from us, however, the main objective.

Not until he had exhausted all minor facilities, and all possible evasions, did he publicly declare that the amendment should pa.s.s the House, and put it through. When he had done that we rested from the attack momentarily, in order to let him consummate with grace, and not under fire, the pa.s.sage of the amendment in the Senate. He rested altogether. We were therefore compelled to renew the attack. He countered at first with more words. But his reliance upon them was perceptibly shaken when we burned them in public bonfires. He then moved feebly but with a growing concern toward getting additional votes in the Senate. And when, as an inevitable result of his policy-and ours-the political embarra.s.sment became too acute, calling into question his honor and prestige, he covertly began to consult his colleagues. We pushed him the harder. He moved the faster toward concrete endeavor. He actually undertook to win the final votes in the Senate.

There he found, however, that quite an alarming situation

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had developed-a situation which he Should have antic.i.p.ated, but for which he was totally unprepared. Opposition in his own party had been growing more and more rigid and cynical. His own opposition to the amendment, his grant of immunity to those leaders in his party who had fought the measure, his isolating himself from those who might have helped-all this was coming to fruition among his subordinates at a time when he could least afford to be beaten on anything. What would have been a fairly easy race to win, if he had begun running at the pistol shot, had now become most difficult.

Perceiving that he had now not only to move himself, but also to overcome the obstacle which he had allowed to develop, we increased the energy of our attack. And finally the President made a supreme a.s.sertion of his power, and secured the last and 64th vote in the Senate. He did this too late to get the advantage-if any advantage is to be gained from granting a just thing at the point of a gun-for this last vote arrived only in time for a Republican Congress to use it.

It seems to me that Woodrow Wilson was neither devil nor G.o.d in his manner of meeting the demand of the suffragists. There has persisted an astounding myth that he is an extraordinary man. Our experience proved the contrary. He behaved toward us like a very ordinary politician. Unnecessarily cruel or weakly tolerant, according as you view the justice of our fight, but a politician, not a statesman. He did not go out to meet the tide which he himself perceived was ”rising to meet the moon” That would have been statesmans.h.i.+p. He let it all but engulf him before he acted.

And even as a politician he failed, for his tactics resulted in the pa.s.sage of the amendment by a Republican Congress.

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Chapter 27

Republican Congress Pa.s.ses Amendment

The Republican Congress convened in Special Session May 19.

Instantly Republican leaders in control of the 66th Congress caucused and organized for a prompt pa.s.sage of the amendment. May 21st the Republican House of Representatives pa.s.sed the measure by a vote of 304 to 89-the first thing of any importance done by the new House. This was 42 votes above the required two-thirds majority, whereas the vote in the House in January, 1918, under Democratic control had given the measure only one vote more than was required.

Immediately the Democratic National Committee pa.s.sed a resolution calling on the legislatures of the various states to hold special legislative sessions where necessary, to ratify the amendment as soon as it was through Congress, in order to ”enable women to vote in the national elections of 1920.”

When the 64th vote was a.s.sured two more Republican Senators announced their support, Senator Keyes of New Hamps.h.i.+re and Senator Hale of Maine, and on June 4th the measure pa.s.sed the Senate by a vote of 66 to 30,-2 votes more than needed.[l] Of the 49 Republicans in the Senate, 40 voted for the amendment, 9 against. Of the 47 Democrats in the Senate, 26 voted for it and 21 against.

And so the a.s.sertion that ”the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the

[1]These figures include all voting and paired.