Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
MR. RAKER: I want to say to my Republican friends upon this question
that I have been in conference with the President for over three years
upon this question . . . .
MR. KEARNS: How did the women of California find out and learn where
the President stood on this thing just before election last fall?
Nobody else seemed to know it.
MR. RAKER: They knew it.
MR. KEARNS: How did they find it out?
MR. RAKER: I will take a minute or two—
MR. KEARNS: I wish the gentleman would.
MR. RAKER: The President went home and registered. The President went
home and voted for woman suffrage.
MR. KEARNS: He said he believed in it for the several states . . . .
MR. RAKER: One moment——
MR. KEARNS : That is the only information they had upon the subject, is
it?
MR. WILLIAMS: . . . Will the gentleman yield?
MR. RAKER: I cannot yield.
MR. WILLIAMS: Just for a question.
MR. RAKER: I cannot yield . . . .
That the President’s political speed left some overcome was clear from
a remark of Mr. Clark of Florida when he said:
“I was amused at my friend from Oklahoma, Mr. Ferris, who wants us to
stand with the President. God knows I want to stand with him. I am a
Democrat, and I want to follow the leader of my party, and I am a
pretty good lightning change artist myself sometimes (laughter); but
God knows I cannot keep up with his performance. (Laughter.) Why, the
President wrote a book away back yonder” . . . and he quoted generously
from President Wilson’s many statements in defense of state rights as
recorded in his early writings.
Mr. Hersey of Maine, Republican, drew applause when he made a retort to
the Democratic slogan, “Stand by the President.” He said:
“Mr. Speaker, I am still ‘standing with the President,’ or, in other
words, the President this morning is standing with me.”
The resentment at having been forced by the pickets to the point of
passing the amendment was in evidence throughout the debate.
Representative Gordon of Ohio, Democrat, said with bitter ness : “We
are threatened by these militant suffragettes with a direct and lawless
invasion by the Congress of the United States of the rights of those
States which have refused to confer upon their women the privilege of
voting. This attitude on the part of some of the suffrage Members of
this House is on an exact equality with the acts of these women
militants who have spent the last summer and fall, while they were not
in the district jail or workhouse, in coaxing, teasing, and nagging the
Presi dent of the United States for the purpose of inducing him, by
coercion, to club Congress into adopting this joint resolution.”
Shouts of “Well, they got him!” and “They got it!” from all sides,
followed by prolonged laughter and jeers, interrupted the flow of his
oratory.
Mr. Ferris of Oklahoma, Democrat, hoped to minimize the effectiveness
of the picket.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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