Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
While the United States Senate was standing still under our protest
world events rushed on. German autocracy had collapsed. The Allies had
won a military victory. The Kaiser had that very week fled for his life
because of the uprising of his people.
“We are all free voters of a free republic now,” was the message sent
by the women of Germany to the women of the United States through Miss
Jane Addams. We were at that moment heartily ashamed of our government.
German women voting! American women going to jail and spending long
hours in the Senate guardhouse without arrests or, charges. The war
came to an end. Congress adjourned November 21st.
When the 65th Congress reconvened for its short and final session,
December 2nd, 1918 [less than a month after our election campaign],
President Wilson, for the first time, included suffrage in his regular
message to Congress, the thing that we had asked of him at the opening
of every session of Congress since March, 1918.
There were now fewer than a hundred days in which to get action from
the Senate and so avoid losing the benefit of our victory in the House.
In his opening address to Congress, the President again appealed to the
Senate in these words:
“And what shall we say of the women—of their instant intelligence,
quickening every task that they touched; their capacity for
organization and coöperation, which gave their action discipline and
enhanced the effectiveness of everything they attempted; their aptitude
at tasks to which they had never before set their hands; their utter
self-sacrifice alike in what they did and in what they gave? Their
contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal. They have added a
new luster to the annals of American womanhood.
“The least tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals of men in
political rights, as they have proved themselves their equals in every
field of practical work they have entered, whether for themselves or
for their country. These great days of completed achievement would be
sadly marred were we to omit that act of justice. Besides the immense
practical services they have rendered, the women of the country have
been the moving spirits in the systematic economies in which our people
have voluntarily assisted to supply the suffering peoples of the world
and the armies upon every front with food and everything else we had,
that might serve the common cause. The details of such a story can
never be fully written but we carry them at our hearts and thank God
that we can say that we are the kinsmen of such.”
Again we looked for action to follow this appeal. Again we found that
the President had uttered these words but had made no plan to translate
them into action.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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