The Woman's Hour

by Elaine Weiss

  Opponents of the federal amendment were emboldened to take daring new steps. The same band of Democratic newspaper publishers who’d visited Governor Roberts was now making the rounds of state Republican leaders, offering a sweet deal: Make sure enough Republican delegates in the house swing against ratification, preventing a majority coalition, and the Democratic newspapers would come out for the Republican ticket, from Harding on down. To stimulate more defections, Charlotte Rowe publicly offered to defend any delegate who might wish to withdraw the ratification pledge he’d given to the Suffs. If Sue White was threatening to expose delegates who reneged on their pledges, Rowe promised to protect them from such disgusting blackmail. She could provide beleaguered legislators with incriminating information about the Suffs; it was the Antis’ own type of card-indexing system—they could play that game.

  The Antis also beefed up their Constitutional League legal team with the arrival of Judge Oscar Leser, a noted legal scholar who’d piloted efforts to defeat ratification in Maryland. And they augmented their lobbying brigade with former Chattanooga mayor (and recent gubernatorial contender) Jesse Littleton—who’d so unctuously assured Anita Pollitzer he was a firm suffragist—now openly working for the Antis.

  In Marion, Warren Harding did the Antis another favor. When pressed by reporters for his latest opinions on ratification, Harding speculated that should Tennessee ratify, the constitutional questions swirling around the legislature’s action, and the legal challenges that would surely follow, might throw the fall elections into chaos. Harding was reciting, almost verbatim, the Antis’ script; he was skilled at repetition, if not reasoning. His fears about Tennessee’s ratification would appear on the front pages of newspapers the next morning.

  Governor Roberts was just trying to keep his head above water. On his desk was a barbed message from DNC chairman George White: “I insistently hope the Volunteer State, under your magnificent leadership, will keep step with the times,” just as he received another “I’m depending upon you” telegram from Governor Cox. James Cox was receiving panic-tinged reports from Tennessee all day. Sue White and Anita Pollitzer wired to him the details of their findings about the probable Walker-L&N-Brandegee–Atlantic Coast Line connections, and he took them seriously. He mentioned the alleged conspiracy in his daily press briefing, and he authorized a special message, sent specifically to Democratic members of the Tennessee house known to have business ties to the L&N, asking them to stand fast for ratification.

  “Asinine,” a spokesman for the railroad called all the rumors about the Louisville and Nashville interfering in Tennessee’s ratification fight. The accusations were “too absolutely absurd to need a denial,” he contended. “What would the L&N be bothering about suffrage for?” he asked. “We have troubles enough of our own.”

  At eight p.m., the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments, a body of eighteen delegates drawn from both political parties, with Speaker Walker attending in an ex officio capacity, convened in the hotel room of its chairman, Tom Riddick, to decide whether to recommend ratification. Hundreds of people gathered in the Hermitage lobby, in the hallways and public rooms, awaiting word of the committee’s decision. At a few minutes before the hour, Joe Hanover, who served on the committee, glanced at his pocket watch. Two committeemen, both pledged for ratification, were absent. Alert suffragists rounded up the two, who were obviously trying to duck the meeting, and hustled them over to Riddick’s room.

  The meeting was brief, little more than fifteen minutes: no debate, not even any real discussion. The first ballot was tied. Joe Hanover was disturbed to see that one of Governor Roberts’s close allies, Banks Turner, voted with the Antis. Then, without explanation, another of the delegates who’d voted with the Antis asked to change his vote: put him in the aye column, favoring ratification. It is possible that Seth Walker signaled him to do this. The committee vote had demonstrated the strength of the Antis, and under these circumstances, the quicker Walker could herd his men to a full house vote, the better. The committee, by a vote of 10 to 8, recommended ratifying the federal amendment.

  Joe Hanover left the room quickly. The Suffs had won, but the vote was too close. It didn’t bode well for the full house vote. When Seth Walker strode out of the committee meeting, he told reporters: “We’ve got ’em whipped to a frazzle. We have ratification beaten, that is all there is to it.”

  * * *

  Nashvillians awoke on Tuesday to a boldfaced and boxed advertisement in the morning Tennessean:

  AN APPEAL TO THE CITIZENS OF NASHVILLE

  Will you, by your presence in the Capitol this morning, help to DEFEAT the Susan B. Anthony Amendment? This is the most important issue that has confronted the South since the Civil War.

  We appeal to you in the name of Tennessee, in the name of the South to help us maintain a righteous cause.

  Wear a red or pink rose. Show your loyalty to the people of your own land.

  In the name of millions of Southern women we appeal to the unquestioned chivalry of the South.

  Josephine Pearson was very proud of this bugle call from her Tennessee women of the Rejection League—fighting on the front lines—to their kinsmen on the home front. This was the day of the vote, and just as valiant Confederate soldiers had attempted to storm the statehouse in 1864, to oust the blue-belly Federalist soldiers and release the city from Union occupation in the Battle of Nashville, so she and her fellow Antis were willing to face the barrage on Capitol Hill today, for the glory and future of Tennessee. And Pearson was confident that the people of Nashville would turn out today to defend their state and protect their heritage. She pinned on her three red roses, her president general insignia, and headed to the statehouse.

  The statehouse was looking a bit too yellow for Miss Pearson’s taste. Squads of Suff decorators had been busy since just after dawn, tacking up bunting and banners, hanging flags. Saffron-colored cloth was draped from the columns of the building’s portico, while the golden satin banners of the Tennessee suffrage organizations—as well as the Woman’s Party’s purple, white, and gold standards—were suspended between the Corinthian columns of the house chamber. Some daredevil suffragist had lashed a big yellow sunflower to the spread-winged eagle above the Speaker’s chair.

  Waves of people, thousands of people, surged up Capitol Hill in the hours before the session was to begin. The impassioned, the incensed, and even the indifferent came trudging up the Hill. Women who’d been in the suffrage fight for years, as well as those who’d ignored it all that time, came to watch a moment of history unfold before their eyes. Mothers brought their daughters. A car filled with women factory workers arrived, all wearing red flowers; they’d been given the day off by their boss to swell the ranks of the Antis.

  The galleries were packed long before the first gavel, as Suff and Anti sympathizers fought over the seats and benches, elbowing one another for a standing room spot. On the floor of the chamber, the area behind the brass bar was already stuffed with standing spectators, and those who couldn’t squirm their way in were pushed back into the hallway, where they stood four deep. The chamber floor looked like Union Station’s waiting room, with nearly 100 members seated and more than 250 lobbyists milling around them.

  Seth Walker, his eyes swollen from lack of sleep, stood on the Speaker’s stand and rapped his gavel at half-past ten. The moment the roll call was complete, ninety-five legislators present, the Antis made their first move: they demanded that the floor be cleared of all lobbyists and spectators. A howl of protest went up from the ratificationists. House Rule #17 stipulated that no one but legislators were allowed on the floor except as guests of the Speaker; the rule was rarely enforced, but it should be now, the Anti delegate insisted. Speaker Walker agreed. Joe Hanover jumped up to protest: “There is no reason to ask America to leave the chamber,” he yelled, the people are entitled to petition their representatives in person; we have nothing to hide. Hanover moved to
suspend Rule #17. Walker smiled; he’d maneuvered the first test vote.

  Suspending a house rule required a two-thirds majority. There was no way the Suffs could muster that many votes. The roll was called, with fifty-one voting aye to allow spectators to remain on the floor, forty-five voting no. Not enough. Speaker Walker ordered the sergeant at arms to remove all spectators from the chamber floor. It took some minutes for all the Suff and Anti workers to be escorted off the floor—the women did not go willingly. Only then did the real dueling begin.

  Tom Riddick, as chairman of the Constitutional Amendments Committee, submitted the majority report recommending ratification and kicked off the debate. He put his courtroom dramatic skills to good use and opened with a bang: “Isn’t it time for the South to quit being the tail-end of creation, the backyard of civilization, remaining backward on the march of progress?” he cried, calling opposition to woman suffrage “a relic of barbarism.”

  Riddick’s arguments ranged from quoting the Golden Rule and Declaration of Independence—“If women are human beings, why shouldn’t the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence apply alike to them?”—to dismissing the “Negro question” along with the various legal complications supposedly impinging upon ratification. And he made a threat:

  “I have here the pledges of 62 members of this House to ratify the 19th Amendment, right here in black and white,” he announced, “which the people of Tennessee will have the opportunity to read.” A few legislators looked queasy. “You speak of your conscience?” Riddick demanded. “What about your conscientious objections to violating your pledge?” More cheers from the yellow-breasted men and women. “If those men fail to keep faith, and this resolution is defeated,” Riddick said slowly and solemnly for emphasis, “I shall go from this chamber a dishonored man. Ashamed of being a Tennessean, and doubly ashamed of being a Tennessee Democrat!” Flushed and quivering, Riddick sat down.

  For the next three and a half hours, the friends and foes of ratification made their case in the well of the house. Almost every argument ever voiced over the past seven decades, both for and against woman suffrage, was revived, with the addition of concerns such as states’ rights, southern chivalry, home rule, and the Negro question. And, of course, the loudest themes heard in Nashville during the past weeks—constitutional qualms, oaths of office, The Woman’s Bible, and “certain influences” trying to sway the legislature—all popped up during the overheated debate. Frustrated spectators relegated to the statehouse corridors had to rely upon those standing closer to the chamber door to relay what was being said inside. All they could hear was the ballyhoo.

  Each time a speaker made a clever remark or a cogent point, fans adorned in either floral yellow or red applauded and cheered, whistled and stomped. Decorum was completely abandoned by both sides. It was the political version of talent night at the local vaudeville house, and the speakers definitely played to the audience, each trying to outdo the other and win the crowd’s approval.

  Creed Boyer took the homespun approach: “Women are the best thing God ever made,” announced the seventy-four-year-old Republican from the mountains of East Tennessee, “and I honor women above all humankind. But I would not pollute them by allowing them to wade through the filthy waters of politics.” The Anti women lobbyists clapped.

  He was blessed with a wife, nine daughters, eight sons, and eight daughters-in-law, Boyer told his listeners, and all of his womenfolk agreed that he and his sons could adequately represent them at the polls. “And I guess what’s good enough for them will have to be good enough for the rest.” Catherine Kenny remembered Boyer. He’d pledged to ratify “until the cows come home.” Now he was proud to be voting against ratification, for the sake of his eighteen female family members. The Suffs’ hisses were drowned out by the Antis’ applause.

  Carrie Catt again kept vigil at the open window of her room, straining to hear the periodic bursts of cheering that spilled down from Capitol Hill. The imposing visage of the statehouse filled Catt’s window frame, just as it dominated the skyline of the city. In that building, at that moment, her Cause and the future of American women was being debated and decided—by men. She could only watch.

  Catt was, however, amused to learn that the Tennessee Suffs had gotten hold of a replica of the Liberty Bell, that famously cracked symbol of American independence, and installed it in the house chamber this morning, ready to be rung the moment the vote to ratify was won. When it was won; if it was won.

  For years, in so many of her speeches, Catt had spoken of the moment heralding women’s political freedom. The bell of liberty would surely, inevitably, ring, she’d say, because there was nothing so powerful, so irresistible, as an idea whose time had come. She’d told that to her Suffs in 1916; she’d told that to Congress in 1917; she’d told it to President Wilson in 1918. But sometimes, like this morning, she had to wonder. Some men in that statehouse across the way were undoubtedly making the same arguments against woman suffrage that Susan Anthony had heard. And some women were still frightened, or deluded, enough to be applauding them. The vote was likely to be excruciatingly close. Even at this late date, there was no firm consensus, no overwhelming mandate, for giving women the vote or permitting their full citizenship. She tried not to wonder whether America was ready to hear the Liberty Bell.

  * * *

  They went on and on, hour after hour. George Canale, a fruit merchant from Memphis, took the floor: “As a Southern man, I could not refuse to allow women to shed their refulgent rays across the path of politics in the South,” Canale gushed. “Woman is God’s chosen creature, and won’t she, if taken into our political life, scatter her purity and fragrance into the muddled waters of our political life, and make it as clear as a crystal?”

  Percy Sharpe, one of the Davidson County defectors, stood to speak of his sleepless nights, worrying about the violence that might be unleashed in the South if universal suffrage was imposed and black women and men were allowed to vote. He could not subject his elderly mother to such indignities. “I reached the decision that I would never put this thing upon my people,” he proclaimed, or “force woman suffrage upon the states which don’t want it.”

  The parade of speakers continued:

  “Taxation without representation should no longer apply to the women of the United States,” cried a speaker for the Suffs.

  “This issue has nothing to do with woman’s suffrage,” insisted an Anti advocate, “it is a matter of the constitution and violation of our oaths.”

  “I would be ashamed to admit that my wife, my mother, or my sisters were not as capable of exercising the ballot as I am.”

  “The so-called elevation of woman in politics means instead her degradation.”

  “The working women of this country should have the same right accorded to Negro chauffeurs or a Negro porter.”

  “Tennessee must place the capstone on the temple of justice by becoming the 36th state.”

  The luncheon hour came and went and stomachs began to growl; the delegates got a bit fidgety. The Suffs noticed and kicked into action. They’d already bought sandwiches and iced tea to feed the hungry legislators, keep them from adjourning, and hold them for a vote. But the house sergeant at arms, under strict orders from the Speaker to allow no unauthorized person onto the floor, refused to permit the Suffs to distribute the food or even allow the pages to do it. The sandwiches sat uneaten, and the hungry legislators grew grouchier.

  At some point between a speaker offering a tribute to the glories of womanhood and an orator launching another tirade against Mrs. Catt and The Woman’s Bible, a page approached the desk of delegate Charles Wesley Brooks, Democrat from Carroll County, and slipped him a telegram. Brooks read it quickly and the color drained from his face. He sprang out of his chair and made his way to Joe Hanover. Brooks was in the ratification camp.

  The note brought Brooks the awful news that his wife was seriously
ill, and her doctors were imploring him to return home. I have to go, Brooks whispered into Hanover’s ear, explaining the situation. Hanover had to wonder whether the dire warning was real, as there’d been so many fake telegrams of emergencies in the past few days. It was real, but Brooks was needed for this next vote; Hanover begged him to stay. Brooks slipped a folded train schedule from his inside jacket pocket and scanned down the tables. It was a long trip back to his home in West Tennessee. He needed to catch the next fast train.

  Sue White, Betty Gram, and Anita Pollitzer stood just behind the brass bar at the rear of the chamber, paying close attention to the speeches but also watching the delegates themselves: who was listening, who was doodling, who was walking around, who was whispering to whom. They recorded each procedural vote, and they kept closest tabs on their men, the men they’d pledged or attempted to sway, the ones they could trust, and especially the ones they could not. They noted with irritation, but also a touch of sadness, that Harry Burn of Niota was wearing a red rosebud in his lapel this morning.

  Burn was infuriating; he seemed willing to tell each side what they wanted to hear. Most recently he’d declared himself “undecided”—but he was voting with the Antis. Pollitzer noticed that Burn appeared agitated, his baby face lined with worry, his eyes betraying strain. She and Gram felt rather sorry for him; he was their age, he could have been their brother or boyfriend. He was awfully cute. He wasn’t a smooth politician, he had an endearing awkwardness about him, an almost comical earnestness.