by Elaine Weiss
This was the fieldwork of democracy, the tough, sweaty, unglamorous enterprise of retail politics. Before the advent of radio or television broadcasting, this was how candidates won elections. But it was also how, over the years, the suffragists had slowly, methodically, built a constituency for change: selling their radical concept, door-to-door, town-to-town. Pageants and parades were fun, they caught public attention and energized the troops, but the real work was always accomplished on the ground: canvasses and petition campaigns, small meetings and personal pleas, knocking on doors.
Only after that sort of cultivation had been accomplished, only when the constituency for woman suffrage had expanded from a few women around a tea table to millions around the country, reached critical mass, and attained a robust voice, could the suffrage argument be advanced: carried into politicians’ offices, subsequently hoisted onto legislative dockets, and finally presented as a fundamental alteration to the national Constitution. Women had done all that, over the span of decades, but now it was back into the field for the final stage, with both Suffs and Antis scrambling for advantage, with the clock ticking. Such was the natural physiology of change within a democracy, and the process was now being put to a stress test in the fields of Tennessee.
* * *
Mr. Crump wanted women to vote, he wanted the amendment ratified, and Mr. Crump gave the orders in Memphis. Carrie Catt was very pleased; it made her work in the city much easier.
Edward Hull Crump ran the Democratic Party machine in Shelby County, which includes Memphis. He was forty-five years old, with cup-handle ears that sprang out from his head, wavy red hair, a deeply cleft chin, and bushy eyebrows over intense eyes. “Scrappy” was the word that best described him. He grew up poor, married well, used his native smarts to make money and climb the political ladder quickly; he was elected mayor of Memphis, Tennessee’s largest city, in 1909 when he was just thirty-five years old. He ran the city like a business, with an efficient administration and customer service approach, keeping a tight budget while improving public services. But when Crump repeatedly refused to enforce the state’s prohibition laws, knowing the liquor ban would harm his city’s lucrative industry of saloons, gambling parlors, and music joints, the temperance-inclined governor and legislature passed a special “Ouster Law” kicking him out of office. His removal didn’t diminish his political influence; he simply shifted his center of power to Shelby County and ruled the city from there.
Crump was a political boss with progressive leanings, or at least he embraced those progressive measures that could enhance his power. Crump couldn’t give a speech to save his life, but he had a genius for organization and an ability to work with different constituencies: give something, get something, everybody wins.
Memphis was home to the largest black community in the state, and Crump considered this group a valuable—and voting—constituency with whom he forged alliances. He was a traditional segregationist, but when the black community requested a city park of their own (they were forbidden to enter the other, grander parks in town under Jim Crow statutes), Crump listened and obliged. In return he expected, or demanded, black men’s support at the polls. He made it easy: his organization paid the poll taxes for many black men and got them to the voting booths; they voted the Crump organization ticket; he, in turn, improved their neighborhoods. Black community leaders such as businessman Robert Church, Jr. (brother of suffragist and civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell), often found Crump a helpful ally. It was, as later politicians would describe it, a win-win transaction. A large new bloc of voters, white women and black women, was enticing to Crump. It didn’t hurt that Mrs. Crump was a strong suffragist, too.
Was the arm-twisting, horse-trading, brutal, and bruising political world of Boss Crump the paradigm of democracy Carrie Catt had promised to American women? No. But it was the real world of politics. Women’s entry might sanitize, elevate, and improve it—might—but women must at least take part. And, as she’d learned through many a campaign, especially dealing with Tammany Hall in New York: if the local political machine could be harnessed for your good, if it could help carry women toward enfranchisement, be willing to take the ride. When Carrie Catt arrived in Memphis, she was happy for Boss Crump’s support.
Catt enjoyed a warm welcome to the city when her train arrived in the early morning. At a noontime Chamber of Commerce luncheon, more than 150 women and men, leaders of the city’s suffrage establishment, as well as members of the political and civic elite, gave her a long, glassware-rattling ovation. Even more significant, the local politicians were lining up solidly behind ratification, with no apparent qualms or equivocations. She’d barely had to nudge; they were already on her side. It was remarkable. It was due to Mr. Crump.
To the suffragists’ delight, Crump was taking strong measures to guarantee that the Shelby County Democrats would not only vote as a bloc, but also take the lead in promoting ratification in the legislature. He’d persuaded Thomas Riddick, a respected Memphis attorney, to run for one of the vacant legislative seats to serve in the special session. Political observers were shocked: “Million Dollar” Riddick (he had a very lucrative private practice) had often been mentioned as a candidate for governor, congressman, or U.S. senator, but not for a lowly seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives. But when it was revealed that Boss Crump would serve as Riddick’s campaign manager, it all made sense. Crump was placing Riddick in the special session to be his surrogate, keep the Memphis/Shelby delegation in line, and guide ratification efforts. For the Suffs, it was a happy prospect.
* * *
While Carrie Catt was in Memphis, Josephine Pearson was in a state of ecstatic anticipation. Fulfilling the dreams of her parents, she was marshaling the forces of good to defend southern and Christian civilization against the barbarians at the gates, against Gog and Magog, against . . . Mrs. Catt and the suffragists. It was a divine mission that suited her perfectly.
First, Pearson blew the trumpet, sending out a call for sympathetic helpers to join the Anti effort. She and her colleagues made a broad and clever appeal: Whether you oppose woman suffrage on principle, or approve of suffrage but oppose the federal amendment and Washington trampling on states’ rights, we welcome you. If you support ratification of the federal amendment but believe Tennessee legislators would be violating their oaths of office if they voted on ratification in the special session, join us. Building a bigger tent for a wider coalition was a smart move, and the response was enthusiastic. Volunteers quickly formed committees to attend to every task: letters typed and copied, literature printed and distributed, envelopes stuffed and licked, the headquarters staffed and decorated, teas and receptions prepared. The cream of Nashville society, women from all the best families, were Pearson’s eager recruits, working selflessly in shifts through the day and evening, under her command.
Pearson and the other executive officers of the Tennessee division of the Southern Women’s Rejection League, together with Nina Pinckard and Charlotte Rowe, also devised a robust political program. Rowe would venture out to various Tennessee cities to stoke Anti sentiment in public speeches and private meetings. Pinckard would continue to hammer at the presidential candidates and Governor Roberts. Every Tennessee legislator would be contacted, made painfully aware of his legal and moral obligations to defeat ratification. Dozens of distinguished women from the states that had already rejected the amendment were invited to Nashville, as well as national leaders of the Anti movement. And a delegation of Tennessee women, led by Pearson’s colleague Queenie Washington, was prepared to leave for a meeting with James Cox in Dayton the minute he signaled for them to come. He’d said that a meeting would, of course, be granted, but no specific date had yet been set. Josephine Pearson was delighted to give the full measure of her bountiful intellectual and spiritual gifts to these efforts. She took to wearing a little bouquet of three red silk roses on her bosom, signifying her leadership status.
* * *
Anita Pollitzer continued her manhunt through the Appalachian foothills of East Tennessee, Republican politicos in her sights. Unless she could bring these “big men” around, the pledges she wrangled from their legislative underlings wouldn’t be worth much. She kept a list of important men to see in each town, adding to it every day as those men suggested others. She compiled two notebooks filled with names and notes on “who could get to whom” as she stalked the local movers and shakers and pounced on them in their lairs.
When she’d stepped off the train in Athens, the McMinn County seat, she’d headed for the courthouse, the political nerve center of the region. McMinn was Republican territory, as during the War of Secession the county had voted, narrowly, to remain in the Union. (Families and friends were torn apart as the county sent twelve units of its men to fight for the Union and eight units to defend the Confederacy.) Pollitzer visited the Republican county chairman, who sketched for her the personal and professional ties among the party men of McMinn, directing her to see some of the more pivotal players. She compiled a checklist—see Luther, Boyer, Burn, and Candler—and went after them, one by one. Senator Herschel Candler was the most essential, antisuffrage and influential, a bad combination, but she learned he was out of town. She hired a car to take her into the hills to see Emerson Luther, the Republican house floor leader, and came away with his pledge. She was told that delegate C. Fulton Boyer was not only too old and stubborn and Anti to argue with, but also untrustworthy. “That is polite for scoundrel,” she explained to Paul, and decided not to bother finding him. That left Harry Burn.
At twenty-four years old, freshman representative Harry Burn was the youngest member of the legislature. He was, according to everyone Pollitzer spoke to, earnest and hardworking, well liked by his constituents and his colleagues in the statehouse. He lived on his family’s land in the hill town of Niota, north and a little west of Athens, supporting his widowed mother and two younger siblings. He was a hometown boy making good. He was holding down jobs as a Southern Railway agent and at a local bank while reading law at night under the tutelage of a senior attorney; everyone said he had the potential to go far. At this stage he had little clout in the legislature, and he was up for reelection in the fall, but Miss Paul thought he was worth pursuing. He’d voted for presidential suffrage last year, but he hadn’t yet revealed his stand on ratification.
But getting to Burn was not going to be easy. Niota was a tiny town—population 467—nestled between wooded ridges. It was less than ten miles from Athens, and the local train did stop there, but the timetable wouldn’t allow Pollitzer to get there in a timely fashion, and the Burn place was a long climb from the depot. She couldn’t afford to hire another car and driver; it wasn’t going to work. Pollitzer did the next best thing: she asked the helpful Republican county chairman to telephone Burn. Anyhow, the party chief would wield more clout with the young legislator.
Oh sure, Harry will be with you, the party chairman assured Pollitzer. Then why was he still claiming to be “uncommitted” in all the legislative polls? she asked. Oh well, Harry’s up for reelection, you know, he’s got to be careful. He needs to play things close to the vest. Pollitzer pressed the chairman to place the call. When the operator at central put him through, Harry came to the phone.
Lady here wants to know if you’ll be voting to ratify, Harry—the chairman spoke into the cup of the phone’s mouthpiece. There were muffled words coming from Burn into the chairman’s earpiece, but Pollitzer couldn’t make them out. The conversation was brief. The chairman returned the elongated bell of the receiver into its cradle. Harry will be all right, he told her.
Harry T. Burn was marked as pledged to ratify, and Pollitzer moved on to Knoxville.
* * *
Carrie Catt barely had time to swallow some dinner before delivering another speech at the suffrage rally in Memphis’s Court Avenue Presbyterian Church. She was a talented speaker, able to combine cold logic and warm humor, mixing idealism with how-to practicality. But in truth, the woman renowned around the world for her oratory gifts was, even after decades on the podium, in agony whenever she spoke. She habitually calmed her nerves by clasping and unclasping her hands behind her back, twiddling her fingers, gnashing her thumbs. Only those sitting behind could ever see; her audiences never knew. Still, Catt was always happiest on the stump, out and doing, revving up the faithful, converting the doubtful, and she felt buoyed by this reception in Memphis. The church was packed.
In conjunction with Catt’s tour, mass meetings, rallies, and petition drives were also being launched by the League of Women Voters in the state’s smaller centers—Tullahoma, Murfreesboro, Mountain City—to bring public pressure to bear upon the legislature. The goal was to make it impossible for any member of the General Assembly to elude the suffragists’ grasp as the time of decision neared. In the hours between her speeches, in every city and town on her tour, Catt met privately with the district chairwomen of the local branch of the League of Women Voters to scrutinize the legislative polling data they’d collected. During these meetings with her suffrage fieldworkers, Catt probed beyond the bare numbers to ask blunt questions. In every meeting she asked, “Are there any known bribable legislators from your district?”
There was rarely a response of complete silence. Often the entire group shouted out a name in unison, as the shady reputation of a certain legislator was so well-known. Catt posed the same question to the local political leaders, the men behind the scenes, with whom she met privately in each city. The men usually reacted to the query with a startled look of suspicion, which they quickly masked with a blank expression, followed by what Catt called a “canny determination” not to reveal any names. Catt didn’t let them off the hook: “Further discussion usually secured the names.”
Using secret marks on the polling list, Catt corroborated the legislator’s name with other reliable people. These suspect lawmakers were not counted in Catt’s private tally of likely votes for ratification, even if they’d signed a pledge to do so. They were liable to fall under the sway of a generous Anti lobbyist. Catt kept two sets of books, so to speak: the accounting she gave to the press, which assumed every pledge was sound, and the real one, which took a more jaundiced, realistic view of lawmakers’ promises.
As Catt and her entourage moved from city to city, she was alarmed to notice more secret marks accumulating next to various delegates’ names and the numbers on the Suffs’ pledge tallies softening. In consulting with the local suffragists and party politicians, she noticed a common theme emerging: the “violation of oath” issue had taken hold, despite all the legal and practical arguments to the contrary. The opinions of former U.S. Supreme Court justice Charles Evans Hughes, the U.S. and Tennessee attorney generals, and all the other big legal names didn’t seem to make much of a dent in the opposition. If anything, more Tennessee legislators seemed to be getting spooked by the oath issue.
This violation of oath business was simply a smoke screen being used by those who oppose ratification at heart, Catt kept insisting to her audiences and to the press. It was a subterfuge, an excuse. To counter the spreading oath menace, Catt sent orders to Nashville to launch a broader effort to refute the Anti claims. Squads of suffrage friends, both women and men, visited the law offices of respected attorneys in their districts, urging them to endorse the favorable legal opinions already in hand or write one of their own. The Suffs built a healthy roster of notable attorneys supporting ratification; but the Antis were recruiting their own all-star team of lawyers to take their side.
* * *
Nina Pinckard and Charlotte Rowe were ushered into the plush offices of some of Nashville’s finest law firms, escorted by a staff member of the American Constitutional League. They carried introductions not only from prominent local attorneys such as John Vertrees and several Vanderbilt University law professors, but also from Charles S. Fairchild and Everett Pepperrell Wheeler at Constitutional
League headquarters in New York. Both Fairchild and Wheeler were prominent corporate lawyers and veterans of the male antisuffrage movement. Both men had impressive résumés and were highly respected in legal circles: Wheeler a leader of the civil service reform movement and a founder of the American Bar Association; Fairchild known for his successful work for banking and railroad clients. They brought their legal skills into the suffrage fight through the Constitutional League, which they’d launched after the Antis’ embarrassing defeat in the 1917 New York suffrage referendum. They both possessed nimble legal minds, which they devoted to developing novel attacks on the federal amendment and now on maneuvers to prevent, or even reverse, ratification.
The Antis’ legal assault was assisted by a new ally: on the very day that Mrs. Catt began her speaking tour, the Chattanooga Times published the opinion of Foster V. Brown, one of that city’s most distinguished lawyers—a former U.S. congressman and attorney general—contending that sitting Tennessee legislators would indeed be violating their oath of office by voting on ratification in the special session. That Brown was known as a champion of woman suffrage and supporter of the federal amendment made the opinion all the more potent and, for the Suffs, more damaging. The Antis quickly printed leaflets featuring Brown’s statement and circulated them around the state, handy ammunition for the Anti delegation visiting Nashville’s top lawyers. The Anti ambassadors were able to sway enough of those lawyers that within days, a Tennessee Constitutional League was formed. The Nashville lawyers and businessmen organizing the Constitutional League—several of whose wives were active Antis—then enlarged the organization by contacting their colleagues in other cities and distributing enrollment blanks around the state. The Tennessee Constitutional League, comprising both Democrats and Republicans, with John Vertrees heading the board of directors, vowed to protect “the letter and spirit of our constitution from the attacks of its enemies.”
