The Woman's Hour

by Elaine Weiss

  They found a suitable replacement: Joe Hanover. He was experienced, well liked, politically savvy, and devoted to suffrage. Carrie Catt heartily approved, as she had confidence that Hanover was well equipped to execute the Suffs’ ratification strategy. By breakfast time on Friday, Hanover was the new house ratification floor leader. Have pity on good ol’ Joe, his friends moaned, everyone knows the stiffest battle is going to be in the house. But the senate had to be won first.

  Exhausted and demoralized, the Woman’s Party staff in Tennessee had been looking forward to having their own commander provide leadership rather than Mrs. Catt, but Alice Paul was still in D.C., a victim of bad cash flow. But as much as Sue White yearned for Miss Paul to march into Nashville and relieve her of the awful responsibility of directing the party’s role in this definitive fight, she also knew, deep down, that it might be best that Miss Paul stay away.

  A harsh sentiment had arisen among many of the legislators against all outsiders, the Woman’s Party in particular. The Betty Gram incident didn’t help; both the Antis and the Tennessee Suffs were still angry about Gram’s “scene” with Seth Walker. Miss Paul wouldn’t care a fig about all that, she’d stared down tougher opponents and had no desire to do the polite thing rather than the right thing, but her presence in the city would be a distraction. More than a distraction: a gift to the Antis. They were already having a field day with Mrs. Catt; imagine what diabolical fun they could have with Miss Paul.

  Sue White willed herself to be calm and brave and focused. She wasn’t a little orphan anymore, feeling abandoned, having to make her own way. She was a confident, competent woman, and she knew what to do. Accent the positive: this proved Miss Paul’s deep trust in her leadership abilities. She’d have to live up to that trust. She pinned a nosegay of purple, white, and gold asters to her open collar (those were the new special Woman’s Party floral badges) and straightened her prison pin. Miss Paul wasn’t coming to Nashville, and Miss Sue must lead the troops.

  Josephine Pearson also willed herself to remain calm and collected. It wasn’t easy for her; she was easily provoked. Her temper, when triggered by what she considered a moral outrage, expressed itself in emotional outbursts that could be embarrassing. “If I can get Josephine Pearson mad, we will win,” Kate Warner boasted to another suffragist in the hallway of the Hermitage. Warner had witnessed a few of these episodes over the years. Pearson heard the boast and refused to give Warner such satisfaction. Whenever events in Nashville disturbed her, Pearson would lock herself in her seventh-floor room “for a spell” until the bubbling anger subsided and she regained her composure. Then President General Pearson would return to duty.

  * * *

  On Friday morning a throng of Suffs and Antis, in full floral regalia, pushed through the doors of the senate gallery, scrambling and shouldering one another to grab a good seat. In an impressive display of political symbolism, the pro-ratification senators had invited prominent Tennessee suffrage women to sit beside them at their desks, as guests, but also as future partners in the governing process. They were in for quite a show.

  Andrew Todd gaveled the senate to order, and Estes Gwinn delivered the majority report of the Constitutional Amendments Committee. The report, hammered out in the early morning hours, was remarkably strong and unequivocal, even embellished by some rhetorical flourishes.

  The committee “is of the opinion that the present Legislature has both a legal and moral right to ratify the proposed resolution,” the report said, detailing the legal rationales for this judgment. “Its adoption is as certain as the recurrence of the seasons. . . .

  “National woman’s suffrage by Federal amendment is at hand,” the senators wrote, “it may be delayed, but it cannot be defeated; and we covet for Tennessee the signal honor of being the 36th and last state necessary to consummate this great reform.” Cheers from Suffs in the balcony rang out as Senator Gwinn finished the report: “Fully persuaded of its justice and confident of its passage, we earnestly recommend the adoption of the resolution.” More clapping. But there was a minority report, too, written by the two members of the committee who disagreed, insisting that the senate must refuse to act upon ratification. After sparring, and the first test vote, the minority report was tabled by a comfortable margin, and the majority report was accepted by a voice vote. More Suff hoorahs.

  Ernest Haston, the Suffs’ floor leader in the senate, rose to place the ratification resolution itself before the senate for passage, but Lon McFarland jumped to his feet. “Point of order,” he yelled, and handed a written protest to the clerk, contending that the senate had no power or authority to act on the ratification resolution. Speaker Todd overruled the point of order and McFarland appealed the Speaker’s decision, but Todd’s rule was sustained by an overwhelming majority. These were the warm-up acts to the day’s drama, and there was a rustle of movement, both on the floor and above, as the chamber braced for the main attraction. Senator Herschel Candler took the floor.

  Candler was a man of the law, a husband and father, a former colonel in the army, but he felt like a lonely warrior, abandoned by his own senate colleagues and his party. They were all trying to defeat him in his crusade to prevent this abomination of woman suffrage from infecting the entire nation. He glanced around the chamber to see many of his colleagues sitting with women lobbyists at their elbows, sharing their desks, whispering in their ears: coarse, political women who should be at home, but instead they were invading the senate sanctum. A few of his fellow senators had political bosses sitting beside them, keeping them on a leash, making sure they voted the way they were told. It sickened him. He considered himself a man of patience and probity, but dammit, he was not going down without a fight.

  “I know of the pressure that has been exerted here,” Candler told his colleagues, “and I am humiliated to confess that southern Republicans are Republicans for revenue only.” A segment of the men in the chamber grumbled. “I know of men who a week ago were against this thing are for it today, and I know why: Many of them now have their names on the state payroll,” Candler continued, eliciting angry glares from the floor.

  “I am here representing the mothers who are at home rocking the cradle, and not representing the low-neck and high-skirt variety,” Candler said, pointing his finger at a group of suffragists, “who know not what it is to go down in the shade of the valley and bring forth children. Motherhood has no appeal to them.” Women began to hiss at Candler, and an incensed Suff in the gallery shouted down: “I have six children!”

  He didn’t give up. The federal amendment was the dawn of “petticoat politics,” Candler maintained, an era of radical feminine domination. “If there is anything I despise, it is a man who is under petticoat government!” he blasted. Men joined in the hissing.

  “You are being dictated to by an old woman down here at the Hermitage Hotel whose name is Catt. I think her husband’s name is Tom,” Candler joked lamely. “Mrs. Catt is nothing more than an anarchist.” The hissing grew louder, almost drowning out Candler’s screed. “Have you read the speech of hers before an audience in New York, when she said that she would be glad to see the day when negro men could marry white women and it is none of society’s concern? This is the kind of woman that is trying to dictate to us.” Even some of his fellow senators were hissing Candler now. “They would drag the womanhood of Tennessee down to the level of the negro woman!” Protests rained down on him from every corner of the chamber. He was undeterred. He steadied himself to make his final terrifying point.

  “Within a very few years after this amendment has passed, you will find that Congress has legislated so as to compel we people of the south to give to the negro men and women their full rights at the ballot box,” he warned in a shrill voice. “Then you will find many of your counties, now dominated by the Democrats and white people, sending up negro representatives to this house.

  “I have telegraphed to Senator Harding my unwillin
gness to violate the constitution of my state. I warn the majority in this chamber now that the next thing we know negroes will be here legislating in Tennessee as they did fifty years ago.”

  The chamber broke into a hissing, shouting, and jeering frenzy. Flushed and spent, he sat down. His colleagues were embarrassed by Candler’s outburst, the Tennessee Suffs were outraged, and even the Antis found his statements offensive—and worse—possibly damaging to their efforts. Candler had managed to insult everyone.

  Andrew Todd left the Speaker’s chair to respond. He tried to calm the room, speaking in a stern but soothing, fatherly tone: “That is the most unfortunate speech that has ever been made upon the floor of the Senate,” he lamented. “These slurs do not meet approval of the good women of Tennessee,” he chastised Candler.

  “I am convinced that there yet remains enough virtue among the womanhood of Tennessee and enough courage among the manhood of the state to see that no condition such as the Senator from McMinn has pictured would ever occur,” Todd said in rebuttal. “We won’t have negro rule. Republicans and Democrats alike would take their muskets and go to the polls to prevent it.” Todd was, unfortunately, correct about that.

  “There are no sinister influences here,” Todd said, trying to inject some humor into the tense proceedings. “Talk about petticoat government. If there is a man in this house or in the gallery who has not been under petticoat government ever since he was born, I want him to stand up. I am ready to go into petticoat government.” The Suffs clapped their hands sore for Todd. “I have always been under that kind, and I thank God for it!” Todd received an ovation as he returned to the Speaker’s chair.

  Governor Roberts now entered the chamber, and all eyes followed him as he made his way to the Speaker’s desk, sitting down next to Senator Todd. His silent presence gave the signal that he was keeping score. The Suffs applauded his appearance; the Antis viewed him with suspicion, and they noticed Roberts’s surrogate, Albert Williams, circulating among the senators aligned with the administration, reminding them of what they’d promised. Congressman Will Taylor kept an eye on his fellow Republicans while he sat at the desk of one senator known to be opposed to ratification, never leaving his side until the roll was called.

  The men of the senate felt compelled to explain themselves, to justify their positions, and for almost three hours a steady parade of wordy senators took the floor. Most rehashed the legal arguments or made the case for party obligation to ratify, but almost every speaker condemned—or, more painfully, ridiculed—Harry Candler’s vituperative remarks.

  Republican National Committee member John Houk, who’d had a bad night after Harding’s letter was revealed at the debate, stood to make a ringing speech. “There is no politics in this proposition, and there is no ‘nigger’ in this proposition,” Houk declared. “It is a proposition of right and justice.” Houk paused to accommodate the sustained applause from the gallery. “The time to split hairs is gone,” he proclaimed. “In all my life I have never heard a sound argument against giving woman the right to vote: a woman is a human being and so is entitled to a vote in the making of laws affecting her and her children.” Speaker Todd rapped his gavel to quiet the loud cheering.

  Anita Pollitzer’s favorite, Erastus Patton of Knoxville, also took after Candler: “I have never been a pie-hunting Republican,” Patton protested, taking umbrage at Candler’s insinuation that his fellow party members could be influenced by patronage. And he took exception to Candler’s allegations that woman suffrage would be ruinous to state government: “If I thought for one minute it would work to the detriment of my little girl at home, I would vote against it,” Patton vowed, “but you can’t tell me that these magnificent women are going to turn the government into anarchy.” Patton paused and then continued with a mischievous smile: “We have been accused of having petticoat government, but the Senator is mistaken there, he’s behind the times, because they don’t wear ’em anymore!” And the chamber broke into laughter. A few women blushed. Patton closed with a stirring appeal to the lawmakers to grant women their political freedom and a share in their government, ending with a rallying cry that brought all yellow-flowered spectators to their feet: “Let’s make Tennessee the Perfect 36th!”

  More senators stood to make heartfelt entreaties for ratification, including Senator C. C. Collins, who insisted on leaving his sickbed to attend the session and had to be helped to his seat, but who now rose shakily to his feet and, clinging to his desk, spoke up for ratification.

  “I am voting for ratification because suffrage is right and just, not just because it aids either party,” declared Albert Hill, upon whom the Suffs knew they could rely. “I believe that with equal suffrage we will have a better country and better government.”

  But one senator was less motivated by idealism than revenge. William Monroe was an avowed Anti; he’d opposed limited suffrage for Tennessee women the previous year and was listed as opposed to ratification, but he’d been bombarded with telegrams from Anti women in the North, specifically Connecticut, begging him not to impose woman suffrage upon their state by Tennessee’s ratification. He didn’t like Yankees telling him what to do. “Let’s put back to Connecticut what she put on us,” Monroe taunted gleefully, referring to the way that state, as well as other northern states, had readily ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments giving freed slaves civil rights and black men the vote.

  “Connecticut was one of the first to take a position upon the question of Negro voting,” Monroe explained. “Now that Connecticut took great pride in giving the south these amendments, it stands her in poor grace to say that we cannot hand back the question of woman suffrage. But I, for one, take great pleasure in so doing!” It was still and always about the Civil War, but if sour revenge brought another senator into the “aye” column for ratification, the Suffs were willing to clap for Monroe and his spiteful justification.

  Carrie Catt and Harriet Upton waited impatiently in the Hermitage for word from the senate chamber. Catt kept busy with correspondence. She’d received a report from the private eye in New York digging for information about that mystery man in the Hermitage lobby, the one who claimed to represent a newspaper syndicate, or the Republican Party, or some other fiction. He was a fake, the investigator reported: his card bore a phony name, his company did not exist, his sponsors were shady. Stay away from him, the gumshoe advised Catt, make sure no one gives him any information. Catt wasn’t surprised—she’d suspected the fellow was working for one of the corporate opponents of suffrage, one of the sinister influences—but this report just confirmed it. He wasn’t the only such actor in the Hermitage lobby, she was certain.

  It seemed long ago—but it was just last February—when Catt and Upton were so sure that they were on the verge of victory. So sure that at the NAWSA’s final convention, after Catt made her valedictory speech launching the League of Women Voters, Upton had presented her with a beautiful victory brooch, a blue sapphire, the Chief’s favorite color, surrounded by little diamonds. It was a gift of gratitude from suffragists across the country, and even schoolchildren had contributed their nickels and dimes to honor Mrs. Catt. The brooch would complement her ratification dress so well, and on that evening everyone had expected ratification to be completed within days. Catt was immensely touched by the gift, but she refused to wear the brooch until ratification was actually won. Here they were, six months later, marooned in a stifling room in strife-torn Nashville, still waiting for ratification. Upton longed for nothing so much as to see that brooch on Mrs. Catt’s bosom.

  There was also anxious waiting within the Woman’s Party’s town house in Washington as Alice Paul and her staff awaited bulletins from their colleagues in Nashville. “We are waiting, as women have had to wait thru all these ages, as patiently as possible for the results of the vote,” Paul’s secretary wrote that morning. “Our helplessness when we reach the final consummation of a piece of work, where we h
ave to depend upon the judgment of men for the final word, is maddening even though it is an age-long helplessness.”

  * * *

  It was well past lunchtime when the ratification resolution finally came to a vote in the senate. The roll call moved swiftly: “Bradley”—aye. “Burkhaiter”—aye. “Caldwell”—aye. “Candler”—no. One senator walked out of the chamber to avoid voting. Lon McFarland and two other senators abstained. An electric tension vibrated through the chamber as the “aye” votes climbed toward seventeen, the majority threshold needed to ratify in the thirty-three-member senate. “Houk”—aye was number fourteen on Sue White’s tally sheet. “Long”—aye was number fifteen on Catherine Kenny’s recording list. The Antis tried to raise a small ruckus of disapproval as the ayes mounted, and several men they’d been counting on buckled “under the lash of the bosses,” as they put it, and deserted them. “McMahan”—aye was number sixteen, and the clamor in the galleries grew louder, with everyone wearing yellow up on their feet. “Matthews”—aye, and as the seventeenth vote in favor was cast, the gallery exploded in cheers and cries, waving of yellow banners, and deafening applause. The tumultuous demonstration continued, forcing a temporary suspension of the roll call.

  Speaker Todd banged his gavel repeatedly, but the Suffs were still making so much noise that few people could hear the clerk continuing the roll or hear the senators’ replies. The Suffs didn’t care, they knew they’d won the senate. When the clerk finally shouted, in a hoarse bark, the final tally of twenty-five voting aye, four nay, one absent, and three not voting, the Suffs boomed again, and Todd had to call upon the sergeant at arms to subdue the rumpus. Catt and Upton could hear the cheers wafting up toward the hotel window.