Volume 5 — CHAPTER XIV. (continued 2)
Reading edition
No one who lives, who ever lived, who ever will live understands or really accepts and believes in a republic which denies to women the right of consent by their ballots to that government. Such a position is unthinkable and the time has come when an aristocracy of sex must give place to a real republic or the absurdity of the position, as it exists, will make us the laughing stock of the world. Let us either stop our pretence before the nations of the earth of being a republic and having "equality before the law" or else let us become the republic that we pretend to be.
This concluded the hearing for the suffrage associations and as the "antis" also had asked for one they occupied the afternoon. Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, the president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, said in opening the discussion: "We begin to hear from all over the country a very decided demand for help. The women are beginning to be frightened. They are frightened at exactly the same sort of thing by which the suffragists try to frighten you men—noise—so that in many States women are beginning to organize for the first time against suffrage. We are here today rather against our wishes. We did not want to bother you men again because the matter has been pretty well settled for this session of Congress at least. But the suffragists had demanded a hearing of you gentlemen, and so we asked you to hear us, and you have very courteously extended to us that privilege. We are here to represent the majority of women still quiet but not going to be quiet very much longer...." Mrs. Dodge made an analysis of the number of enfranchised women to show that the parties had nothing to fear and said in closing: "I wish to say that the suffragists who make these threats are not representing the women of the country. It is the women of the country whom we try to represent and we have tried for several years against the noisy, insistent and persistent demands of a group."
The other women speakers were Mrs. Henry White, member of the executive committee of the Massachusetts Association; Miss Alice Hill Chittenden, president of the New York Association; Miss Marjorie Dorman, secretary of the Women Wage-earners' Anti-Suffrage League of New York City[97]; Mrs. O. D. Oliphant of New Jersey, who was not able to reach Washington but whose paper on Feminism was put into the report; Miss Minnie Bronson, secretary of the National Association. Miss Bronson's address, which was largely statistical, called out many questions from the suffrage members of the committee. She said the association had approximately 100,000 members.[98]
The first of the men speakers against the amendment was J.N. Matthews (N. J.) who began by saying it would be difficult for him to put aside his Democratic partisanship even for a moment. He was soon involved in a wrangle with the committee which occupied over half of the space filled by his speech in the report. This was true also of the speech of Representative Thomas J. Heflin (Ala.), which ended with a long poem entitled The Only Regeneration, beginning: "There's no earthly use in prating of eugenics' saving grace." Mrs. Dodge had scored the suffragists for having more than one association but delegates from three of the "antis" were present at this hearing, the Guidon Society of New York City, represented by a New York lawyer, John R. Don Passos, who stated that he represented also the Man Suffrage Association. He filed a "brief" of its president, Everett P. Wheeler, a Democratic New York lawyer, entitled Home Rule. As was the case with the other men speakers most of his time was taken up by the "heckling" of the committee and his answers. In the latter he said that woman suffrage sooner or later would have a tendency to destroy the home, hurt the social and moral standard of women and "convert them into beasts."
Dr. Mary Walker spoke ten minutes at her own request, scoring the suffragists and saying that women already had the right to vote under the National Constitution. Mrs. Evans closed the hearing.