Volume 5 — CHAPTER XVIII. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Mrs. Catt continued: "The speech to which we have listened has been interesting because it has seemed to be a chapter from a book that was written long ago. The week before the war began it was my privilege, sitting in the balcony of the House of Commons, to look down upon the bald head of Mr. Asquith while he made a speech against woman suffrage. 'I am unalterably opposed to woman suffrage because Great Britain is a mighty empire and it will always be necessary to defend it by military power and what do women know about war?' he asked. Three years later he humbly confessed before the world that when a nation like Great Britain goes to war, and such a war as this one, which calls for every ounce of power the nation can offer in its defense, men and women make equal sacrifices and therefore it is not a man's job but it is a man's and a woman's job and they are doing it together. So the Premier demanded woman suffrage and voted for it in the House of Commons. Remembering Mr. Asquith, I think there is hope for Mr. Bailey."
Mrs. Catt pictured eloquently the marvelous work being done by women in Great Britain in the munitions factories, the railway service, the dockyards, and also in our own and all countries; she described the heroic sacrifices of the nurses; she told how the women of Canada and New Zealand had voted for conscription and how in all countries the women were backing their men in the war. "It is declared that American women cannot carry a gun," she said. "Why that is the kind of talk we heard forty years ago and Mr. Bailey's speech is just that much behind the times.... I am sorry for any man who has stood still while the world has moved on."
Only the merest outline of this convincing address is given but before its conclusion Mr. Bailey had deliberately insulted Mrs. Catt by leaving the room. Mrs. Wadsworth, when asked if she wished her side to be heard in rebuttal, introduced Miss Charlotte E. Rowe of Yonkers, N. Y., who made a vigorous plea for saving the home, children and womanhood and declared woman suffrage would lead to Socialism. During the course of her speech she said, according to the official stenographic report: "If working girls and women in colleges will study cooking and sewing and domestic science and hygiene, or simple rules of health and how to care for the sick and the fine and beautiful art of home making, it will be much better for them and better for the country than if they spend their time parading up the avenue of a crowded city and praying that they may some day, somehow, become policemen or boiler-makers side by side with men.... I say to you that it has remained for this self-sufficient 20th century to have produced a womanhood which would stand—even a small proportion of it—in legislative halls and say that they are doing more in this great and terrible war than the men are doing.... Gentlemen, if I were a married woman and my husband was a feminist and on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November he said to me, 'Come, walk by me so as to strengthen and sustain me as I go to the polls,' I would say to him, 'Look here, Mabel, here is the key of the flat; I am going home to father.' I would advise men and women suffragists—and especially those suffragist men who need their wives to strengthen and sustain them on election day—I would advise them to go to the cellar and check over the laundry."
This last hearing on the Federal Suffrage Amendment closed on January 7 and the following day the committee made a favorable report to the House of Representatives. By consent of the Committee on Rules the 10th was set for the debate and vote and on that day the House by a two-thirds majority voted to submit the amendment to the State Legislatures.