Note 175 — TENNESSEE. PART II[169]

After Mrs. Catt returned to New York she said: "Never in the history of politics has there been such a nefarious lobby as labored to block the ratification in Nashville. In the short time that I spent in the capital I was more maligned, more lied about, than in the thirty previous years I worked for suffrage. I was flooded with anonymous letters, vulgar, ignorant, insane. Strange men and groups of men sprang up, men we had never met before in the battle. Who were they? We were told, this is the railroad lobby, this is the steel lobby, these are the manufacturers' lobbyists, this is the remnant of the old whiskey ring. Even tricksters from the U. S. Revenue Service were there operating against us, until the President of the United States called them off.... They appropriated our telegrams, tapped our telephones, listened outside our windows and transoms. They attacked our private and public lives. I had heard of the 'invisible government.' Well, I have seen it work and I have seen it sent into oblivion."