country because the women are worthy of their men, and we plead because we are a part of the people, a part of the Government which claims to be a democracy, and in order that this country may stand clean-handed before the nations of the world.
The speech of Mrs. Whitney, analyzing the vote on the suffrage amendment which was carried in New York State the preceding November was a complete statistical refutation of the charge made by the anti-suffragists that the favorable vote was due to Socialists and pro-Germans. A letter was read from Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, saying that speaking personally and not officially he favored the submission of the amendment. Telegrams urging it were received from well-known women in the southern States and Mrs. Catt read editorials strongly favoring it from a number of southern newspapers. Mrs. George B head of the Democratic Women's National Committee, protested against the circulation in the Capitol which was being made by the "antis" of President Wilson's declaration made in 1914, "I believe this is a matter to be fought out in the individual States," because in 1916 he addressed the National Suffrage Convention in Atlantic City, saying: "I have come to fight with you ... and in the end we shall not differ as to methods."
Mrs. Dudley represented the women of the South, saying in the course of her address:
What has happened to the State's rights doctrine? Recently the Federal Constitution has been twice amended and that under a Democratic administration. While the child labor bill and eight-hour bill are not amendments, they are really open to the same objections because they impose upon a State laws to which it has not given consent. These bills were proposed in one House or both by southern Democrats; Federal prohibition was proposed in both Houses by southern Democrats and passed by the votes of others. So it appears that the theory of State's rights is only invoked when women plead at the bar of justice for that voice in their Government to which all those who submit to authority are entitled. Now, as to the negro problem. We southern women feel that the time h come to lay once and for all this old, old ghost that stalks through the halls of Congress. It is a phantom as applied to woman suffrage. In fifteen States south of the Mason and Dixon line the are over a million more white women than negro men and women combined. There are only two States in which the negro race predominates, South Carolina and Mississippi. In the former the percentage is 55.2, but there a voter must read and write and own
