598
HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
Our amendment was submitted June 4, 1919, and to-day, eight months and eight days later, it has been ratified by thirty-one States. No other amendment made such a record but the time is not the significant part of the story. Of the thirty-one ratifications twentyfour have taken place in special sessions. These mean extra cost to the State, opportunity for other legislation and the chance of political intrigue for or against the Governor who calls them. These obstacles have been difficult to overcome, far more difficult than most of you will ever know, and in a few instances well-nigh insurmountable, but the point to emphasize to-day is that they-were overcome. Asa whole the ratifications have moved forward in splendid triumphal procession. There have been many inspiring incidents of daring and clever moves on the part of suffragists to speed the campaign and there have been many incidents of courage, nobility of purpose and proud scorn of the pettiness of political enemies on the part of Governors, legislators and men friends. On the other hand there have been tricks, chicanery and misrepresentation, but let us forget them all. Victors can afford to be generous.
Referring to the cost of special sessions, Mrs. Catt said:
If the Governor is a Republican tell him that had it not been that two Republican Senators, Borah of Idaho and Wadsworth of New York, refused to represent their States as indicated by votes at the polls, resolutions by their Legislatures and planks in their party platforms, the suffrage amendment would have passed the 65th Congress. It then would have come into the regular sessions of forty-two Legislatures with more than thirty-six pledged to ratify and without a cent of extra cost to any State! When a Republican Governor calls an extra session in order to ratify he merely atones for the conduct of two members of his own party. They, not he, are to blame that it became necessary. If the Governor is Democratic say that had it not been for two northern Democratic Senators, Pomerene of Ohio and Hitchcock of Nebraska, who refused to represent their States on the question as indicated by their Legislatures and platforms, Congress would have sent the amendment to the 1919 Legislatures and it would have cost the States nothing. The Democratic Governor who calls a special session only makes— honorable amends for the misrepresentation of members of his own party....
We should be more than glad and grateful to-day, we should be proud—proud that our fifty-one years of organized endeavor have been clean, constructive, conscientious. Our association never resorted to lies, innuendoes, misrepresentation. It never accused its opponents of being free lovers, pro-Germans and Bolsheviki. It marched forward even when its forces were most disorganized by disaster. It always met argument with argument, honest objection with proof of error. In fifty years it never failed to send its representatives to plead our cause before every national political convention, although they went knowing that the prejudice they would
