Suffrage is Thrust Upon Us, 1917

Suffrage is Thrust Upon Us

Former Senator Root Spoke at Mass Meeting Held in Utica

Norwich Sun, September 25, 1917

 

Elihu Root made known his opposition to woman suffrage in emphatic utterances at a mass meeting here last night.  Mr. Root presided presenting Mrs. James Wadsworth, Jr., president of the National Association Opposed to woman Suffrage and Mrs. Grace Duffield Goodwin of Connecticut.

 

Mr. Root declared it "unfortunate that the subject should be thrust upon us now at a time when all that care for their country require all their energy and strength and enthusiasm and heart and soul for the service of their country in the peril that confronts it [i.e., World War I].  I think it unfortunate that we should be compelled to turn aside from our efforts toward making our country victorious over that cruel, brutal and arrogant enemy which does not hesitate to murder women and children and which seeks to destroy the liberties of the world, in order to have controversy over the question of woman suffrage.  But the subject is thrust upon us.  It cannot be allowed to go by default and these women who are not seeking a place in politics, who love their homes and have high ideas of womanhood, have buckled on the armor of discussion and are determined that the question shall not go by default."

 

"I could not come  here and introduce them to you if I did not sympathize with their views.  I am opposed to the granting of suffrage to women.  I formed an unfavorable opinion of the project many years ago and time, far from changing my opinion, has but confirmed it.  I am opposed to it because I think it would be sad for the government of the country, for the state and bad for women."

 

Mrs. Wadsworth said she became actively interested because she believed the government is threatened with a serious illness--feminization--and decided something must be done to stop it....

 

 

 

Senator Elihu Root

 

National Interest in Anti-Suffrage Mass Meeting

Utica, NY Sunday Tribune, Sept. 23, 1917

 

That the anti-suffrage mass meeting at the Colonial Theater tomorrow night [Utica, Oneida Co., NY] will be largely attended and that its proceedings will be given attention throughout the country is a foregone conclusion.  National interest in the meeting develops from the fact that Elihu Root will preside and that he probably will restate his views on the suffrage question.  Statements attributed to Mr. Root after his return from Russia were seized upon by suffragists as evidence that he had modified, if not abandoned, his expressed opposition to woman suffrage.  He subsequently declared that his position was unchanged and tomorrow night, it is expected he will make a further statement on the matter.

 

The speakers at the meeting tomorrow night will be Mrs. James W. Wadworth, Jr., wife of the senior United States Senator from New York State, the present head of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, and Mrs. Grace Duffield Goodwin, of Connecticut, one of the most prominent advocates of the anti-suffrage cause.

 

Mrs. Wadsworth is taking a very active part in the anti-suffrage campaign.  In an interview published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine just before the vote in Maine, when suffrage was overwhelmingly defeated, she expressed clearly and forcibly her view of the case against suffrage.  In part, this interview was as follows:

 

"A querulous, unreasoning insistence, an insistence that continues in and out of season, an insistence as irritating as the crying of a spoiled child, an insistence that is kept up until the desired object is attained--that, I am sorry to say, is a form of strategy to which a portion of my sex does not hesitate to descend.  For countless generations--I suppose ever since the world began--women have been using this in their private lives.  Women suffragists are now using it in public life.  Do the men want nagging injected into politics?  This fall the voters of two states, Maine and New York, must answer "Yea" or "No."

 

"The right to petition the government" she continued, "is one of the fundamental, one of the most sacred rights in a land of liberty.  It is a right guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States.  The suffragists, however, interpret this right to petition as the right to nag."

 

"Their petition to force, by an amendment to the Federal Constitution, woman suffrage upon States that have already overwhelmingly declared at the polls that they don't want it is already in Congress.  The President has given them  hearings (disgraced by impertinent interruptions and hecklings), but still they are buzzing about the White House like a swarm of gadflies, trying to fret and goad a man already harassed by the staggering problems of a great Nation in the midst of a world crisis."

 

...."Do you know that since the close of 1912 the voters of 13 states, including such big States as New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri have declared at the polls that they do not want woman suffrage, and that the voters of only two States, Nevada and Montana in 1914, have said that they want it.  All the other gains of which the suffragists have been so brazenly boasting, have been won in the State legislatures by female lobbies."

 

..."And now, as to the genuineness of the patriotism of the suffragist leaders and the sincerity of their military ardor.  Don't  forget all the suffragists who in the face of this fearful world cataclysm argued that if woman had the vote there would be no war.  Don't forget that when our ships were being sunk, our citizens massacred at sea, our rights ignored, and our national dignity spurned, not one woman prominent among the suffragists declared herself for preparedness and against peace without honor....Don't forget that Mrs. Carr in a speech in Columbus, Ohio, on May 13, 1917, long after we were at war said:  "The United States has no right to talk about making the world safe for democracy.  We had better blot the mote from our own eye before we go forth and want to blot it from the Prussian eye."...Don't forget Jeannette Rankin, the representative from Montana, who, in that solemn hour when the vote was being taken as to whether we would avenge the U-boat butcheries of our men, women, and children, whether we would take our stand with the Allies in the death struggle of democracy against militarism, stood up in the house of Representatives and quartered, "I want to stand by my county, but I cannot vote for war." and broke down and wept."....

 

"Government is a man's job.  And I have no doubt that at the coming election New York will continue with that imposing galaxy of States--Michigan, South Dakota, Ohio, North Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Maine and West Virginia--which in the last four years have voted an emphatic "no" to the cry of "Votes For Women."

 

Alice Hay Wadsworth - leader in anti-women's suffrage movement

(Mrs. James W. Wadsworth)

Courtesy of Library of Congress

 

[Compiler Note:  The 19th amendment to the US Constitution which prohibits any US citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex was first introduced in Congress in 1878.  Forty-one years later in 1919 it was passed by Congress and submitted to the states for ratification.  Ratification by the requisite number of states was achieved on August 18, 1920 and the amendment was enacted.  Subsequent challenges regarding its constitutionality were rejected by the US Supreme Court.]