Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/791

 rately they would make some great demand for political equality with Protestants but there is no record that they did. I find that the reason why our country became so liberal to them was not because there was any demand on their part and not because there was any special advocacy of their enfranchisement by statesmen. It was due to the fact that in the Revolution, Great Britain, having difficulty with the American colonies on the south side of the St. Lawrence River, did as every belligerent country does and tried to hold Canada by granting her favors. In order to make the Canadian colonies secure against revolution the British Parliament, which had previously disfranchised the Catholics and the Jews, now extended a vote to them. The American Constitution makers could not do less than Great Britain had done, and so in every one of the thirteen States they were guaranteed political equality with Protestants.

The next great movement was the elimination of the land qualification and on this we find that history is practically silent. In Connecticut and Rhode Island a small petition was presented to the Assembly asking for its removal. In New York in the constitutional convention of 1821 when some members advocated its removal others asked, “Where is the demand? Who wants to vote that has no land?” The answer was that there had been some meetings in New York in behalf of removing this qualification. No one of them had seen such a meeting but some members had heard that a few had been held in the central districts of the State. This constitutes the entire demand that has been made by the men of our country for the vote.

In contrast we may ask what have women done? Again I may say that New York is a fair example because it is the largest of the States in population and has the second city in size in the world and occupies perhaps the most important position in any land in which a suffrage referendum has been taken. Women held during the six months prior to the election in 1915, 10,300 meetings. They printed and circulated 7,500,000 leaflets or three-and-a-half for every voter. These leaflets weighed more than twenty tons. They had 770 treasuries in the State among the different groups doing suffrage work and every bookkeeper except two was a volunteer. Women by the thousands contributed to the funds of that campaign, in one group 12,000 public school teachers. On election day 6,330 women watched at the polls from 5:45 in the morning until after the vote was counted. I was on duty myself from 5:30 until midnight. There were 2,500 campaign officers in the State who gave their time without pay. The publicity features were more numerous and unique than any campaign of men or women had ever had. They culminated in a parade in New York City which was organized without any effort to secure women outside the city to participate in it, yet 20,000 marched through Fifth Avenue to give some idea of the size of their demand for the vote.

What was the result? If we take the last announcement from the board of elections the suffrage amendment received 535,000 votes—2,000 more than the total vote of the nine States where women now have suffrage through a referendum. It was not submitted in Wyoming, Utah or Illinois. Yet New York suffragists did not win because the opponents outvoted them. How did this happen? Why did not such evidence of a demand win the vote? Because the unscrupulous men of the State worked and voted against woman suffrage, aided and abetted by the weakminded and illiterate, who are permitted a vote in New York. In Rochester the male inmates of the almshouse and rescue home were taken out to vote against the amendment. Men too drunk to sign their own names voted all over the State, for drunkards may vote in New York. In many of the polling places the women watchers reported that throughout the entire day not one came to vote who did not have to be assisted; they did not know enough to cast their own vote.

Those are some of the conditions women must overcome in a referendum, One can eventually be carried even in New York but we believe we have made all the sacrifices which a just Government ought to expect of us. Even the Federal Amendment is difficult enough, with the ratification of 36 Legislatures required, but we may at least appeal to a higher class of men. We were obliged to make our campaign in twenty-four different languages It is too unfair and humiliating treatment of American women to compel