Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/637

 TENNESSEE 621 Republican National Committee, Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, vice-chairman of its executive committee, came to assist. Urged by President Wilson, Governor Cox, George White, chairman of the National Democratic Committee, and Senator Pat Harrison, its chairman of publicity and speakers, U. S. Senator McKellar came with his valuable help. Miss Edna A. Beveridge of Maryland and Mrs. Lydia Holmes, president of the Louisiana Suffrage Association, came to assist Mrs. Catt. Miss Sue White, Tennessee chairman of the National Woman's Party, assisted by Mesdames L. Crozier French, Walter Jackson, Frank Phillips, Miss Anita Pollitzer, Miss Betty Grim, Parley P. Christensen and others, also opened headquarters and worked for ratification. Since there were so many committees at work it was decided to appoint a general chairman and Miss Charl Williams was the wise choice. From the time the special session was called anti-suffragists gathered in Nashville from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, many of them paid workers. Everett P. Wheeler, a New York lawyer, president of a so-called American Constitutional League, formerly the Men's Anti-Suffrage Association, came and formed a branch composed of men prominent politically, who used every means known to influence legislation ; sent speakers into the districts of friendly legislators, promised rewards, used threats, and charges of bribery were so insistent that Judge D. B. DeBow ordered a grand jury investigation. There was no depth to which some of the men trying to defeat woman suffrage did not descend. 1 Mrs. James S. Pinckard of Alabama, president of the Southern Women's Rejection League; Miss Josephine Pearson, its Ten- nessee president; Miss Mary G. Kilbreth, president of the 1 After Mrs. Catt returned to New York she said: "Never in the history of politics has there been such a nefarious lobby a 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 yean I worked for suffrage. I was flooded with anonymous letters, vulgar, ignorant, insane. Strange men and groups of men sprang up, men we bad 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 window* 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 teen it sent into oblivion."