Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/444

learning who they were, persuaded the doorkeeper to admit them, introduced them herself to the chairman of the committee, and placed them in good seats near the front, where they certainly heard more about the facts of equal suffrage than they ever did before.^[1]

Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge and Miss Bissell addressed the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage, and Mr. Thomas Russell, Mrs. A. J. George, Miss Emily Bissell and Mrs. Rossiter Johnson addressed the House Judiciary Committee. In each case they secured the last word, to which they were not entitled either by equity or custom, by asking to speak at the conclusion of the suffrage hearing. It was trying to have to listen to egregious misstatements of fact, and to hear the Woman's Journal audaciously cited as authority for them, without a chance to reply.

The time for these hearings belonged exclusively to the suffrage delegates, the chairmen of the two congressional committees stating that they would appoint some oth@r day for the "remonstrants." The delegates, however, declaring that they had no objections, the "antis" were permitted to read their papers at the close of the suffrage hearing, thus having the benefit of the large audiences, but furnishing a vast amount of amusement to the suffragists.^[2]

The Woman's Journal said in its perfectly fair description:

The chairman of the House Committee asked Mrs. A. J. George of Massachusetts, who conducted the hearing for the "antis," a number of questions that she could not answer, and Thomas Russell of that State had to prompt her repeatedly. The chairman would ask a question; Mrs. George would look nonplussed; Mr. Russell would lean over and whisper, "Say yes," and she would answer aloud "Yes." The chairman would ask another question; Mr. Russell would whisper, "Say no," and Mrs. George would answer "No." This happened so often that both the audience and the committee were visibly amused, and several persons said it was Mr. Russell who was really conducting the hearing. He is a Boston lawyer who has conducted the legislative hearings for the "antis" in Massachusetts for some years.

1. That this was a mistaken courtesy was proved by subsequent events, as afterwards Mrs. Dodge came out with a card in the New York Sun denying that they were admitted through the intervention of Miss Anthony.
2. In the official Senate report of the hearing the arguments of the suffragists filled forty pages; those of the "antis" five pages. They consisted of brief papers by Mrs. Dodge and Miss Bissell. The former took the ground that the Congress should leave this matter to be decided by the States; that women are not physically qualified to use the ballot; and that its use by them would render "domestic tranquillity" a byword among the people. Miss Bissell began by saying, "It is not the tyranny but the chivalry of men that we have to fear," and opposed the suffrage principally because the majority of women do not want it, saying, "I have never yet been so situated that I could see where a vote could help me. If I felt that it would, I might become a suffragist perhaps."