Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/749

WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN PRESIDENTIAL CONVENTIONS 711 tin, Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch and Mrs. Sara Bard Field and they asked for an endorsement of the Federal Suffrage Amend- ment. The "antis" were represented by their national president, Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, and national secretary, Miss Minnie Bronson ; Miss Alice Hill Chittenden, New York State president, and Mrs. George. They asked that there should be no mention of woman suffrage. The sub-committee reported against the adoption of a suf- frage plank, the vote standing five to four Senators Lodge, Yadsworth, Oliver, and Charles Hopkins Clark, editor of the Hartford (Conn.) Courant, and former Representative Howland of Ohio opposed; Senators Borah, Sutherland and Fall and Representative Madden of Illinois in favor. The question was then taken up in the full Committee on Resolutions. Senators Borah and Smoot led a vigorous fight for a plank ; Senator Marion Butler of North Carolina headed the op- position. The strongest possible influence was brought to bear against it by the party leaders, Senators W. Murray Crane and Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts; Boies Penrose of Pennsyl- vania and James W. Wadsworth, Jr., of New York and Speaker Cannon of Illinois. Nevertheless it was carried by 26 to 21. Within a half hour defeat was again threatened when seven absent members of the committee came and asked for a reconsideration. After repeated parleys it was reconsidered and emerged as the last plank in the platform. The final vote was 35 to 11 but it was the result of a compromise, for it read : "The Republican party, re- affirming its faith in government of the people, by the people and for the people, as a measure of justice to one-half the adult people of this country, favors the extension of the suffrage to women but recognizes the right of each State to settle this question for itself"! For the first time this party declared for the doctrine of State's rights, which was the chief obstacle in the way of the Federal Amendment, the goal of the National Association for nearly fifty years. Mrs. Catt knew that it would be utterly useless to ask for a plank favoring this amendment and so she asked simply for a clear-cut endorsement of the principle of woman suffrage. Thi^ was secured, after women had been appealing to national Republi-