Ten Years of Woman Suffrage
jr., Oliver McKee
298 THE COMMONWEAL July 16, 1930 TEN YEARS OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE By OLIVER McKEE, jr. THE American woman celebrates this year her tenth birthday as a voter. Those who have led her to the...
...Even in public life when the bricks are flying thickest, the American man is not without a certain chivalry...
...The following paper summarizes the evidence available about women associated with government in elective or appointive positions...
...Many of the smaller cities have chosen women mayors...
...The hustle and scramble of ward politics, long years of humble tutelage before the knees of the boss—the knocks and cudgelings of local campaigns—these provide the training by which so many men rise to political preferment...
...So all down the line...
...Women hold office as collectors of customs and as collectors of internal revenue...
...M. A. Ferguson of Texas, both Democrats, have been elected governors, but no woman has held office so far as lieutenant-governor...
...They have held offices also as state treasurer, have been given seats in the governor's council, beside holding a varied assortment of other state offices...
...These statistics show not only that a woman can be elected, but that she can be reelected...
...Several women have held important posts in the foreign service of the Department of Commerce, a service whose main function is to help the American exporter find new markets for his products...
...Human nature is human nature...
...Connecticut did better than any other state, with twenty women in its legislature in 1929, as compared with fifteen, the year before...
...Several states have elected women sheriffs...
...Miss Beatrice Bowman, head of the Navy Nurses Corps...
...Florence E. Allen, reflected in November, 1928, for her second term ds a member of the Ohio Supreme Court, is the only'representative of her sex serving on a supreme court in the United States, while Genevieve B. Kline, also of Ohio, was appointed in 1928 associate justice of ¦ the United States Customs Court...
...Women too have donned the judicial ermine...
...The main control, nevertheless, is still in the hands of men...
...Men still monopolize, however, the two most important committees of the House: appropriations, which controls the purse strings of the nations, and ways and means, which controls taxation...
...What is true of Washington may hold true also, in some measure, in other fields of public activity...
...Louise Stanley, chief of the Bureau of Home Economics...
...They seem now to have been useless tempests, the ballot in the hands of women has neither wrought the marvels nor sown the perdition which figured in so muck oratory...
...Miss Mary tion of the changes brought about by woman's advent into politics...
...Mary Anderson, director of the Women's Bureau...
...Even Mrs...
...Pratt is on banking and currency...
...The six New England states contributed more than one-third of the total number of women legislators...
...The Republicans are heavily in the majority, Pennsylvania for the Republican senatorial nomina- 99 as compared with 42 Democrats, the other being tion...
...Ruth Pratt, now in Congress, was one of these...
...No formula is at hand for the politician by which he can predict how the women will vote on most issues...
...United States Army...
...Fifty out of sixty-three counties in Colorado have women school superintendents...
...The result may be the same...
...Five of them are Republicans and three Democrats, a division which corresponds pretty well to the relative strength in numbers of the two parties in the lower House...
...Before she resigned from the foreign service to get married she had served in the American legations in Berne and Panama...
...They have shown a special aptitude, however, for certain appointive offices, especially welfare work, such as schools and hospitals...
...Not only does a woman get treated more gently, but her sex gives her another advantage, which she may easily capitalize...
...Iowa elected its first woman member of the legislature...
...In the House women seem to have thoroughly established themselves...
...If the lady from Texas sits next to the Secretary of War at dinner, shows she enjoys his jokes, admires the way he runs his department and sympathizes with his problems, that same lady has a distinct advantage on the morrow when she turns up at the War Department to ask its head if he could not recommend another barracks for a Texas army post...
...The part that women are playing in the drive to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment is one of the most significant things about the revolt against prohibition...
...Mrs...
...And their work has been quite satisfactory...
...These are some of the women who have held responsible positions in the executive branch of the Government...
...McCormick is on naval affairs...
...This is b]' no means all...
...No woman has been made attorney-general, though several have held office as assistants to the attorney-general...
...If the House leaders decide that a measure sponsored by a woman must be defeated, they will administer lethal gas to kill it, rather than call upon the headsman's axe...
...Conservative by tradition and temper, New England July 16, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 299 has apparently been quicker than other sections to follow equal suffrage to its logical conclusion...
...Half a dozen or so of the sex have been successful in passing the entrance examinations...
...States have not been slow to recognize the new order...
...Arduous training of this sort is ill adapted to the physique and temperament of women...
...Her opposition to the World Court proved one of Ruth McCormick's most successful issues, yet nine women out of ten, at first thought, might be supposed to favor our adherence to this tribunal, as a "peace" measure, if for no other reason...
...Women may be found on many of the important committees...
...pointive offices...
...Two women have served in the Department of Justice as assistant to the attorney-general: Annette Adams of California served as such during the Wilson administration, and the late August, 1920, they have held many elective and ap- President Harding gave a similar appointment to Mrs...
...Though some like Mrs...
...McCormick, though she is making a record for herself on her own, came forward originally as the wife of a late senator and as the daughter of Ohio's most famous political boss...
...Mary Harris, superintendent of the Federal Prison for tion...
...Leaders of both major parties have recognized the fact that equal suffrage has increased the number of voters by one third, or a half, and have given the new voters a place in the councils of the party...
...A clever woman will be able, in the long run, to get more from the executive branch of the government, even perhaps from the President, than any except the most influential leaders in Congress...
...Juvenile and municipal courts have likewise had a number of women judges...
...Six states have had women secretaries of states...
...A few names will suffice to show that the appointing power has fully recognized the fact that women have now entered politics: Jessie Dell, member of the United States Civil Service Commission...
...Miss Annie Matthews is serving her second term as registrar of New York County'' at a salary of $12,000 a year, one of the largest drawn by any woman in public life...
...The equal suffrage amendment has created no revolution in American politics...
...Women have so far played but a minor role in the affairs of the House...
...In what fields have they been most successful, and where have they failed...
...but the methods are different...
...Two women have been members of the New York City Board of Aldermen...
...Rogers is on world war veterans legislation, and so on...
...Congresswoman Norton of New Jersey, for example, has been one of the most effective anti-prohibitionists, and there are many others in both political parties...
...Ruth Hanna McCormick has smashed her way to victory in the Illinois primary, taking the measure of a sitting senator, Deneen, and if she continues her victorious march through November, will be the first of her sex to really earn a seat in the United States Senate...
...The roster of the federal government reveals a steady increase in the number of important positions held by women...
...Nepotism," if we may so call it, is not unknown of course in the ranks of the men, and it is no more fair to criticize a woman for running for Congress because her husband was there ahead of her, than to point a finger at Richard Aldrich of Rhode Island because his father happened to be one of the most famous senators which New England ever sent to Washington...
...Some 149 women hold seats in the legislatures of 38 states...
...and Miss Bess Goodykuntz, assistant commissioner in the Bureau of Education...
...They have still to attain a major chairmanship...
...Eight women are members of the present, or Seventy-first Congress...
...In the National House of Representatives, and no doubt in other legislative bodies also, her sex confers upon a woman a certain advantage...
...Rebecca Latimer Fulton, appointed by the governor of Georgia to serve just one day, November 21, 1921...
...Thirteen women in all have been sent to the Congress of the United States, but only one of the thirteen has sat in the Senate, Mrs...
...Pratt of New York have come to Washington on their own with no male relative of their family preceding them, of too few perhaps can this be said...
...Two women, Mrs...
...Women in Congress have yet to win a place in the inner councils of that body...
...Miss Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who served one term in the House, from 1917 to 1919, was the only woman to serve in the national legislature before the adoption of the Federal Suffrage Amendment...
...McKee concludes that "the equal suffrage amendment has created no revolution in American politics," but that women will continue to play an important part.—The Editors...
...Eight states suffered losses, but sixteen others showed gains...
...Bertha K. Landes...
...That women have come to occupy a real place in the public life of the country needs no elaborate proof...
...Even on the issues where a casual observer might most expect to see a substantial agreement among them, women will divide into two opposing camps...
...Those who have led her to the enjoyment of her new rights have made much of this anniversary, marking as it does the passing of a decade since the equal suffrage amendment was placed in the ConstituFierce battles of long ago come back to us as the tenth anniversary of feminine suffrage is observed...
...A congressman does not answer a feminine foe as curtly on the floor or treat her as roughly as he will a male opponent...
...Officered in the past exclusively by men, the State Department has opened its doors to women, albeit, it would appear, a bit begrudgingly...
...though the number may fluctuate from year to year, it is difficult to envisage a petticoatless Congress at any time in the future...
...Miss Ruth Shipley, chief of the Passport Division of the Department of State...
...The last election, that of 1928, showed several interesting results...
...Miss Lucile Atcherson blazed the trail for her sisters in the diplomatic service eight years ago...
...Women are active in the pacifist drives launched against Congress, but there are no more valiant friends of national defense, by sea and land, in Congress than among the women members of the House...
...More specifically, it may be asked, to what extent have women gone into politics, and what offices have they held...
...The anniversary leads naturally to an examina- Women at Alderson, West Virginia...
...The office of school superintendent is naturally a popular one with women, for it is one for which they have special qualifications...
...A few weeks ago Miss Annabelle Matthews wo(n new honors for her sex by receiving from President Hoover an appointment to the United States Board' of Tax Appeals, the "Supreme Court" of tax litigation...
...Bessie P. Brueggman, chairman of the United States Employees Compensation Commission...
...What new elements have th y brought into the political equation...
...No man can forget that...
...Kahn of California, whose great ambition has been to hold the chairmanship of the Military Affairs Committee held by her late husband, has not been able to gratify that ambicion...
...According to a survey made by the League of Women Voters, this represents a gain of 23 over the record established by the legislatures of 1927-28, when 126 women so Labor James J. Davis, winner in the primary race in served...
...The name or fame of a husband or father has helped several women in the past to a seat in the House...
...The net advance therefore was a real one...
...It is in Congress, perhaps, that women come most conspicuously before the public eye...
...Theirs is an aptitude also for public posts which demand faithful and conscientious service, with an attention to detail...
...even Mrs...
...Seattle is the only large city that has elected a woman mayor, having given that office for one term to Mrs...
...So again with the issues of internationalism, and pacifism and militarism...
...Major Julia Stimson, head of the Army Nurse Corps, and the only woman with the rank and insignia of a major in the classified either as non-partisan or without a party designation...
...In the field of elective office, where the strain and burden of a hard fought campaign must be borne, women have yet to register more than an occasional triumph...
...His opponent may be only a people's representative, like himself, but she is also a woman...
...Fifteen women were elected as state senators, and twelve were reelected to their fourth term...
...Women have made their mark in county governments...
...Social life in Washington plays a more important part in legislation than one would think...
...Since the equal suffrage amendment became effective in Stuart, assistant director of the Indian Education Service...
...Miss Grace Abbott, chief of the Children's Bureau, has recently been boomed by her friends for a cabinet place to succeed Secretary of Mabel Walker Willebrandt...
...Anna C. M. Tillinghast, commissioner of immigration in Boston...
...As they move to defeat her bill, men will act as politely toward a woman as the gentleman highwayman who begs his victim's pardon as he takes his bank roll...
...Nellie Taylor Ross of Wyoming and Mrs...
Vol. 12 • July 1930 • No. 11
