USA > New York > History of the state of New York, political and governmental, Vol. V > Part 10
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The chief legislation before Congress in 1919 and 1920 had to do with settling the issues of the war, with readjusting the finances of the country, and with restor- ing to a normal peace basis the enterprises which had been disturbed by the war. Foremost among these tasks was the enactment of a bill for the government supervi- sion and regulation of the railroads after their return by the government to private control. The period of government war control, under the Democratic admin- istration, had caused a deficit of more than half a billion dollars in the railroad account and had greatly disorganized the roads and enormously increased their expenses. These circumstances made the framing of a satisfactory law a difficult matter, but in the task the Republican majority in Congress succeeded in a man- ner which won almost universal approbation. In this and other post-bellum legislation the Republican party showed itself thoroughly reunited and steadfastly intent upon pursuing those progressive policies of service to the public welfare, and at the same time those resolute conservations of the rights of the individual citizen, of property and of business, which had been characteristic of it from its foundation. Between it and the Demo- cratic party intense animosity continued as of old to prevail, sometimes to an extent regrettably deterimen-
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tal to patriotic interests. But within the ranks of the Republican party, enormously extended as they were in 1920, a greater degree of harmony prevailed than had been known in nearly a score of years. The former distinctions of "Standpatter" and "Progressive" had generally disappeared, and in the pursuance of its traditional policies, at once conservative and progress- ive, the party showed and continued to show that it recognizes no geographical divisions, no class distinc- tions, no discrimination of race or sex in the vindi- cation of civil rights. North, south, east, west; black and white; rich and poor; employer and employe; man and woman, native and naturalized-all are the same to the party which in the fulfillment of its name is devoted to the progress and prosperity of the Common Wealth.
CHAPTER XVI EQUAL SUFFRAGE
L ATEST of all the great advancements made in the civic life of America and greatest of all the late reforms achieved under the influence and leadership of the Republican party, is the enfranchise- ment of women. It was eminently appropriate that this work should be done chiefly by Republicans because it was in logical accord with the fundamental principles of that party. An organization that came into existence for the vindication of the rights of man was unmis- takably destined to become the champion of equal rights of citizenship for men and women. Between the Repub- lican party and the early movement for Woman Suf- frage there was indeed an intimate personal connection We cannot say that all Republicans were suffragists or that all suffragists were Republicans. But it is a fact of record that many of the founders of the Republican party were advocates of Woman Suffrage, and that the great majority of suffragists were affiliated with the Republican party.
Some citations from the national platforms of the Republican party with reference to the rights of women have already been made. It will be profitable to review the record in detail. As early as 1872 the Republican national convention, which nominated
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Grant and Wilson for the Presidency and Vice-Presi- dency, declared :
"The Republican party is mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to the cause of freedom. Their admission to wider fields of usefulness is viewed with satisfac- tion; and the honest demand of any class of citizens for additional rights should be treated with respectful consideration."
That was a tentative and conservative utterance. But it was the first utterance on the subject that was made by any considerable political party. Again in 1876 the Republican platform, upon which Hayes and Wheeler were nominated, declared :
"The Republican party recognizes with approval the substantial advances recently made toward the establishment of equal rights for women by the many important amendments effected by Republican Legislatures in the laws which concern the personal and property relations of wives, mothers, and widows, and by the appointment and election of women to the superintendence of education, charities, and other public trusts. The honest demands of this class of citizens for additional rights, privileges, and immunities should be treated with respectful consideration."
Again, in 1896, when Mckinley and Hobart were nominated, the Republican platform said :
"The Republican party is mindful of the rights and interests of women, and believes that they should be accorded equal opportunities, equal pay for equal work, and protection to the home. We favor the admission of women to wider spheres of usefulness and welcome their cooperation in rescuing the country from Democratic and Populistic mismanagement and misrule."
Naturally, when Mckinley was renominated in 1900 the Republican platform again recognized the public services of women and expressed appreciation of their cooperation.
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Then in 1912 came the climax. We have already told of the great Progressive movement of that year, when more than half of the Republican party tem- porarily separated itself from the general organization. The Progressive Republicans in their platform un- equivocally declared for the complete enfranchisement of women. They said :
"The Progressive party, believing that no people can justly claim to be a true democracy which denies political rights on account of sex, pledges itself to the task of securing equal suffrage to men and women alike."
With the reunion four years later of the Progressives with the regular Republican party, that unequivocally expressed principle of the former was fully and heartily adopted by the latter, so that the Republican national convention of 1916 declared in its platform :
"The Republican party, reaffirming its faith in government of the people, by the people, 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."
Meanwhile, what of the Democratic party? While the Republicans at intervals during nearly half a cen- tury were making these half-dozen explicit declarations in favor of the rights of women, what did the Demo- crats say? Not one word. The subject of the civil and electoral rights of women was never so much as referred to in a Democratic platform until 1916 when, under sheer compulsion and most reluctantly, there was inserted this dodging and begrudging plank:
"We recommend the extension of the franchise to the women of the country by the States upon the same terms as to men."
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That was all; a single utterance of fewer than two dozen words, without a hint at belief in the matter or of appreciation of the civic and partrotic worth of womanhood-that constitutes the entire record of the Democratic party on the subject of Woman Suffrage.
The declaration of the Republican platform of 1916 was, it is true, in favor of suffrage for women by State rather than by national action. But when a little later the issue was brought before Congress in the form of a proposal for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States which would make equal suffrage a national and not merely a State right, Republicans readily accepted and supported it and it was by Repub- lican votes that the amendment was adopted by both houses of Congress and recommended to the States for ratification.
This was not, it is true, the first presentation of the equal suffrage cause to Congress. As early as 1878 it was thus presented by no less authoritative a person than Miss Susan B. Anthony. The House of Representa- tives had at that time, however, a Democratic majority and Miss Anthony's earnest appeal fell upon unsym- pathetic ears. There was a similar result when the amendment was introduced into the Sixty-fifth Con- gress. That body was Democratic in both houses, and by Democratic votes it rejected the amendment. Happily for the cause of suffrage, however, in the fall of 1918 President Wilson made his extraordinary appeal to the country for the election of another Democratic Con- gress, to which the nation promptly responded by elect- ing a Congress Republican in both houses.
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To that Republican Sixty-sixth Congress, then, the amendment was resubmitted, to be speedily approved. Congress met in special session on May 19, 1919. Just two days later, on May 21, the House of Representa- tives, with a strong Republican majority, overwhelm- ingly adopted the amendment. The vote stood as follows :
Republicans-For, 200; against, 19.
Democrats-For, 102; against, 70.
A little later, on June 4, the Senate voted as follows :
Republicans-For, 36; against, 8.
Democrats-For, 20; against, 17.
Thus in the whole Congress, 236 Republicans voted for equal suffrage and only 27 against it; while only 122 Democrats voted for it and no fewer than 87 against it. It was emphatically and indisputably the work of the Republican party, therefore, that the so-called Susan B. Anthony Suffrage amendment to the Constitu- tion of the United States was adopted by Congress for submission and recommendation to the States for rati- fication.
No less was it the work of the Republican party that ratification by the States was secured. The first eight States that ratified it were the staunch Republican States of Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas, Ohio, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, every one of which had, of course, a Republican Legislature. Of the thirty-six States that ratified it and made it a part of the Constitution, giving the franchise to nearly 27,000,000 women, no fewer than twenty-six had Legis- latures Republican in both branches, and only seven
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had Legislatures Democratic in both branches; while of the other three one house was Republican and the other Democratic. On the other hand, of the eight States that outrightly rejected the amendment seven were Democratic and only one was Republican.
The final contest was in the Tennessee Legislature, on August 13 and 18, 1920. That body was overwhelm- ingly Democratic, yet its favorable action was chiefly the work of the Republican minority, done in accord with the declaration of the Republican national plat- form and with the expressed wishes of the Republican candidates and party leaders. In the Tennessee Senate on August 13, eighteen Democrats voted for and three against ratification, and seven Republicans voted for and only one against it. But in the House on August 18 the Democrats were about evenly divided, 35 voting for and 34 against ratification, with one absent; while the Republicans voted 15 for and 12 against, with two absent. Thus the Republican minority was decidedly more favorable to ratification than was the Democratic majority.
Thus the Nineteenth amendment was ratified by the States by the following vote :
Republicans-For, 26; against, 1.
Democrats-For, 7; against, 7.
Divided Legislatures-For, 3.
Beyond all question or challenge, therefore, the granting of Equal Suffrage, both in Congressional initi- ative and in ratification by the States, was the work of the Republican party, successfully effected in the face of Democratic opposition.
WILLIAM BARNES, JR.
William Barnes, jr., publisher; born at Albany, N. Y. November 17, 1866; graduated from Harvard university, 1888 with degree of A. B .; publisher Albany Journal since 1889; member republican state committee, 1892-1914; chairman 1911- 1914; in 1915 brought action for libel against Theodore Roosevelt which was tried at Syracuse, N. Y., and resulted in a verdict for the defendant.
WILLIAM RUSSELL WILLCOX
William Russell Willcox, ex-chairman public service com- mission, 1st district; born in Smyrna, Chenango county, 1863; education received at country schools and state normal school at Brockport; attended University of Rochester; taught at Webster academy and Spring Valley high school; graduated from Columbia law school and admitted to the bar in 1890; republican nominee for congress in New York City, 1900; park commissioner by appointment of Mayor Seth Low, 1901-1902; appointed postmaster of New York City by President Roosevelt, 1904; appointed chairman of the public service commission by Governor Hughes, July 1, 1907; chairman republican national committee campaign of 1916.
CHARLES DEWEY HILLES
Charles Dewey Hilles, chairman of republican national com- mittee; born in Belmont county, O., June 23, 1867; educated at Oxford college, Md .; financial officer and superintendent of the Boys State Industrial school at Lancaster, O., 1890-1892; super- intendent New York Juvenile asylum at Dobbs Ferry, 1902-1909; assistant secretary U. S. treasury, 1909-1911; secretary to Presi- dent William H. Taft, 1911-1913 ; chairman republican national committee 1912, succeeded Herbert Parsone as member repub- lican national committee 1920.
CHAPTER XVII NATION OR LEAGUE?
T HE years 1919 and 1920 witnessed the greatest conflict in American history between the Presi- dent and the Senate of the United States. The subject was the covenant of the League of Nations, which President Wilson had, as he himself declared, purposely so interwoven with the treaty of peace with Germany at the close of the Great War that the Senate would be compelled to treat the two as one, to be ratified or rejected together. Thus the Senate could not ratify the much-desired treaty of peace with Germany with- out also ratifying the covenant of the League of Nations, and it could not reject the covenant without also reject- ing the treaty. Moreover, he made it plain that he would accept no "effective" amendments or reservations to the instrument modifying its meaning and effect in any way, such as the Senate had previously appended to other treaties, but that it must be either ratified or rejected just as it stood, practically "without the dotting of an i or crossing of a t." (That was not his phrase, but was the substantial purport of his declarations.)
The Republican majority in the Senate early made it plain that it would not ratify the covenant without a number of effective reservations. This is not the place for a detailed review of all their objections to that extra-
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ordinary instrument, but a few of the foremost may properly be recalled. From July 14 to September 4 the Senate committee on foreign relations held hearings concerning it, and then reported it to the Senate. From October 2 to November 6 it was discussed in committee of the whole, and thereafter to November 18 the com- mittee of the whole was busy with successive votings on proposed amendments. Finally on November 19 the Senate voted on it, and the requisite two-thirds could not be obtained for it either with or without the reserva- tions. Again on February 9, 1920, it was taken up on motion of the Republican leader, and debate and vot- ings continued until March 19, when as before it failed of the necessary two-thirds. On both occasions both parties were divided. The great majority of Republi- cans were in favor of ratification with effective reserva- tions ; a few were opposed to the covenant in any form, and one or two would have accepted it without reserva- tions. Several of the Democrats voted with the Repub- licans for reservations, and a much larger number of them would have done so-it is believed, enough to give it a two-thirds majority-had the President not practi- cally forbidden them to do so. It should be added that in the late summer of 1919, in order to bring popular influence to bear upon the Senate for ratification, the President undertook a long stump-speaking tour, to the Pacific coast and back, during which he suffered a severe nervous and physical collapse that compelled his return to the White House, where he was practically interned as an invalid for the remainder of his term of office.
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The first serious objection was that if the United States entered the League, it would not be able to with- draw without the unanimous permission of the other members; and a reservation was proposed giving this country the right to withdraw on proper notice when- ever in its own estimation it had fulfilled its interna- tional obligations and was thus entitled to withdraw.
The second objection was to Article X, which bound every member of the League to preserve and defend the territorial integrity and political independence of every other member; and a reservation was proposed freeing the United States from that obligation and from the obligation to use its military and naval forces under any article of the treaty for any purpose, except by the order of the American Congress, according to the pro- vision of the Constitution.
A third grave objection was to a part of the covenant which apparently would submit to alien jurisdiction domestic questions relating to the internal affairs of the United States, such as the tariff, immigration, labor problems, and the like; and a reservation was proposed giving to this country exclusively the right to decide what questions were within its domestic jurisdiction and were not to be submitted to alien jurisdiction.
A fourth objection related to the covenant's treatment of the Monroe doctrine. The covenant did indeed de- clare that nothing in it should be deemed to affect the validity of "international engagements, such as treaties of arbitration or regional understandings like the Mon- roe doctrine." But it was objected that this was so gross a misdescription of the doctrine as to constitute in itself
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a repudiation of it; and also that the whole spirit of the covenant, calling for American participation in all the political and military controversies and wars of Europe, was absolutely opposed to the spirit of the Monroe doc- trine, which pledges us against such meddling, so that adoption of the covenant would be essentially tanta- mount to abrogation of the doctrine. Accordingly a reservation was proposed declaring that the doctrine should not be affected by anything in the covenant, that the doctrine should be interpreted by the United States alone and should be kept entirely outside of the juris- diction of the League, and that no question involving the doctrine should be submitted to the arbitration or even the inquiry of the League.
A fifth objection was to the provision of the covenant that no nation should increase its armament without permission of the League; and a reservation was pro- posed reserving to the United States the right, without awaiting such permission, to increase its armament whenever it was threatened with invasion or was en- gaged in war.
In brief, the fifteen reservations upon which the final vote was taken aimed at preserving the complete national independence of the United States and main- taining the integrity of its Constitution as the supreme law of the land. The final vote occurred on March 19, 1920, on the question of ratifying the treaty with the fifteen reservations which had been appended. The vote was: Yeas, 49; nays, 35. As a two-thirds vote was required to ratify, the resolution of ratification failed of passage. There were 84 Senators present, and 56
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affirmative votes would have been needed to ratify the treaty. The votes in favor of ratifying the treaty with the reservations protecting the integrity and independ- ence of the United States as a sovereign nation com- prised 28 Republicans and 21 Democrats; and the votes against such ratification and against such reservations comprised 23 Democrats and 12 Republicans. There were in the whole Senate 49 Republicans and 47 Demo- crats. A decisive majority of Republicans therefore voted for the treaty of peace and the maintenance of American nationality, while a majority of the Demo- crats actually voting opposed the ratification of the treaty in that form.
A resolution rescinding the declaration of war of April 6, 1917, and recognizing the reestablishment of peace, leaving all readjustment of international rela- tions to further negotiations, was passed by Republican votes in the House of Representatives on April 9, 1920, and in the Senate on May 14, but was vetoed by the President.
These proceedings remitted the issue of the nation- ality of the United States versus the League of Nations to the people for final determination. At the opening of the Presidential campaign of 1920, therefore, this was generally regarded, by both parties, as the paramount issue. The President had demanded a "great and solemn referendum" thereon, and the Republican lead- ers gladly accepted his challenge. The Republican national convention was held at Chicago early in June and with fine unity of spirit nominated for President Warren G. Harding, a United States Senator from
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Ohio, who had distinguished himself in the Senate by his independent and constructive spirit, and by his reso- lute insistence that the treaty of peace and covenant of the League of Nations should be ratified only with effective reservations for protecting the independence and integrity of the United States and for maintaining the Constitution and established policy of this country. As he himself said, "We do not mean to shun a single responsibility of this republic to world civilization. We were not seeking to defeat a world aspiration; we were seeking to safeguard America." For Vice-President was nominated Calvin Coolidge, Governor of Massa- chusetts, who had distinguished himself in a great civic crisis by his resolute stand for the supremacy of law and order, of justice and of loyalty to American institutions. The platform, besides speaking clearly for "agreement among the nations to preserve the peace of the world
. based upon international justice with- out the compromise of national independence." took finely progressive ground for the betterment of indus- trial relations, recognizing the justice of collective bar- gaining; for taxation reform and a national budget sys- tem ; for the improvement of roads and the development of inland waterways; for the promotion of education and health, prevention of the evils of child labor, and safeguarding the welfare of women in industry ; and for dealing with all the pressing public issues of the time in a spirit of progressive and constructive statesmanship.
The Democratic national convention was held at San Francisco early in July, and after a prolonged and at times acrimonious contest it nominated for the Presi-
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dency James M. Cox, Governor of Ohio, and for the Vice-Presidency Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York, Assistant-Secretary of the Navy. The platform com- mitted the party and its candidates to the President's scheme of a League of Nations without any effective reservations for safeguarding American national inde- pendence or for making the covenant conformable to the principles of the Constitution and the Monroe doc- trine. It also declared for a "tariff for revenue only." On most other topics of importance it followed pretty closely after the Republican platform. Its outstanding feature was its unqualified endorsement of President Wilson's policy concerning the League of Nations, upon which Mr. Cox and the President a few days later declared themselves to be in absolute agreement.
The issue was thus joined between the two parties with singular clearness and precision. It was the ques- tion whether America should participate in interna- tional affairs and in the preservation of the peace of the world as a free and independent nation, as described by the Declaration of Independence, or as a fettered mem- ber of a semi-military alliance, subject to the dictation of alien powers. On that the Republican party and its candidates stood unswervingly for the side of the Amer- ican commonwealth.
The campaign was on the whole a quiet one, with far less speaking, parading, and the like than in most of its predecessors in recent years. The Democratic candi- dates indeed did a vast amount of travelling about the country and speaking, but the other important speakers of their party were few. The Republican candidates
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did little travelling and little speaking. The party press on both sides was animated and aggressive, but failed to arouse any considerable degree of popular interest. The result at the polls was never doubted by thoughtful observers. Some desperate and grossly ill-advised efforts were made by the Democratic candidates and press to divert attention from what their own President had declared to be the paramount issue, by making venomous attacks upon the integrity of the Republican managers and even of Mr. Harding himself. But these fell ludicrously flat, or recoiled with damaging effect upon their authors. The people of the United States had obviously made up their minds, without any per- suasion of "spellbinders," to give a decisive judgment in the "great and solemn referendum" which the Presi- dent had fatuously challenged.
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