Speech Before Congress
Carrie Chapman Catt, 1917
Woman suffrage is inevitable. Suffragists knew it before November 4, 1917;
opponents afterward. Three distinct causes made it inevitable.
First, the history of our country. Ours is a nation born of revolution, of
rebellion against a system of government so securely entrenched in the customs
and traditions of human society that in 1776 it seemed impregnable. From
the beginning of things, nations had been ruled by kings and for kings, while
the people served and paid the cost. The American Revolutionists boldly proclaimed
the heresies: "Taxation without representation is tyranny." "Governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The colonists
won, and the nation which was established as a result of their victory has
held unfailingly that these two fundamental principles of democratic government
are not only the spiritual source of our national existence but have been
our chief historic pride and at all times the sheet anchor of our liberties.
Eighty years after the Revolution, Abraham Lincoln welded those two maxims
into a new one: "Ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for
the people." Fifty years more passed and the president of the United States,
Woodrow Wilson, in a mighty crisis of the nation, proclaimed to the world:
"We are fighting for the things which we have always carried nearest to our
hearts: for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to
have a voice in their own government."
All the way between these immortal aphorisms political leaders have declared
unabated faith in their truth. Not one American has arisen to question their
logic in the 141 years of our national existence. However stupidly our country
may have evaded the logical application at times, it has never swerved from
its devotion to the theory of democracy as expressed by those two axioms
....
With such a history behind it, how can our nation escape the logic it has
never failed to follow, when its last unenfranchised class calls for the
vote? Behold our Uncle Sam floating the banner with one hand, "Taxation without
representation is tyranny," and with the other seizing the billions of dollars
paid in taxes by women to whom he refuses "representation." Behold him again,
welcoming the boys of twenty-one and the newly made immigrant citizen to
"a voice in their own government" while he denies that fundamental right
of democracy to thousands of women public school teachers from whom many
of these men learn all they know of citizenship and patriotism, to women
college presidents, to women who preach in our pulpits, interpret law in
our courts, preside over our hospitals, write books and magazines, and serve
in every uplifting moral and social enterprise. Is there a single man who
can justify such inequality of treatment, such outrageous discrimination?
Not one ....
Second, the suffrage for women already established in the United States makes
women suffrage for the nation inevitable. When Elihu Root, as president of
the American Society of International Law, at the eleventh annual meeting
in Washington, April 26, 1917, said, "The world cannot be half democratic
and half autocratic. It must be all democratic or all Prussian. There can
be no compromise," he voiced a general truth. Precisely the same intuition
has already taught the blindest and most hostile foe of woman suffrage that
our nation cannot long continue a condition under which government in half
its territory rests upon the consent of half of the people and in the other
half upon the consent of all the people; a condition which grants representation
to the taxed in half of its territory and denies it in the other half a condition
which permits women in some states to share in the election of the president,
senators, and representatives and denies them that privilege in others. It
is too obvious to require demonstration that woman suffrage, now covering
half our territory, will eventually be ordained in all the nation. No one
will deny it. The only question left is when and how will it be completely
established.
Third, the leadership of the United States in world democracy compels the
enfranchisement of its own women. The maxims of the Declaration were once
called "fundamental principles of government." They are now called "American
principles" or even "Americanisms." They have become the slogans of every
movement toward political liberty the world around, of every effort to widen
the suffrage for men or women in any land. Not a people, race, or class striving
for freedom is there anywhere in the world that has not made our axioms the
chief weapon of the struggle. More, all men and women the world around, with
farsighted vision into the verities of things, know that the world tragedy
of our day is not now being waged over the assassination of an archduke,
nor commercial competition, nor national ambitions, nor the freedom of the
seas. It is a death grapple between the forces which deny and those which
uphold the truths of the Declaration of Independence ....
Do you realize that in no other country in the world with democratic tendencies
is suffrage so completely denied as in a considerable number of our own states?
There are thirteen black states where no suffrage for women exists, and fourteen
others where suffrage for women is more limited than in many foreign countries.
Do you realize that when you ask women to take their cause to state referendum
you compel them to do this: that you drive women of education, refinement,
achievement, to beg men who cannot read for their political freedom?
Do you realize that such anomalies as a college president asking her janitor
to give her a vote are overstraining the patience and driving women to desperation?
Do you realize that women in increasing numbers indignantly resent the long
delay in their enfranchisement?
Your party platforms have pledged women suffrage. Then why not be honest,
frank friends of our cause, adopt it in reality as your own, make it a party
program, and "fight with us"? As a party measure--a measure of all parties--why
not put the amendment through Congress and the legislatures? We shall all
be better friends, we shall have a happier nation, we women will be free
to support loyally the party of our choice, and we shall be far prouder of
our history.
"There is one thing mightier than kings and armies"--aye, than Congresses
and political parties--"the power of an idea when its time has come to move."
The time for woman suffrage has come. The woman's hour has struck. If parties
prefer to postpone action longer and thus do battle with this idea, they
challenge the inevitable. The idea will not perish; the party which opposes
it may. Every delay, every trick, every political dishonesty from now on
will antagonize the women of the land more and more, and when the party or
parties which have so delayed woman suffrage finally let it come, their sincerity
will be doubted and their appeal to the new voters will be met with suspicion.
This is the psychology of the situation. Can you afford the risk? Think it
over.
We know you will meet opposition. There are a few "women haters" left, a
few "old males of the tribe," as Vance Thompson calls them, whose duty they
believe it to be to keep women in the places they have carefully picked out
for them. Treitschke, made world famous by war literature, said some years
ago, "Germany, which knows all about Germany and France, knows far better
what is good for Alsace-Lorraine than that miserable people can possibly
know." A few American Treitschkes we have who know better than women what
is good for them. There are women, too, with "slave souls" and "clinging
vines" for backbones. There are female dolls and male dandies. But the world
does not wait for such as these, nor does liberty pause to heed the plaint
of men and women with a grouch. She does not wait for those who have a special
interest to serve, nor a selfish reason for depriving other people of freedom.
Holding her torch aloft, liberty is pointing the way onward and upward and
saying to America, "Come."
To you and the supporters of our cause in Senate and House, and the number
is large, the suffragists of the nation express their grateful thanks. This
address is not meant for you. We are more truly appreciative of all you have
done than any words can express. We ask you to make a last, hard fight for
the amendment during the present session. Since last we asked a vote on this
amendment, your position has been fortified by the addition to suffrage territory
of Great Britain, Canada, and New York.
Some of you have been too indifferent to give more than casual attention
to this question. It is worthy of your immediate consideration. A question
big enough to engage the attention of our allies in wartime is too big a
question for you to neglect.
Some of you have grown old in party service. Are you willing that those who
take your places by and by shall blame you for having failed to keep pace
with the world and thus having lost for them a party advantage? Is there
any real gain for you, for your party, for your nation by delay? Do you want
to drive the progressive men and women out of your party?
Some of you hold to the doctrine of states' rights as applying to woman suffrage.
Adherence to that theory will keep the United States far behind all other
democratic nations upon this question. A theory which prevents a nation from
keeping up with the trend of world progress cannot be justified.
Gentlemen, we hereby petition you, our only designated representatives, to
redress our grievances by the immediate passage of the Federal Suffrage Amendment
and to use your influence to secure its ratification in your own state, in
order that the women of our nation may be endowed with political freedom
before the next presidential election, and that our nation may resume its
world leadership in democracy.
Woman suffrage is coming--you know it. Will you, Honorable Senators and Members
of the House of Representatives, help or hinder it?