150,000.[A]

[Footnote A: Suffrage in the Colonies. New York Chapter. McKinley.]

The next extensions of the vote to men were made to certain tribes of Indians by act of Congress; and to the Negro by amendment to the Federal Constitution.

At least three-fourths of the present electors secured their votes through direct naturalization or that of their forefathers. Congress determines conditions of citizenship and state constitutions fix qualifications of voters. In no instance has the foreign immigrant been forced to plead with a vast electorate for his vote. The suffrage has been "thrust upon him" without effort or even request on his part. National and State constitutions not only close to women the comparatively easy processes by which the vote was extended to men and women of other countries but also those processes by which the vote was secured to men of our own land. The simplest method now possible is by amendment of the Federal Constitution. To deny the privilege of that method to women is a discrimination against them so unjust and insufferable that no fair-minded man North or South, East or West, can logically share in the denial.

3. RELIEF FROM UNJUST CONSTITUTIONAL OBSTRUCTIONS DEMANDS IT.

The constitutions of many states have provided for amendments by such difficult processes that they either have never been amended or have not been amended when the subject is in the least controversial. Their provisions not infrequently are utilized by opponents of a cause to delay action for years. A present case illustrates. Newspapers in Kentucky which have opposed woman suffrage, and still do so, have started a campaign (December, 1916) to submit a woman suffrage amendment to voters with the announced intention of securing its defeat at the polls in order to remove it from politics for five years as the same question cannot be again submitted for that length of time.

There are state constitutions so impossible of amendment that women of those states can only secure enfranchisement through Federal action and fair play demands the submission of a Federal constitutional amendment. (See Chapter II.)

4. PROTECTION FROM INADEQUATE ELECTION LAWS DEMANDS IT.

The election laws of all states make inadequate provision for safeguarding the vote on constitutional amendments. Since election laws do not protect suffrage referenda, suffragists justly demand the method prescribed by our national constitution to appeal their case from male voters at large to the higher court of Congress and the Legislatures. (See Chapters III and IV.)

5. EQUAL STATUS OF MEN AND WOMEN VOTERS DEMANDS IT.

Until the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment the National Constitution did not discriminate against women but in Section 2 of that amendment provision was made whereby a penalty may be directed against any state which denies the right to vote to its male inhabitants possessed of the necessary qualifications as prescribed by nation and state. If the entire 48 states should severally enfranchise women their political status would still be inferior to that of men, since no provision for national protection in their right to vote would exist.

The women of eleven states are said to vote on equal terms with men. As a matter of fact they do not, since they not only lose their vote whenever they change their residence to any one of the 37 other states (except Illinois, where they lose only a portion of their privileges), but they enjoy no national protection in their right to vote. Women justly demand "Equal Rights for All and Special Privileges for None." Amendment to the National Constitution alone can give them an equal status. Equality of rights can never be secured through state by state enfranchisement.

6. NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF QUESTION DEMANDS IT.

Woman suffrage in every other country is a National question. With eleven American states and nearly half the territory of the civilized world already won; with the statement of the press still unchallenged that women voters were "the balance of power" which decided the last presidential election, the movement has reached a position of national significance in the United States. Any policy which seeks to shift responsibility or to procrastinate action, is, to use the mildest phraseology, unworthy of the Congress in whose charge the making of American political history reposes.

7. TREATMENT OF QUESTION DEMANDS INTELLIGENCE.

The handicaps of a popular vote upon a question of human liberty which must be described in technical language will be clear to all who think. It is probable that at least a fourth of the voters in West Virginia, one of the recent suffrage campaign states, could not define the following words intelligently: constitution, amendment, franchise, suffrage, majority, plurality. It is probable they would succeed even less well at an attempt to give an account of the Declaration of Independence, the Revolution, Taxation without Representation, the will of the majority, popular government. Such men might make a fairly intelligent choice of men for local offices because their minds are trained to deal with persons and concrete things. They could decide between Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hughes with some discrimination, but would have slight if any knowledge of the platforms upon which either stood. A referendum in many of our states, means to defer woman suffrage until the most ignorant, most narrow-minded, most un-American, are ready for it. The removal of the question to the higher court of the Congress and the Legislatures of the several states means that it will be established when the intelligent, Americanized, progressive people of the country are ready for it.

CHAPTER II.

STATE CONSTITUTIONAL OBSTRUCTIONS[A]

[Footnote A: Table of difficulties in each state is to be found in the
Appendix.]

MARY SUMNER BOYD

At its last session the Arkansas Legislature passed a Woman Suffrage bill by a generous majority; in Kentucky a bill passed both houses and one house in five other states. One of these was Arkansas where a constitutional provision that only three amendments can be submitted to the people at once rendered of no avail the passage of the Legislature. In the five other states the enormous Constitutional majorities required in a legislative vote on amendments defeated the measure.

This is the story of a typical year and these are two of the difficulties which beset the gaining of suffrage "state by state." Year after year labor is thrown away and money wasted because actual minorities in legislatures can defeat constitutional amendments; or because once past the legislature, constitutional technicalities can keep them away from the polls; or because, safely past these hazards, a minority vote of the people can defeat a bill that has successfully reached the polls.

Theoretically an amendment to a state constitution must have the approval of the Legislature, ratified by the approval of the people. This ratification is what differentiates it from a statutory law. This is the actual requirement, however, in but two of the male suffrage states, South Dakota and Missouri. In all the rest, except Delaware and New Hampshire, which have special methods of amending, much more than simple passage and ratification is required.

There are some half-dozen classes of technical requirements which make the amending of many state constitutions wellnigh impossible. Some states have never been able to amend; others have had to submit the same amendment again and again