CATT, CARRIE CHAPMAN GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE Phillips, Lena M. COPY Carrie Chapman Catt 120, Paine Avenue New Rochelle New York March 7, 1933 Miss Lena Madesin Phillips, Vanderbilt Hotel, New York, N.Y. My dear Miss Phillips: Two friends have read aloud to me all the chapters in the manuscript which appear to have been concerned with suffrage matters and we have read a few other chapters. We did not look over the first chapters because the material must have been obtained from written sources and, presumably, I do not know more about them than anyone else. Several names were wrong and we changed those in the manuscript. Some one else had read this manuscript and had made similar markings. You will not recognize ours from some sone else's. Poor Mrs. Irwin will have to read it all over. For instance, Senator Pomerene of Pennsylvania is mentioned. Pomerene came from Ohio and the Senator referred to was evidently Penrose. The young man who won the day in Tennessee is called Banks, whereas his name was Burns. We have made several corrections of that kind to which I shall not now allude. These might easily have been a stenographer's errors. We three, who read the book together, were agreed that it is a good story, well told, and with brilliant touches. I was especially delighted with Mrs. Irwin's index which has a dramatic touch. The woman's movement always had a dramatic setting, but few writers have caught the spirit of it. A great deal of time must have been spent by Mrs. Irwin in getting her material; nevertheless, it needed a little more time spent on it, for it is a very difficult task to grasp out of many books the outstanding and important events of a century. Naturally, some events which seemed to Mrs. Irwin as important did not seem so consequential 2 to us. We concluded that Mrs. Irwin had the right to rely upon her own judgment as to what material she should use; therefore, I have not ventured to object to the introduction of any event she has chosen to record. What I propose to comment upon are historical inaccuracies only. I make an exception in the question of the name. NAME We three agreed that the name is not well chosen. Women, in reality, were not called Angels or Amazons. If you wish to see the book, as I suppose you do, I would advise a more saleable title. That title sounds like a sensational book and it is not that. The book is dignified and intended as an important historical contribution to the woman's movement. Mrs. Irwin is so brilliant a woman that she surely can find a better title. PAGE 277. It is implied that Miss Anthony was responsible for the debt of $10,000. I suggest that it be put another way. A debt of $10,000 was left which Miss Anthony assumed. This is the truth. PAGE 280 The story of the Tilton scandal is not quite accurate. I do not recall having discussed with Miss Anthony, herself, the story of that scandal, but I had two very exhaustive discussions about it with Mrs. Harper, who wrote Miss Anthony's Life. She said that when Miss Anthony went to see Mrs. Tilton one day, Mrs. Tilton did "sob out on her shoulder." the confession of her affair with Beecher. It was an enormous shock to Miss Anthony, naturally, since Mr. Beecher was one of the great men of the country and one of the heroes in the suffrage movement. Naturally, she was filled with this excitement, when she saw Mrs. Stanton and she confided the story to her. A short time later Mrs. Woodhull came to pay Mrs. Stanton a visit. Mrs. Stanton poured the confession into Mrs. Woodhull's ear, although she had promised not to pass the story on. Mrs. Woodhull published it, as Mrs. Irwin says, in her paper and "the fat was in the fire." The newspapers tried their best to get from Miss Anthony some confession of her complicity in the 3 spreading of the tale, but she never admitted it to any of them. She did not spread it. She did not talk of it and, indeed, more than once she denied any knowledge of it. They never did get her involved in that affair. I think Mrs. Irwin lays unjust blame upon her. Tainting the memory of persons who are dead and gone is not the best way to record history. When I came to New York to live in 1892, we built a house in the suburbs of Brooklyn and during the ten years that I lived there, I learned to know the Brooklynites quite well. At the time I came, there was a important, dignified, and going woman suffrage club. Its president was Mariana Chapman, a wealthy, beautiful, well-educated and high-minded Friend. I talked with her about this scandal more than once. It seems that the American Woman Suffrage Association brought its convention to Brooklyn because the trial of Beecher had utterly disrupted the suffrage forces which were stronger there than in any other city except Boston. They came to re-build. They organized this Club and Mrs. Chapman's aim was to call back the confidence that had once reposed in the suffrage idea. Now, as far as history is concerned, I consider this much more important as an historic event that Mrs. Chapman slowly, painstakingly, and with much self-sacrifice recalled that confidence than that Miss Anthony's reputation should be unduly weighted with the charge of gossip which she did not deserve. THE SUFFRAGE STRUGGLE From 1833 to 1933 the evolution of women was moving rapidly, but not without the assistance of women themselves. Women were struggling here, there, and everywhere for more freedom and opportunity. This is a struggle of the individual woman, or, perhaps, of a group of women. In the center of this movement was an organized group, fighting hard for laws that would give women control of property, children, wages, etc., and for the vote that was the help secure these laws and to protect women in their general rights. Women did not join this movement until they had become quite 4 strong in character and will. The suffrage movement, therefore, was bolder and more outspoken than others and aided every other venture that women made. It was the storm center of the woman movement from the first, although it did not become an organized struggle until 1846. It is particularly important that that storm center should be understood, and its affairs be correctly recorded. THE WOMAN'S PARTY I read the chapters concerning suffrage with particular attention because it was here that I expected Mrs. Irwin might not write with accuracy. She has given a chapter to the Woman's Party which has told the history of their entire program and experience for the few years they worked before the final victory came. It is natural that Mrs. Irwin should emphasize the Woman's Party program and experience as she sympathizes so strongly with them, but it is very unfortunate that she has emphasized so disproportionately the events in their history. It is possible that she is not informed of the history made by the old organization. She speaks kindly enough of it, but omits some outstanding facts and gives to the Woman's Party credits it did not earn. PAGE 400 She speaks of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment and says it is known by that name and that Miss Anthony wrote it. Both statements are incorrect. Congress might have named it the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, but it did not do so. All the suffragists of the country might, collectively, have given the Amendment her name. They did not do it. The small body of the Woman's Party announced that they would so name it. they had no authority to do this. Miss Anthony did not write that Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment was written by many people, including the best lawyers in the Anti-Slavery movement. They adopted the form which they thought would withstand those attacks before the Supreme Court. It did withstand those attacks 5 and the suffragists, including many men friends, united in the agreement that it would be safe to state the woman's amendment is precisely the same terms. They did so and their judgment was right, because no legal attack could be made upon it. As an honor to Miss Anthony it may be courteous to give that amendment her name, but it can no more justly be given her name than that of several other suffragists who stood by her side at that date. PAGE 407 I came to my first national convention in 1890, when the two old organizations became the National American Woman Suffrage Association. I remember nothing about the Congressional hearing of that convention. I have not taken time to look it up. In 1891, I had typhoid fever and did not attend the convention, but in 1892, I was again in attendance as a delegate from the State of Washington. I remember very well the instructions that were given to the delegates that were going to the Hearing. The states were called and each delegation was asked to name some person who would rise and speak for the 16th Amendment, as it was then called. It was carefully explained and it was my introduction to that Amendment. Year after year the same procedure was followed, yet, on page 407, it is said that the National American Woman Suffrage Association "joined the fight." Miss Paul and Miss Burns, I am told, went to Miss Shaw and asked to be put in charge of the Federal Amendment which was already long established as the federal program. (I was not in the country at that time and did not return for two years.) It would seem that if those terms were to be used at all, it should be said that these young women asked the privilege of aiding and improving the campaign which had so long been the aim of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. PAGE 406 It is said that the Congressional Union resigned from the National American Woman Suffrage Association. They may have done so, but certainly they were told that they could not remain in the National 6 American Woman Suffrage Association unless their policy agreed with that of the National Body. They would not agree to this and they were, in reality, dismissed from the Association. Afterwards, they may have resigned in order to cover what had actually taken place. PAGE 425 It is said that the President could have got two Senate votes at any time he had so chosen. Mr. Wilson was never a convinced suffragist, I suppose. Mrs. Irwin said so in the beginning of the chapter, but I personally know that he tried to get those two votes and I am willing to take my oath that it was a sheer impossibility for him to do so. When it was clear that neither he, nor any one else, could break down the little opposition to the amendment, I, myself, went to Massachusetts and to Delaware and pled with the suffragists to assume an anti-Weeks and an anti-Salisbury campaign and to elect a Democrat in Massachusetts and a Republican in Delaware who would vote "yes" on our amendment. The women were shocked and horrified at the idea of attempting so impossible a task, but they finally organized an anti-Weeks campaign in Massachusetts an an anti-Salisbury campaign in Delaware. The National American Woman Suffrage Association furnished the arguments for those campaigns. The two votes were secured and it was done by the National American Woman Suffrage Association auxiliaries. In reading over this account, the wrong impression is given and I beg that this be corrected, because it is a pivotal matter in the history of the suffrage campaign. PAGE 453 A beautiful tribute is paid to Maud Wood Park, and justly, but the most important thing she did is curiously omitted. When I was elected to the presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association for the second time, the chairman of the Federal (Congressional) Committee had resigned and I recall with great clarity the correspondence I had with Mrs. Park. I wrote to say that she had been picked out as the woman to go to Washington and take charge of that situation. She pled that she was not prepared for it, etc. We begged her to go to Washington 7 and get prepared. The Woman's Party conducted its own campaign in its own way and paid no attention to ours. We did the same and paid no attention to theirs. It would have been better had there been more cooperation, but we consider that Mrs. Park is responsible for putting through the Federal Suffrage Amendment and she gave her very life to it for the many months she was obliged to remain in Washington for the purpose. The omission of this fact adds to the inaccuracies which seem, first, to give the credit for there being a suffrage amendment at all to the Woman's Party and, second, that they secured its passage through the Senate, and, third, that the Amendment was ratified. Undoubtedly, the Woman's Party secured results, but these results are not those stated in the book. PAGE 437 It is said that Sue White had long led the suffrage forces in Tennessee. Sue White was a young woman who had been a member of the old Association. It was in the year 1895 that I went on a Southern tour with Miss Anthony as her aid. We went to a few places in Tennessee for meetings, the chief one being Memphis. Miss Anthony was a guest of Mrs. Leid Meriwether. She was then growing elderly and had led the suffrage forces of Tennessee ever since they had been gathered together again after the Civil War. She was a heroine and one of the great women in the movement. She died and younger women came to take her place. Sue White was one of those who split off to assume the responsibilities for the Woman's Party. Why make it seem as though the Woman's Party was the chief and only organization? There were some terrible deals in that Tennessee ratification and there are things that never have been told and cannot be until more of those men who participated are out of politics. We had brought Mrs. Upton down to Tennessee to keep the Republicans in line and she was at work with them continuously and brought to bear every sort of influence possible, but 8 I will not describe them here. Had there been no Woman's Party, that Amendment would have been ratified. PAGE 467 There is a very definite and important difference of opinion about protective legislation. I have never been agitated on that subject and think I am quite neutral on it. There are women in Europe who are dead opposed to protective legislation, just as there are here. The Consumers League and the Trade Union League have been very important organizations in this country which have supported protective legislation. How does it happen that in a history a full account of the anti-protective side, favored by the Woman's Party, is recorded with no argument or history of the opposition led by the Consumers League and Trade Unions? That does not seem fair nor, indeed, is it particularly interesting to mention at all, since it is a pending issue. PAGE 478 Mary Anderson's name is curiously omitted from the list of people in important government positions. She is the chief of the Women in Industry Bureau. The Equal Rights Amendment, advocated by the Woman's Party has as much attention, although it has not yet been achieved, or anything connected with it sufficiently achieved, to make it historically important. What the Woman's Party did at Havana and in connection with the Pan American Union is important and is a real achievement, but getting that Amendment introduced by Mr. Curtis, and Hearings called, is evidenced as a great step in advance. This was just what the National American Woman Suffrage Association had done for the Federal Amendment, year after year, and yet that procedure, in that case, does not seem to have been worthy of mention when credit is being given completely to the Woman's Party. In the chapter of work done, which is a beautiful story (I think under the National American Woman Suffrage Association,) the name of Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw might be mentioned in connection with the 9 night parades. Her aim was to visit every assembly district in the City many times. I think, at first, she made one every week, but, toward the end, they became thicker and faster. No woman ever worked harder than did Mrs. Laidlaw. Why not mention her? I think New York City would certainly not have carried had it not been for the devoted and steadfast work, intelligence, and application of Mary Garrett Hay. The National theory is that New York gave the impetus to the whole movement that finally brought us to the Federal Amendment. In many ways, Mrs. Irwin has very beautifully merged the story of the Woman's movement without mentioning names, so that no credit or discredit is given to any particular women, or class of women. This was before she became interested in the Woman's Party. I do not see why that story of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the Woman's Party should not be written in a neutral, non-partisan way, giving credit where credit is due, and blame where blame is due, but getting it all on a truthful basis. I was sure Mrs. Irwin could do this, and probably would do it, if the story was quite clear in her own mind. I have pointed out what seems to me to be very important inaccuracies, but the book has not been read with great thoroughness and I have not mentioned all the points that I might have done. In conclusion, let me say that we three readers agree that it is interestingly readable and those who are uninformed with the history of the woman movement will be pleased with it, but will probably get the wrong idea on some points. It is a pity that they cannot be corrected. I think Mrs. Irwin's last paragraph was exceedingly good and impressive. She has caught the right spirit and outside suffrage matters, neutrality has been maintained. Were it true of the suffrage records 10 I would pronounce it an excellent and remarkable book. Mrs. Irwin is brilliant and knows better than any suffrage writer how to tell a good story. Very sincerely, (signed) Carrie Chapman Catt Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.