Today in Herstory: One Vote Holds Suffrage Back in the Senate (10 feb 1919)
(yes, folks, it was DEMOCRATS who were blocking suffrage, and PUBS who were voting for it. )
Today in Herstory: One Vote Holds Suffrage Back in the Senate
February 10, 1919: A landmark suffrage victory came tantalizingly close today, but still remains out of reach tonight.
Only one vote stood in the way of the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment being adopted by the Senate. Having already been passed by the House on January 10th of last year, Senate approval would have sent it directly to the States for ratification, and done so at the best possible time.
Since this is an odd-numbered year, all State legislatures are now – or soon will be – in regular session, so had the Anthony Amendment passed today, there could have been quick votes in every State, and ratification long before the first primaries in 1920.
Since Congressional approval will be delayed by at least a couple of months, legislators in many States will have finished voting on this session’s bills by then, and when the legislature adjourns, go back home to their other jobs until the next regular session, which in some States won’t be until 1921. So getting 36 approvals from State legislatures in time for the next Presidential election will mean convincing a number of governors to call “special sessions.” Even pro-suffrage governors will not be eager to do this because of the extra expense to taxpayers, and anti-suffrage governors certainly will not want to call their legislatures back into session to approve a suffrage amendment.
Despite vigorous campaigns by both militant and more conservative suffrage groups, personal pleas from political powerhouses such as President Wilson and William Jennings Bryan to their fellow Democrats, and 26 State legislatures having recently asked Congress to pass the suffrage amendment so that they can ratify it, that last vote was nowhere to be found. The amendment’s chief sponsor, Senator Andrieus Jones, Democrat of New Mexico, was bitterly disappointed that in the final few days in which his party controls Congress, this measure was not passed, and the blame for that failure will fall on his party.
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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2015/02/10/today-in-herstory-one-vote-holds-suffrage-back-in-the-senate/