An Amazing Line-Up of Women Voters (1919)

Whether or not the Federal Suffrage Amendment is ratified by a sufficient number of the States in time to permit the women of every State to vote in the next Presidential campaign, there will be 15,492,751 women eligible to vote in 1920. Leaders of women in this country are endeavoring to increase the number to 29,000,000, by securing the ratification of the Federal Amendment by thirty-six States within the next few months.

Sixteen States have ratified the amendment since its passage by the Sixty-sixth Congress last June, within two weeks after the Republicans returned to power when eighty-six percent. of the G. O. P. members of the Senate voted “for” the resolution, and forty-six percent of the Democrats voted “against.”

Ratification within a month of passage was effected by Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Texas, States in which the legislatures were in session last June, the month which marked the passage of the Federal Amendment by Congress after nearly seventy years of struggle. Of these, all but Texas and Ohio had Republican Governors.

Of the ten States which called special sessions to ratify—New York, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Arkansas, Montana, Minnesota, and New Hampshire—four had Democratic Governors and six Republican executives.

In Alabama, the Senate defeated ratification twice but the Republican element (which is also the minority) came out with an open letter putting itself on record as being for the amendment.

In the sixteen States having ratification records, four of the legislatures are Democratic and twelve are Republican.

On August 22, the Conference of Republican Governors in Salt Lake City passed a resolution in favor of special sessions to ratify the Federal Suffrage Amendment. It was a woman, Mrs. John Glover South, of Frankfort, Ky. (daughter of the only Republican Governor Kentucky ever had), who went west and appealed to the Western Governors to take this action.

The interest of the politicians in the woman vote is plain when it is remembered that the fifteen and one-half millions of women of voting eligibility in this country live in States which will choose 306 of the 531 Presidential electors in the campaign of 1920.

Source: Frank Leslie’s Weekly – October 4, 1919

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