"I have read it [the Constitution] many times, and there have been just 17 amendments adopted since the original Constitution was framed by the master minds whom God had inspired in the cabin of the Mayflower to formulate the Constitution of the Plymouth Colony which was made the basis of the Constitution of Massachusetts and subsequently resulted in the establishment of the Constitution of the United States under which we now live . . . ."

Fancy his shock at finding the pickets triumphant.

"Since the second session of the Sixty-fifth Congress opened," he said, "I have met several women suffragists from the State of Massachusetts. I have immediately propounded to them this one question: ‘Do you approve or disapprove of the suffrage banners in front of the White House . . . ?' The answer in nearly every case to my question was: `I glory in that demonstration' . . . the response to my question was very offensive, and I immediately ordered these suffrage advocates from my office."

And again the pickets featured in the final remarks of Mr. Small of North Carolina, Democrat, who deplored the fact that advocates of the amendment had made it an issue inducing party rivalry. "This is no party question, and such efforts will be futile. It almost equals in intelligence the scheme of that delectable and inane group of women who picketed the White House on the theory that the President could grant them the right to vote."

Amid such gems of intellectual delight the House of the great American Congress passed the national suffrage amendment.

We turned our entire attention then to the Senate.

Chapter 16

An Interlude (Seven Months)

The President had finally thrown his power to putting the amendment through the House. We hoped he would follow this up by insisting upon the passage of the amendment in the Senate. We ceased our acts of dramatic protest for the moment and gave our energies to getting public pressure upon him, to persuade him to see that the Senate acted. We also continued to press directly upon recalcitrant senators of the minority party who could be won only through appeals other than from the President.

There are in the Senate 96 members-2 elected from each of the 48 states. To pass a constitutional amendment through the Senate, 64 votes are necessary, a two-thirds majority. At this point in the campaign, 58 senators were pledged to support the measure and 48 were opposed. We therefore had to win 11 more votes. A measure passed through one branch of Congress must be passed through the other branch during the life of that Congress, otherwise it dies automatically and must be born again in a new Congress. We therefore had only the remainder of the first regular session of the 65th Congress and, failing of that, the short second session from December, 1918, to March, 1919, in which to win those votes.

Backfires were started in the states of the senators not yet committed to the amendment. Organized demand for action in the Senate grew to huge proportions.