CHAPTER XIII.

A Protest Against Broken Promises.

On Saturday we sent to one hundred and fifty daily and weekly Wisconsin newspapers; to every state senator and assemblyman, to the executive officers and the justices of the supreme court of Wisconsin; and to the United States senators and members of the House of Representatives from Wisconsin the following statement:

Milwaukee, May 31.

Wisconsin women advocates of the Women's Rights bill, which passed the State Senate Friday, are fighting mad over the amendments made by the Senate. They will try to have the bill, with the clauses eliminated in the Senate restored, brought to a vote in the Assembly this week. Mrs. Frank Putnam, Milwaukee, state chairman of the National Woman's Party and leader in the fight for the bill, said:

"Senator Bird of Wausau is responsible for the Senate Amendment to our bill, denying women freedom of contract. We respect his candor. He opposed us openly. He believes women are still children mentally and that as children they still need men's guardianship in business affairs. He speaks and acts for a social and industrial order that has vanished, for a large portion of society. Today millions of women, both married and unmarried, are forced to make their own way in the world. Under existing law they are unjustly handicapped. In our bill, as it went to the Senate, these women asked only for their natural right to manage their own business affairs, with the same freedom of contract that their brothers have always enjoyed. This clause, for all self-supporting women, was the most vital in the whole bill. Its elimination makes the bill a mockery, hardly worth fighting for.

"Last Wednesday we had twenty-four senators pledged to vote for the bill containing the 'freedom of contract' clause. In the vote Friday on Senator Bird's motion to cut out this clause, all but four of the twenty-four senators -Huber, Staudenmayer, Anderson and Severson-broke their promise to us. Also, they broke the pledge of the platform upon which they were elected. This is true of the Socialist senators as well as of the Republicans. Only the little group of Progressive Republican senators kept faith with us, and with the platform of the Republican party. Senator Bird's arguments had more weight with the others than their party or their personal pledges.

"We women, new in politics and taking part in it only because it vitally affects our personal and material security, do not understand the meaning of such conduct. We do not understand how the people's representatives can lightly repudiate the solemn contract, of their own proposing, upon which the people elected them to office. But we intend learning what it means, and if possible to find a remedy for it.

"We are told the Assembly is against us; that we haven't a chance to get our bill through at this session. We know that a large majority of the assemblymen-the Republicans were elected upon a platform promising Wisconsin women equal rights with men under Wisconsin laws. We know that the Socialist assemblymen represent a party in which equal rights for women has always been a cardinal principle. We know that all or most of the Non-Partisan League assemblymen were chosen to office upon a platform containing a similar pledge.

"Therefore we shall not believe, until we see it done, that a majority of the assemblymen, elected in large part by women's votes upon a public promise to grant women equal rights under the law, will violate that promise. In any event, we intend to demand a roll call upon our bill and the amendments to it, so that, in the Assembly as in the Senate, Wisconsin women may know exactly who is for granting them legal equality with men, and who is against it.

"Speaker Young on Thursday promised us to help get our bill before the Assembly as it then stood, containing the freedom of contract clause, and to vote for it. Many

other assemblymen have given us like promises. In view
of our recent experience with such promises in the Senate,
we are less certain of their delivery value than we were
at the beginning. But we intend believing that their prom-
ises are dependable until a roll call proves the contrary.
"A few members of the legislature appear to feel that
women coming up to their State Capitol to ask for legal
rights necessary to their personal and material security,
and to their self-respect as citizens, are intruders. They
resent our presence there. We beg to remind them that
politically at least Wisconsin women are no longer chil-
dren in the eyes of the law; that we have the same right
as men respectfully to petition our law-makers for fair
play under the law; and that in the ballot we now have
the same weapon as men to enforce it.

"It is true that thus far there has been little public
demand for our bill. But there will be. I predict that if
it is not enacted during this session, it will be one of
the controlling issues of next year's elections. We, who
initiated it, had no time to work up public interest in it.
We knew it was planned to have a similar grant of rights
to women offered in Congress and in the legislature of
each of the forty-eight States in the near future. We
wanted Wisconsin to have the honor of being the first State
to grant its women these rights, as Wisconsin was the first
State to ratify the federal suffrage amendment. We still
hope that Wisconsin will win this honor during the next
fifteen days."

An error occurred in this statement for which we are deeply regretful. One of the four senators who kept his promise to us was Senator Hirsch, Socialist. Senator Anderson, who was named as one of the four, was absent when the vote was taken.

When this bulletin flared out on the pages of the leading newspapers, and arrived duly at the desk of each senator and assemblyman, there was a new political sensation in the State. Senators were indignant. Some protested they had promised to vote for "a" bill, not just for the bill as introduced. They were not used to being held personally responsible in this "offensive manner" for a promise given off hand and without serious consideration. They declared such things were not done in politics.

To one member, who made that statement to me, I replied: "Well, women are now in politics. We have our own code. We do not like your code in many ways, but still we have to deal with it, and men who expect to continue in public office will have to deal with our code."

Some of our friends looking on from the side were inclined to regret our boldness in publicly rebuking the Senate majority while still dependent on that majority for ultimate success. But we thought the constituents of these men should know how their promise, to us had been broken; also, it was meant as a warning to the members of the Assembly. All our friends at the Capitol, both senators and other State officials, had told us that it was extremely unlikely that the Assembly would pass the bill, even with the limitations which the Senate had written into it. Our opponents told us we hadn't the ghost of a chance to get anything through the lower house. Later in the session one of the opposing senators told us he believed that bulletin put the bill through the Assembly.

Most of the senators took it for granted that the Assembly would kill the bill, and we knew from past political experience many of them thought that they-the senators-having passed it unanimously with a few amendments, could get credit with the women voters in the next campaign, without having given women the civil rights we most desired.

CHAPTER XIV.

Carrying the Fight Into the Assembly.

Assemblyman Petersen, chairman of the Public Welfare committee, lived in Milwaukee. On Monday we went to see him to map out a program for our bill in the Assembly. We planned for a hearing before his committee during the week. Mr. Petersen said he would ask his committee to offer an amendment restoring the clauses which had been struck out in the Senate,

and if his committee objected to offering the amendment he would offer it from the floor.

The bill was received by the Assembly on Wednesday, June 1; read first and second times and referred by Speaker Young to the Committee on Public Welfare.

We had a hearing before the committee on Thursday. The women who spoke for the bill were: Mrs. Willard Bleyer, chairman of the Dane County League of Women Voters (the previous week at a luncheon of the Dane County League of Women Voters, the several hundred members present heartily endorsed the bill); Mrs. Joseph Jastrow, representing the Consumers' League; Miss Gena Thompson, representing the Wisconsin Woman's Progressive Association; Mrs. Louis E. Reber, chairman of the Madison board of the Young Woman's Christian Association; Mrs. Max Rotter and myself representing the National Woman's Party. At my request, Mr. Crownhart explained the bill in its legal significance.

Many more women would have liked to speak for the bill at this hearing, but it being past the date for committee hearings, the chairman had extended us this special courtesy, with the request that we not have many speakers.

In the meantime the following letters were received from Senator Lenroot and Governor Blaine.

Dear Mrs. Putnam:

United States Senate, May 28, 1921

I have yours of the 23rd instant with enclosure of the bill pending in the legislature relating to the rights of women. I have read this bill and its purpose meets with my hearty approval.

I am not sufficiently familiar with the present Wisconsin Statutes to know whether the bill, as drawn, will cover the subject without creating some confusion, especially in matters concerning descent of property, the custody of children and other like matters. I assume this has been carefully considered by counsel. You are at liberty to use this letter in any way you desire.