1920 (22 page)

Actually, in some cases its claims were true but factors other than Prohibition were responsible. In 1920, for instance, the United States was more prosperous than ever before, which allowed for different patterns of both spending and saving than had existed prior to the Eighteenth Amendment, which was completely irrelevant to the change in behavior. And as the twenties ended, spending on necessities and saving as much as possible was mandatory because the Great Depression was beginning.

In summary, though, there were positive aspects to Prohibition that are too often ignored by those who write about the twenties. Although it did not prohibit, Prohibition
did
reduce. Was it, then, as the Anti-Saloon League and others insisted, a law that deserved more respect than it received? This is a risible claim. No law that results in more deaths than occurred before the legislation was passed deserves any respect at all from
the populace. Perhaps the best summary of the era, certainly one of the briefest, was offered by an unnamed friend of Winston Churchill. The man had visited the United States during its dry years, and observed carefully before reporting back to England. “There is less drinking,” Churchill quoted his friend as saying, “but there is worse drinking.”

THE TWENTY-FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE
Constitution of the United States was ratified on December 5, 1933. It repealed the Eighteenth, thereby making the latter the only Constitutional Amendment ever acknowledged to be an error and tossed into a Capitol Hill wastebasket.

Yet for all the arguments pro and con that had been offered during the thirteen years, eleven months, and eleven days of the “Noble Experiment,” its demise was assured by a factor that had been little discussed for the majority of that time: money. The Eighteenth Amendment simply cost too much. According to the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, admittedly biased groups, the United States treasury lost an estimated $861 million in tax revenue from alcohol during the period when it had been illegal. The groups also claim that another $40 million a year was tossed to the winds in Prohibition enforcement, which was lax at best, dishonest at worst. Whatever the figures, by December 5, 1933, America was deep in the throes of the worst economic crisis in its history. It was finally time to make the booze safe to drink again—and, no less important to the nation's future, it was time to get tax dollars, tens of millions of tax dollars annually, back into the Treasury.

Wayne Wheeler had no comment.

I
T WAS MID-AUGUST, WITH HEAT
waves swooping over the country, almost as if undulating, and the Nineteenth Amendment still had one more state to go.

Carrie Chapman Catt arrived without fanfare in Nashville, as Tennessee would be the next to decide on the Amendment and the final vote needed for ratification. Catt, however, was not there to take a starring role in the campaign, as might be expected of someone so eminent in the suffrage movement; rather, she would work behind the scenes where, in this case, she believed she could act more effectively. For the most part, she would send telegrams to prominent politicians of both parties, pleading with them to make public announcements of their support for woman suffrage. She was a hard woman to say no to.

Warren G. Harding, one of the Republican prospects going into the convention, replied promptly to Catt's request, writing that “if any of the Republican members should ask my opinion as to their course I would cordially recommend immediate favorable action.” Harding's
fellow Ohioan, James M. Cox, who would end up being his opponent in November, expressed “confidence that the Legislature will act favorably, which will greatly please the national Democratic Party.”

With support like this, and even more from politicians almost as influential as the presidential candidates, it appeared almost impossible that women would continue to be barred from America's polling places. But anti-suffragist forces were not yet willing to concede. In early August, they too gathered in Nashville for one last stand. Most of them were men, as might be expected, but not all. “Many women also went to Nashville to oppose their own enfranchisement,” writes feminist historian Doris Weatherford, “among them officers of the Southern Women's Rejection League, and of antisuffrage associations from Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Ohio.” In the case of these ladies, their “devotion to states' rights proved greater than their commitment to women's rights”; that, at least, was the company line, briefly recited to all reporters who wondered about their negative position.

Whether or not it was true, the anti-suffrage forces were so upset about what had happened around the country earlier in the year, when by January 27 the universal vote for women was but nine states short of passage, “that they filed suits in a number of states against the legislatures' ratification. Inventing points of law that had never been considered in the cases of the first eighteen amendments to the Constitution, they went to court.”

The cases made no sense. The legislative actions in the states named in the suits had been conducted in strict accordance with procedures for altering the nation's founding document. Yet, somehow, one of the suits managed to sneak itself all the way up to the docket of the United States Supreme Court. It did not stay there long. The court ruled dismissively, several of the justices joining millions of other Americans in wondering why they were wasting their time on a matter whose guidelines had been so rigorously enforced and whose outcome was so patently obvious. At that point, supporters seemed to believe, the battle had been won; they could relax.

They were wrong. More struggles remained, none so great as the one in the Tennessee Legislature in mid-August 1920. Although initially seen as a state solidly behind the women's cause, when the votes were counted, to the shock of all except lobbyists who had exchanged untold amounts
of cash for support, the total was forty-eight in favor of the Nineteenth Amendment, forty-eight against.

The state house exploded in anger, the tumult stilled only after the Speaker of the House pounded the gavel so many times, the head might well have flown off. A few minutes later, with the house still noisier than usual, the call was sounded for a second vote. In the gallery—standing room only, mostly women, mostly desirous of the vote—people let out long, audible sighs; those who had seats took them again after having sprung to their feet but were fearful of an even worse outcome. Would an aye, just a single aye decide to change his vote to a nay? How could a cause that made so much sense, that threatened no one, that would alter the functioning of the Constitution not a whit, possibly have become so controversial?

The legislators below the women in the gallery visibly tensed.

One did so more than anyone else. According to Doris Weatherford, it was at this point that “conscience struck 24-year-old Harry Burn,” who had been elected to the state legislature at the age of 22. He had promised his political bosses, who were against ratification, that he would support their position only if his vote were needed to deny the amendment the first time the roll was called. Afterward, he would follow the counsel of his mother, who wrote him a letter, urging him to

Vote for suffrage and don't keep them in doubt. I notice some of the speeches against. They were very bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have noticed nothing yet. Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put “Rat” in Ratification.

It was, of course, those who opposed ratification who were the rats, in Mrs. Burn's view, but never mind her slogan; her intent could not have been more clear.

As the second vote began, Burn decided to be a good boy. He would change his mind. He would help Mrs. Catt. The result was even more uproar in the House, but this time it signaled happiness more than confusion. “After Burn switched his vote to the affirmative, antisuffragists charged that he had been bribed,” but so much blacker was the pot than
the kettle that the statement played as a punch line more than an accusation. Perhaps Burn
had
been bribed, but if so it was by sentiment, not dollars. The
New York Times
reported on the jubilation when the official vote was announced: forty-nine in favor of the amendment, forty-seven opposed.

Women screamed frantically. Scores threw their arms around the necks of those nearest them and danced, so far as it was possible to do so, in the mass of humanity. Hundreds of suffrage banners were waved wildly, and many removed the yellow flowers they had been wearing and threw them upward to meet a similar shower from the galleries.

There were few tears of joy shed by the suffragists. Some wiped their eyes, but on the whole, they considered it no time for weeping. Their happiness was far beyond that stage.

This time the Speaker of the House did not even attempt to wield his gavel. It might not have been heard anyhow.

Burn waited patiently until the large hall was at least relatively still again, then told the Speaker he would like to make a statement for the official journal of the hearing. It was “a point of personal privilege,” he explained, and he had the right to express just such a sentiment. The House became even quieter. The war was over, but the final strategic thrust was about to be revealed. Burn coughed, cleared his throat, took his time. “I changed my vote in favor of ratification because I believe in full suffrage as a right; I believe we had a moral and legal right to ratify; I know that a mother's advice is always safest for her boy to follow and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”

From the gallery came an eruption every bit as loud and tearful—if differently motivated—as the first one.

From those aghast at the notion of woman's suffrage, one of the leaders of whom was a fellow named Seth Walker, came what movement historian Eleanor Flexner has called a display of
opéra bouffe
.

Unable, despite threats and bribery, to bring the bill up for reconsideration, thirty-eight members of the losing minority
crossed the state line into Alabama to try and prevent a quorum until the majority had somehow been undermined. Their hosts in Decatur [Alabama] had even wired those planning the move: “Send them on. We will be proud to entertain Seth Walker and his opponents of suffrage as long as they wish to remain and it will not cost them a penny.”

The action was promptly ruled illegal.

STRANGELY, THERE WERE NO MASS
celebrations by newly enfranchised women, no demonstrations from coast to coast. To Alice Paul, a leading strategist of the Nineteenth Amendment, went the honor of sewing the thirty-sixth and final star on the National Woman's Party suffrage banner, as half a dozen of her supporters looked on, but that appears to have been the extent of triumphant display. There was certainly nothing like the gathering of eight thousand women who marched through Washington on the day before President Wilson's inauguration in 1913. Some of the protesters carried placards, others shouted out slogans; all seemed exuberant and determined. And they were in the streets, of all places, not in the kitchens! The policemen assigned to duty along the route simply could not condone what they saw. Because they “had no experience with such unladylike behavior,” we are told, “they failed to protect the women from assault. A portion of the parade route turned into a mob scene so serious that it ultimately cost the police chief his job. Public sympathy swelled for women who were willing to take such risks for rights.”

But history does not record anything on a grand scale (assuming eight thousand women can be considered a grand scale) after the Tennessee decision. A small parade here, some small parties there and there, a few speeches at various civic occasions—but there seems to have been nothing more exuberant. Perhaps women, and the men who supported them, were fearful that their foes would turn to the Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn the Nineteenth Amendment. And, in fact, they did; the Amendment was not finally institutionalized until 1922, when the Court made a final ruling in its favor. Perhaps, believing that women had been entitled to the vote since Margaret Brent insisted on it in 1638, they believed congratulatory displays were gratuitous. Or perhaps they were simply weary from an incomprehensibly long ordeal.

Carrie Chapman Catt summed it up. Since the 1848 Seneca Falls call for the vote, she counted: 480 campaigns in state legislature; 56 statewide referenda to male voters; 47 attempts to add suffrage planks during revisions of state constitutions; 277 campaigns at state party conventions and 30 at national conventions; and 19 biannual campaigns in 19 different Congresses. Literally thousands of times, men cast their votes on whether or not women should vote. Literally millions of women and men gave their entire lives to the cause and went to their graves with freedom unwon. No peaceful political change ever has required so much from so many for so long. None but a mighty army could have won.