the search for Jeannette Rankin’s hair color, and the first of her two “no” votes
October 13, 1916
The House Beautiful
Usually when a woman is nominated for Congress or the Legislature it is a meaningless but amiable compliment paid to the sex by a minority party that has no chance of winning. There is something more in the nomination of MISS JEANNETTE RANKIN in Montana, for she is running for Representative at large. That means that she is not the Republican candidate in a hopelessly Democratic district, but is running throughout the State, and if the State goes Republican she will be elected. Montana is more inclined to Democracy than Republicanism, but it is not a hopelessly Democratic State; it has even been represented in the United States Senate by Republicans.
If she is elected to Congress she will improve that body aesthetically, for she is said to be “tall, with a wealth of red hair.” Even when good, Congress is not beautiful, and needs adornment. Nothing is more beautifyl than red hair: the ancient superstition that it was ugly has long given way to sense and reason. There are some who qualify the admission by saying that “some kinds of red hair are pretty,” but they are bigoted. There is no shade of red hair that is not prettier than the mud brown which has become the American type we make no exception even in the case of that shade called “carroty,” the least beautiful of all reds. It so happens that Congress, which has improved its appearance by reducing the average of its waistcoat extension, but has taken no other steps toward sprucing up, is singularly lacking in red hair. VICTOR MURDOCK long upheld the average, but the plumage in its palmiest days could never be called “a wealth” of red, and Senator LEWIS’S whiskers were of a Lammie gingerousness. Congress can never become beautiful, can never even become tolerable in the eyes of landscape lovers until it imports red hair and a wealth of it. There is no other way to beautify Congress, for the other ways have all been tried: the House even went so far as to transfer JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS to the Senate, but this extreme step merely shifted the unpulchritudinous balance to the upper house and has no effect on the sum total. Congress needs Representative RANKIN, needs her badly. She cannot single-heded make the House beautiful, but a little red hair will go a long way toward it.
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MISS RANKIN ELECTED
Montana Woman Will be the First to Sit in Congress (November 10, 1916)
With the greater part of the State heard from, Miss Jeannette Rankin this afternoon announced that she was asured of election to Congress from Montana. Reports showed her to be in the lead by 400 votes, and her managers say she will be elected by a majority of 2,000.
Miss Rankin did not finish campaigning until Tuesday night, and since then she has been watching the returns, taking only a few hours sleep. The votes was so close that no one could predict the result until this afternoon.
“I knew the women would stand by me,” said Miss Rankin., when she was assured that she had been elected the first woman in Congress. “The women worked splendidly, and I am sure they feel that the results have been worth the work. I am deeply concious of the responsibility, and it is wonderful to have the opportunity to be the first woman to sit in COngress. I will not only represent the women of Montana, but also the women of the country, and I have plenty of work cut out for me.”
As soon as it was learned that Miss Rankin had won, telegrams from all parts of the country began to shower upon her. Suffrage leaders sent messages saying that her election was significant of a great victory for the women of the country.
Miss Rankin is small, slight, with light brown hair. She is a graduate of the University of Montana and of the School of Philanthropy of New York City. Miss Rankin makes her own clothes and hats, and she is also an excellent cook.
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November 12, 1916: Montana Woman Ran More Than 25,000 Votes Ahead of Her Party, Campaigned on Horseback; Intends to Push the Extension of Child Labor Laws While in Congress
[…]
Although Miss Rankin spent several years in New York CIty, it appears that she was comparatively little known here, and many women who have been active in suffrage work in this city for years have been asking during the what the “Lady from Montana” is like, how old she is, and what she looks like.
The fact that she was so little known in New York is probably explained in the description of her characteristics given by the few persons who could be found here who had known her personally while she was in this city. According to them, Miss Jeannette Rankin is of the most modest type personally, and if one will not talk suffrage or some other problem in which she is interested, she will not talk of it herself. Wehn she began to study public speaking, according to her former teacher in this subject who is now living here, Miss Rankin was really timid.
She is about 34 years old and is about five feet four inches in height, slender with light brown hair — not red, her friends insist — and has an unusual store of energy.
[…]In these campaigns, it is said, she went into mines and to farms to argue personally with men and women to induce them to fight for suffrage. She obtained a place as a field secretary of the National American Woman Suffrage Association after leaving New York City and went to Florida to establish suffrage organizations there. Then the campaign for woman suffrage in her home state was taken up, and she resigned as field secretary of the national body to begin campaigning at home.
She is credited with having done more perhaps than any other woman in the State to obtain suffrage for the women of Montana. Then after a hard fight she was nominated for Congress by an overwhelming vote in the primaries and between the primaries and election day, it is reported, she had to fight some of the Old Guard Republican leaders in her own State as well as teh Democrats. She did a large part of her campaigning on horseback.
Her friends joined her in creating electioneering innovations. She didn’t finish her campaign until election night, it is said. On election day, her friends telephones to practically everybody in the State who had a telephone, according to reports received here, and greeted whoever answered the telephone with a cheery:
“Good morning! have you voted for Jeannette Rankin?”
“Miss Rankin is a very feminine woman,” one young woman who had known her here — and who is now a reporter on a New York evening paper, said yesterday. “She dances well and makes her own hates, and sews, and has won genuine fame among her friends with the wodnerful lemon meringue pie that she makes when she hasn’t enough other things to do to keep her busy.
[… Bemusing Anecdote followed]
Among the things which Miss Rankin has announced that she will fight for in Congress is extension of the child labor laws — she intends to represent children as well as women in Congress, national woman suffrage, mother’s pensions, universal compulsory education, and similar propositions. It is expected that she will introduce a new national suffrage bill as soon as she has the opportunity.
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November 19. 1916; Lousis Levine of the University of Montana “First Woman Member of Congress Versed in Politics”
[…]
Miss Rankin emphasized the fact that a new point of view has come to prevail in recent legislative work — the point of view of social welfare, of the effects of law upon our ways of thinking and feeling and upon the character of the coming generations.
The application of these general principles to the specific problems which the country may have to face in the near future is an inspiring task. It would be premature to expect Miss Rankin to give a definite answer to the many concrete questions which the acutely curious or the insensitively studious like to ask. She will have plenty of time between now and her first appearance in Congress to think many things over and to form opinions on a number of vital issues.
Our conversation drifted to the question of the war several times, and Miss Rankin pointed to her experience in New Zealand, where she spent the early part of 1916, and where she found the women vigorously supporting the war. Miss Rankin did not think this exceptional, but rather an indication of the fact that no war could continue for any considerable length of time without the support of the women.
This, of course, may be questioned by those who think that the present war is continuing despite the weariness and protests of the women. But to Miss Rankin, this is simply another illustration of the injustice of the present arrangement, which is just as injurious to man as it is humiliating to woman.
There is a great surprise in store the members of the new Congress when the convene in Washington next year and meet their first woman colleague. They will have to throw overboard a lot of mental baggage which they may have valued very hightly for many years. They will find in their midst not the impulsive, irrational, sentimental, capriciously thinking and obstinately feeling being which many imagine woman to be, but a strong and well-balanced personality, scientifically trained, accustomed to strict reasoning, well versed in the arts of politics, inspired by high social ideal, tempered by wide experience.
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April 7, 1917: “Seek to Explain Miss Rankin’s ‘NO’. Congress Leaders Think She Has Hurt Suffrage By Not Recognizing the Big Issue. Overcome by Her Ordeal. Her Halting Decision on War Resolution Made a Tense Scene on the Roll Call. Almost Full House Voted. Of the Fifty Opposing the War Resolution, 32 Were Republicans and 16 Democrats”
Miss Jeannette Rankin, the first woman in the history of this Government to play a part in a declaration of war by Congress, did not go to her room in the House Office Building today. She remained at home, overwrought, harrassed by conflicting emotions, beset by doubts as to the expediency of her course, but comforted in part by a conscience that controlled when she she voted against a state of war with the Imperial German Government.
It is possible that no more dramatic scene has ever been staged in the House of Representatives than when Miss Rankin, casting her initial vote in the lower body, interrupted the roll call to say, in thirteen words, that she could not vote for war. This was the most tense moment in the roll call, which resulted in the House passing the war resolution at 3:12 o’clock this morning by a vote of 373 to 50.
In the House it is not customary for members to explain their votes. Such explanations are left to members of the Senate. When the House is voted no word is expected except “Aye!” “No!” or “Present!” to the call of the Reading Clerk.
Possibly Miss Rankin did not know this when she arose, soon after 3 o’clock, and said in a shaking voice that penetrated every corner of the big chamber:
“I want to stand by my country …. but I cannot vote for war.”
There was applause from the little group of pacifists. A murmur of conversation ran through the galleries and the membership. The advocates of a declaration of war sat silent, except for a score who cried:
“Vote! Vote! Vote!”
They did not understand that Miss Rankin intended to vote “No!” although she had not actually used the word.
Speaker Clark and the Reading Clerks did not know how to record Miss Rankin. .The Chief Clerk of the House was sent to her desk. “Did you intend to vote “No”?” he asked. Miss Rankin nodded in a tired sort of way and sank back into her seat. Then she pressed her hands to her eyes, threw her head far back and sobbed.
Ther Clerk of the House called Miss Rankin’s name four times before she responded. The roll is always called twice in the House, the second call being for absentees on the first call. But Miss Rankin was present when her name was first read.
“Miss Rankin,” droned Patrick J. Haltigan, the Reading Clerk. There was no response.
“Miss Rankin!” he repeated in a louder tone.
Practically every member in the House turned toward the seat where the “lady from Montan” sat. Those in the galleries leaned forward. Miss Rankin was evidently under great mental distress. Her appearance was that of a woman on the verge of a breakdown. She clutched at her throat repeatedly. Now and then she brushed back her hair, looking upward at the stained-glass ceiling, and rubbed her eyes and cheeks nervously. She clasped and unclapsed her hands as one does under teh stress of unusual emotion.
Miss Rankin’s name was passed and the first roll call proceeded.
“Uncle Joe” Cannon, entering the chamber, learned that Miss Rankin, though present, had failed to vote. He spoke to her and is understood to have said:
“Little woman, you cannot afford not to vote. You represent the womanhood of the country in the American Congress. I shall not advise you how to vote, but you should vote one way or the other — as your conscience dictates.”
Representative Good, an Iowa Republican, who sat beside Miss Rankin, was apparently seeking to reassure and sympathize with her.
“The clerk will call the names of those who failed to respond on the first roll call,” said Speaker Clark.
There were less than a dozen names. The absenttees came in — and answered. The “R’s” were reached in the alphabetical list.
“Miss Rankin,” called the clerk. Miss Rankin started forward in her seat, then dropped backward with a look of helplessness upon her face.
“Miss Rankin,” repeated the clerk.
The woman member from Montana rose slowly to her feet. Every eye was turned upon her. She swayed slightly, as her hands groped for the back of the seat in front. Her hands found it, and her fingers closed spasmodically as she steadied herself.
“I want to stand by my country — but I cannot vote for war.” Miss Rankin said.
She looked straight ahead, staring at nothing in particular. her voice trailed off into a sort of sob as Miss Rankin flung herself back into the seat, pressed her forehead and began to cry. There was a little applause, a hum of excited conversation and then silence over the chamber once more. A woman had for the first time in the nation’s history participated in a legislative referendum on war.
Soon Miss Rankin left the chamber. She had nothing more to say — she was too overwrought to say it had she been so inclined. Today she remained at her home, and her confidants said that she wondered what the comment of the public would be.
The “practical men” of the House say that Miss Rankin missed an opportunity in not voting for the resolution. Such a vote might have rallied the women of the country and helped inestimably the suffrage cause, whcih is dear to Miss Rankin’s heart.
Miss Rankin’s vote is regarded, not as that of a pacifist, but raher as one dictated by the inherent abhorrence of women for war. Throughout all yesterday Miss Rankin was preoccupied and distressed. Not unitl the last minute, it is said, did she yield to the anti-war arguments of her inner self. She made no speech for or against the resolution, but in the morning hours, when war was declared against Germany and the United States forsook the path of peace, she broke all House precedent by interrupting a roll call and uttering thirteen words in justification of her course.
Of the fifty members who voted against war thirty-two were Republicans, sixteen Democrats, one Socialist, and one Independent. Voting affirmatively were 198 Democrats, 177 Republicans, 2 Progressives, and 1 Independent.
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Letter to the Editor published June 1, 1917… Mercedes E. Llano
It would be interesting to know just what the suffragists are trying to prove by the statements made in Helen C. Mansfield’s letter published May 28. The eleven States having the highest percentage of enlistements may be suffrage States — no one intends to deny this — but what possible connection can there be between a woman’s voting and a man’s enlisting in the army? Are we supposed to infer that in the suffrage States the men are being persuaded to enlist by the more patriotic women? Perhaps this is true in some case in all the States, but such an argument would be absolutely contradictory to the theories of the suffrage agitators. For, if women have such strong an influence over men, why can they not exercise it in questions of politics, instead of demanding the vote for themselves? As usual, the suffragists have forgotten to be consistent.
And is a woman who votes more patriotic than one who does not? Most emphatically, no! The majority of women do not want to vote, and yet nearly every woman in the coutnry is striving to do whatever lies in her power to be of patriotic service. Who has ever, as Miss Mansfield states, “made light of the patriotism of women”? She seems to imply that this has been done by persons opposed to woman’s suffrage, but surely most of us would scorn an argument so unfair, knowing as we do that, since the beginning of this nation’s history, the women have stood by her loyally in every crisis. There are, no doubt, a few weak women who, like Jeannette Rankin “want to stand by their country” — conditionally — but Miss Rankin is no more a fair representative of America’s women than Senator La Follette and Champ Clark are fair reprsentatives of America’s men.
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Next few headlines: “CROWD DESTROYS SUFFRAGE BANNER AT WHITE HOUSE; Angered at a Legend, Telling Russian Mission “America Is Not-a Democracy” AND ASSAILING PRESIDENT Women’s Party Leader Asserts Act Will Be Repeated and Police Give Warning. INDIGNATION IN WASHINGTON Congressmen and Others Deplore the Incident–Miss Rankin Withholds Her Opinion. Suffragists Sought Publicity. Angry Comments in Crowd. CROWD DESTROYS SUFFRAGE BANNER Another Banner Ordered. “Disloyal and Outrageous.” ; “MISS RANKIN VISITS BUREAU AS A SLEUTH; Women Printers’ Complaints of Overtime Investigated by Montana Congresswoman.”; : “VICTORY FOR MISS RANKIN.; McAdoo Puts Bureau of Engraving on 8-Hour Work Basis.”;
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The Case Against Suffrage: Presented by Mrs. James W. Wadsworth, Jr., Leader of Women’s Organization Which Wants No Votes
And now, as to the genuineness of the patriotism of the suffragist leaders and the sincerity of the military ardor: Don’t forget all the suffragists who, in the face of this fearful world cataclysm, agrued that if women had the vote there would be no war. Don’t forget that when our ships were being sunk, our citizens massacured at sea, our rights ignored, and our national digity spurned, not one woman among the suffragists declared herself for preparedness and against peace without honor. Don’t forget that Jane Addams, Fola La Follette, Crystal Eastman, and other prominent suffragists are still outspoken pacifists. Don’t forget that Mrs. Catt, in a speech in Columbus, Ohio, on May 18, 1917, long after we were at war, said: ‘The United States has no right to talk about making the world safe for democracy.’ ‘We had better blot the mote from our own eye before we go forth and want to blot it from the Prussian eye.’
Don’t forget that Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse, President of the Suffrage Party of New York State; Marie Jenney Howe, Alice Carpenter, and other prominent suffragists, over their signatures, made an appeal for contributions to a fund to be given as ‘a New Year’s present’ to The Masses, the revolutionary, socialistic magazine that was recently forbidden to use the mails because of its fight against conscription. And don’t forget Jeannette Rankin, the Representative from Montana, who in the solemn hour when the vote was being taken as to whether we would avenge the U-boat butcheries of our men, women, and children, whether we would take our stand with the Allies in the death struggle of democracy against militarism, stood up in the House of Representatives and quavered, ‘I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war,’ and broke down and wept.
Government is a man’s jobn. And I have no doubt that at the coming elections Maine and New York will continue with that imposing galaxy of States — Michigan, South Dakota, Ohio, North Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Iow, and West Virginia — which in the last four years voted an emphatic ‘no’ to the cry of “Votes for Women.”
[Editorial comment: It’s interesting to note that the editorial moves from venom of the militancy of women’s suffragists to venom over the pacifism of women’s suffragists. Go figure!)]
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Coming sooner or later: Wobblies, and Her second “no” vote.