Woman Suffrage by Federal Constitutional Amendment | Page 4

Constitution. To deny the privilege of that method to women is
a discrimination against them so unjust and insufferable that no
fair-minded man North or South, East or West, can logically share in
the denial.
3. RELIEF FROM UNJUST CONSTITUTIONAL OBSTRUCTIONS
DEMANDS IT.
The constitutions of many states have provided for amendments by
such difficult processes that they either have never been amended or
have not been amended when the subject is in the least controversial.
Their provisions not infrequently are utilized by opponents of a cause
to delay action for years. A present case illustrates. Newspapers in
Kentucky which have opposed woman suffrage, and still do so, have
started a campaign (December, 1916) to submit a woman suffrage
amendment to voters with the announced intention of securing its
defeat at the polls in order to remove it from politics for five years as
the same question cannot be again submitted for that length of time.
There are state constitutions so impossible of amendment that women
of those states can only secure enfranchisement through Federal action
and fair play demands the submission of a Federal constitutional
amendment. (See Chapter II.)
4. PROTECTION FROM INADEQUATE ELECTION LAWS
DEMANDS IT.
The election laws of all states make inadequate provision for
safeguarding the vote on constitutional amendments. Since election
laws do not protect suffrage referenda, suffragists justly demand the
method prescribed by our national constitution to appeal their case
from male voters at large to the higher court of Congress and the

Legislatures. (See Chapters III and IV.)
5. EQUAL STATUS OF MEN AND WOMEN VOTERS DEMANDS
IT.
Until the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment the National
Constitution did not discriminate against women but in Section 2 of
that amendment provision was made whereby a penalty may be
directed against any state which denies the right to vote to its male
inhabitants possessed of the necessary qualifications as prescribed by
nation and state. If the entire 48 states should severally enfranchise
women their political status would still be inferior to that of men, since
no provision for national protection in their right to vote would exist.
The women of eleven states are said to vote on equal terms with men.
As a matter of fact they do not, since they not only lose their vote
whenever they change their residence to any one of the 37 other states
(except Illinois, where they lose only a portion of their privileges), but
they enjoy no national protection in their right to vote. Women justly
demand "Equal Rights for All and Special Privileges for None."
Amendment to the National Constitution alone can give them an equal
status. Equality of rights can never be secured through state by state
enfranchisement.
6. NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF QUESTION DEMANDS IT.
Woman suffrage in every other country is a National question. With
eleven American states and nearly half the territory of the civilized
world already won; with the statement of the press still unchallenged
that women voters were "the balance of power" which decided the last
presidential election, the movement has reached a position of national
significance in the United States. Any policy which seeks to shift
responsibility or to procrastinate action, is, to use the mildest
phraseology, unworthy of the Congress in whose charge the making of
American political history reposes.
7. TREATMENT OF QUESTION DEMANDS INTELLIGENCE.

The handicaps of a popular vote upon a question of human liberty
which must be described in technical language will be clear to all who
think. It is probable that at least a fourth of the voters in West Virginia,
one of the recent suffrage campaign states, could not define the
following words intelligently: constitution, amendment, franchise,
suffrage, majority, plurality. It is probable they would succeed even
less well at an attempt to give an account of the Declaration of
Independence, the Revolution, Taxation without Representation, the
will of the majority, popular government. Such men might make a
fairly intelligent choice of men for local offices because their minds are
trained to deal with persons and concrete things. They could decide
between Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hughes with some discrimination, but
would have slight if any knowledge of the platforms upon which either
stood. A referendum in many of our states, means to defer woman
suffrage until the most ignorant, most narrow-minded, most
un-American, are ready for it. The removal of the question to the higher
court of the Congress and the Legislatures of the several states means
that it will be established when the intelligent, Americanized,
progressive people of the country are ready for it.
CHAPTER II.
STATE CONSTITUTIONAL OBSTRUCTIONS[A]
[Footnote A: Table of difficulties in each state is to be found in the
Appendix.]
MARY SUMNER BOYD
At its last session the Arkansas Legislature passed a Woman Suffrage
bill by a generous majority;