Carrie Chapman Catt - Mississippi Valley Suffrage Conference, May 7-10, 1916 (Box 1, Folder 9)

Biographical Sketch CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT M. G. Peck, 1941

Two American women have displayed genius in building up great mass movements of women demanding better ^social^ condition. The first in point of time was Frances Willard, founder of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The second is Carrie Chapman Catt, who led the woman suffrage movement for thirty years in a fight to the finish with a powerful, organized opposition in Congress and throughout the nation. The struggle ended August 26, 1920, with the writing of the Nineteenth Amendment into the constitution of the United States, giving votes to women. Having seen the triumph of one cause, Mrs. Catt turned without pause to devote her energies to another, - the cause of peace and disarmament.

FAMILY BACKGROUND In origin and up-bringing, Mrs. Catt follows a typical American pattern. She was born in Ripon, Wisconsin, January 9, 1859, the second of three children, her parents being descended from ancestors who came from England to Massachusetts in the early days of the colony. Her father's name was Lucius Lane; her mother's, Maria Clinton. When Carrie Lane was seven years old, the family moved to a farm near Charles City, Iowa, where she went to a district school and had a healthy outdoor childhood. She attended high school in Charles City, riding horseback five miles thither and back each day. She had a hungry mind and read every book she could get hold of during these early years, among them Robert Ingersoll's lectures and Darwin's Origin of Species. She taught a country school to earn money to go to College, took a four-year course at Iowa State College at Ames in three years, paying her way by washing dishes at nine cents an hour the first year, and assisting in the college library at ten cents an hour the last two years.

After graduation in 1880, she studied law for awhile, then became principal of the high school in Mason City, Iowa, and later was made Superintendent of Schools there. In 1885, she married Leo Chapman, editor-owner of the Mason City Republican, and helped him run the paper. After his death, a year later, she engaged in the newspaper business in San Francisco. There she came up against the bad conditions surrounding women in the business and industrial world. Before the year was over, she decided to do what she could to improve them and, with that purpose in mind, she went back to her home state of Iowa and began to lecture on feminist subjects.

ENTERS SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT As she pondered the problem of women's inferior status in society, seeking a definite point of attack, she became convinced that lack of political power was at the bottom of it, and allied herself with the Woman Suffrage Association of Iowa, becoming State Organizer in 1887. She was a good speaker and soon rose to prominence. In 1890, she was invited to address the National Woman Suffrage Convention In Washington, D. C., and there she met Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe, and other famous women who had grown old in the cause to which she was a newcomer. From that time on, she was identified with the national movement to enfranchise women.

Following the convention of 1890, she married George W. Catt, a successful hydraulic engineer, who was in complete sympathy with her chosen career. The same year, she went into her first state suffrage campaign in South Dakota. It was a grim experience in a newly settled region burnt by a five years drought. During the next ten years, campaign followed campaign, four states granting full suffrage, others giving partial suffrage, still others refusing every concession.

-2In 1895, Mrs. Catt made a tour of the Southern states with Miss Anthony, and at its conclusion was made chairman of a newly formed Organization Committee. She chose Mary Garrett Hay as secretary of the Committee, and the two remained close collaborators for many years. From this time, Mrs. Catt became the directing energy of the suffrage association, and when, in 1900, Miss Anthony retired from the presidency, she named Mrs. Catt as her logical successor in the office.

ORGANIZES INTERNATIONAL SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

In 1902, Mrs. Catt and Miss Anthony called an international suffrage conference in Washington. Preparation for this conference involved months of correspondence with government officials and private individuals in all parts of the world, a task which was performed entirely by Mrs. Catt. She learned that there were only eight national suffrage associations in existence, and when the conference met, representatives from nine countries were present, Russia and Turkey among them. The Committee formed in Washington in 1902 called an international congress In Berlin in 1904, where the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was formally organized, with Mrs. Catt as President. The Alliance has held congresses biennially ever since, except during the first and second world wars.

During her leadership of the international movement, Mrs. Catt made many speaking tours of Europe, and in 1911, after the congress of the Alliance in Stockholm, she went around the world, organizing branches of the Alliance in South Africa, the Dutch East Indies, Philippine Islands, China and the Hawaiian Islands, and making contacts with feminists in Egypt, Palestine, India, Japan, and elsewhere in the Orient. The most dramatic part of her tour was her visit to China, where she arrived just after the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty. The tragic story of the part played by women in that revolution was told her by the Chinese feminist leaders themselves. Her last international missionary journey was made in 1922-23, and covered Europe and most of the countries of South America. At the end of the journey, she returned to Rome, Italy, where she presided for the last time at a congress of the Alliance which she had founded twenty-one years before, and retired from office, to be succeeded by Mrs. Corbett Ashby of England. In her farewell address on that occasion, Mrs. Catt stated that of the sixty nations of the world, forty now had branches in the Alliance; twenty nations had fully enfranchised women; eight had granted partial suffrage, and only fifteen countries remained where women had no suffrage.

FOUNDS WOMAN SUFFRAGE PARTY

Her first term as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association took toll of Mrs. Catt's health to such an extent that in 1904 she resigned the office, to be succeeded by Dr. Anna Howard Shaw. The following year, she suffered the loss of her husband. She was then living in New York City and had come to the conclusion that winning votes for women in the Empire State was essential to the winning of suffrage in the nation by federal amendment. In order to win New York State, it was essential to convert the Tammany-ruled metropolis which held half the population of the state. So she went at the gigantic task. She went after the women first, built up a strong city clientele in which all suffrage groups were united. By 1909, she was able to call a convention of 200 elected delegates, representing every voting precinct in Greater New York, at which time the Woman Suffrage Party, organized like the dominant political parties, but with only one plank in the platform, was launched. Over night the attitude of New York politicians changed from indifference to astonished respect. Within two years, the Woman Suffrage Party form of organization had been adopted by suffrage forces all over the nation.

LEADS FIRST NEW YORK CAMPAIGN 1915

Nothing like the intensive campaign for the ballot waged by the women of New York State from 1909 to 1917 can be cited. The statewide referenda on votes for women were held, 1915 and 1917, the latter of which carried by a good majority, and it was New York City which furnished the majority. Mrs. Catt was campaign chairman in the 1915 campaign, and the efficiency of her leadership illustrated by the fact that over 6,000 women served as watchers at the polls on election day that year.

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LEADS FEDERAL AMENDMENT CAMPAIGN At this juncture, Mrs. Catt was drafted away from the New York campaign to take again the presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in the crisis which was approaching. The World War was raging and the United States was drifting closer to it. If the suffrage issue were not to be thrust into the background, it would require truly great leadership to keep it in the public view and moving forward to its goal. By a providential coincidence, just about this time, Mrs. Catt came into possession of a large sum of money by the will of Mrs. Frank Leslie, to be used for the suffrage cause. She formed the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission to administer this fund and it was this money, to a large extent, which financed the Washington headquarters and office force, and provided emergency appropriations for the Federal Amendment campaign.

WAR YEARS With the winning of New York, the time was ripe for the submission of the Federal Amendment. But the country was now at war and the government calling for every citizen to give it undivided support. As leader of the suffrage cause, Mrs. Catt knew she must demonstrate her loyalty conspicuously, and to that end she became a member of the Woman's Division of the Council for National Defense. In consequence of this action, she was immediately dropped from a Peace society of which she was a prominent member. But her course won support for the suffrage movement from a harrassed government, and she was able, with the nation at war and rent by partisan dissentions after the war, to push Congress into submitting the Nineteenth Amendment, June 1919. Then she turned to the country to obtain the thirtysix ratifications required to put it into the Constitution. Tennessee was the thirty-sixth state to ratify, and the hardest battle of the Federal Amendment struggle was fought in the legislature at Nashville. August 26, 1920, witnessed the proclamation of the Nineteenth Amendment enfranchising women in the United States, and the end of a contest that had lasted seventy years.

PEACE AND DISARMAMENT For the first time, the feminist leader now was free to work for a cause to which she had been a life-long adherent, - international disarmament and peaceful settlement of international disputes.

She was sixty-one years of age, with immense prestige, earned by years of leadership, but with health in precarious condition. Nevertheless, after pausing long enough to write a book, telling the story of the passage and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, and to call a Pan American Women's Conference in Baltimore in 1922, she set herself to the task of bringing together and focussing upon a common peace program forces hitherto scattered and therefore more or less ineffectual.

FOUNDS CONFERENCE ON THE CAUSE AND CURE OF WAR, 1925 Most of the great national organizations of women in the United States had international cooperation as one item on their programs. She invited these organizations to combine on a disarmament program, and in 1925, she called the first Conference on the Cause and Cure of War in Washington, D. C. Nine national women's organizations were represented, a permanent Committee on the Cause and Cure of War was formed, comprising the chief officers of the member organizations, (two additional organizations came in later, making eleven in all,) and the annual conferences since that time have steadily increased in numbers and interest. Mrs. Catt served as Chairman of the Committee for some years, retiring to become Honorary Chairman in 1933 Marathon Round Tables for the study of international problems, which are a leading activity of the Committee were started by her in all parts of the country under state chairmen. The list of organizations comprising the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War was as follows:-

-4American Association of University Women General Federation of Women's Clubs National Board of the Young Women's Christian Ass'ns. National Committee of Church Women National Council of Jewish Women National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs National Home Demonstration Council National League of Women Voters National Woman's Christian Temperance Union National Women's Conference of American Ethical Union National Women's Trade Union League

After the Conference on the Cause and Cure of War was established, she aided in forming the Peace Conference, which now (1941) includes forty-one affiliated men's and women's organizations. Together, the Conference on the Cause and Cure of War and the Peace Conference represent a large section of the peace sentiment in the country. When the second world war broke out, it was proposed to reorganize the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War on a somewhat different basis, a proposal now under consideration.

Mrs. Catt has toured all the continents except Australia, and has been honored by many countries. In 1922, she addressed the German Reichstag. When the International Alliance for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship met in Istanbul in 1935, the Turkish Government issued a postage stamp carrying her portrait as founder of the Alliance. She has received many honors in her own country. The degree of Doctor of Laws has been conferred on her by the University of Wyoming, Iowa State College, Smith College, and Moravian College for Women. In 1930, she received the award of $5,000 for eminent achievement from the Pictorial Review magazine. In 1933, she was awarded the American Hebrew gold medal for her national petition of protest of American non-Jewish women against the German government's atrocities inflicted upon the Jews. In 1936, when her fiftieth anniversary as suffragist and pacifist was being celebrated, she was escorted to the White House by the presidents of many national women's organizations, where she was received by President and Mrs. Roosevelt and given a congratulatory letter by the President.

In 1939, there was a public luncheon in New York in celebration of the old leader's eightieth birthday.

The last big undertaking of her career was the Woman's Centennial in New York, November 25-27, 1940, commemorating the first hundred years of the American feminist movement. Recent honors received by her are the gold medal award, in 1940, of the Institute of Social Sciences for outstanding public service, Mr. Wendell Willkie getting a similar medal on the same occasion; the Chi Omega gold medal award for eminent achievement, 1941, presented at the White House; the Scroll of Honor presented by the General Federation of Women's Clubs at the Atlantic City convention, 1941.

Mrs. Catt has been a prolific writer of editorials, controversial articles, travel stories and current events comments. She collaborated in writing "Woman Suffrage and Politics", Scribner's Sons 1923, and "Why Wars Must Cease", Macmillan 1935. She wrote a playlet. "Mars Takes a Sabbatical", 1935, and a "Spectacle", "Listing the Grievances", for the Woman's Centennial, which was presented by students of the Vassar College Drama Department.

Mrs. Catt's home is in New Rochelle, New York, on land granted to Thomas Paine for his services, to the American Revolution.

Biographical Sketch CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT M. G. Peck, 1941

Two American women have displayed genius in building up great mass movements of women demanding better social conditions. The first in point of time was Frances Willard, founder of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The second is Carrie Chapman Catt, who led the woman suffrage movement for thirty years in a fight to the finish with a powerful, organized opposition in Congress and throughout the nation. The struggle ended August 26, 1920, with the writing of the Nineteenth Amendment into the constitution of the United States, giving votes to women. Having seen the triumph of one cause, Mrs. Catt turned without pause to devote her energies to another, - the cause of peace and disarmament.

FAMILY BACKGROUND

In origin and up-bringing, Mrs. Catt follows a typical American pattern. She was born in Ripon, Wisconsin, January 9, 1859, the second of three children, her parents being descended from ancestors who came from England to Massachusetts in the early days of the colony. Her father's name was Lucius Lane; her mother's, Maria Clinton. When Carrie Lane was seven years old, the family moved to a farm near Charles City, Iowa, where she went to a district school and had a healthy outdoor childhood. She attended high school in Charles City, riding horseback five miles thither and back each day. She had a hungry mind and read every book she could get hold of during these early years, among them Robert Ingersoll's lectures and Darwin's Origin of Species. She taught a country school to earn money to go to College, took a four-year course at Iowa State College at Ames in three years, paying her way by washing dishes at nine cents an hour the first year, and assisting in the college library at ten cents an hour the last two years.

After graduation in 1880, she studied law for awhile, then became principal of the high school in Mason City, Iowa, and later was made Superintendent of Schools there. In 1885, she married Leo Chapman, editor-owner of Mason City Republican, and helped him run the paper. After his death, a year later, she engaged in the newspaper business in San Francisco. There business and industrial world. Before the year was over, she decided to do what she could to improve them and, with that purpose in mind, she went back to her home state of Iowa and began to lecture on feminist subjects.

ENTERS SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

As she pondered the problem of women's inferior status in society, seeking a definite point of attack, she became convinced that lack of political power was at the bottom of it, and allied herself with the Woman Suffrage Association of Iowa, becoming State Organizer in 1887. She was a good speaker and soon rose to prominence. In 1890, she was invited to address the National Woman Suffrage Convention in Washington, D.C., and there she met Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe, and other famous women who had grown old in the cause to which she was a newcomer. From that time on, she was identified with the national movement to enfranchise women.

Following the convention of 1890, she married George W. Catt, a successful hydraulic engineer, who was in complete sympathy with her chosen career. The same year, she went into her first state suffrage campaign in South Dakota. It was a grim experience in a newly settled region burnt by a five years drought. During the next ten years, campaign followed campaign, four states granting full suffrage, others giving partial suffrage, still others refusing every conession.