Credit for Suffrage.

One great historic measure is to be recorded to the credit of this first session of the Sixty-sixth Congress. I do not refer to the League of Nations

nor to any feature of the program which may be attempted as the result of our participation in the World War.

On Wednesday, May 21, the third day after Congress convened, the House of Representatives passed by a vote of 304 yeas to 89 nays the following resolution.... "The right of citizens of the United States shall not be denied or abridged by the United States on account of sex."...

Now that it is conceded the Amendment is to become a part of the Constitution, the question of credit for the wonderful achievement is the subject of some lively controversy. Naturally, there is some feeling of rivalry on this point between the two wings of suffrage workers. But where would we be except for the seventy years of persistent education on which the older, more conservative workers have relied to establish the right of women to the full privileges of citizenship? At the same time, those who accused the militants of turning back the clock were wrong. The wonderful pageants they instituted, their unceasing social and political activities, the martyrdom of prison and hunger strike which these women of highest character suffered for their convictions all played a large part in awakening Congress from its lethargy and in causing a remarkable change in sentiment that has taken place....

My basic reason for believing that women's suffrage will give us better government is that I think it will greatly increase the interest in public questions; that it will tend to make public affairs the subject of everyday conversation at the family table and wherever folks get together; that the more intimate knowledge and familiar understanding will uproot the idea that seems to possess us, that government is a game for the politicians to play exclusively and for the voters to umpire and take sides now and then; that, instead, we shall learn to realize that affairs of government--national, state, and local--are like affairs of the household, everyday matters that concern the everyday welfare of all the people. And that like the household, government must have the watchful everyday attention of all its citizens if it is to serve the interests of the people who are paying for its benefits and who are entitled to the best service that it can be made to render.

June 1919

Belle Case La Follette was one of the leading suffragists' in Wisconsin. The wife of Robert M. La Follette Sr., she took over the magazine upon his death in 1925.