Mrs. OLIPHANT. I desire to say that whenever I speak during campaigns I receive a salary.

Mr. Moss. And your organization has in it paid workers, has it

not?

Mrs. OLIPHANT. Yes.

Mr. Moss. Why, certainly.

Mr. GRAHAM. I did not suppose that any of those questions were directed towards the creation of an organization and the paying of salaries; I supposed that they were directed toward the question whether there was a "corrupt lobby" fund. [Laughter.]

Mr. TAGGART. There was no such fund developed in the testimony. Mr. GRAHAM. I quite agree with you; therefore it is unnecessary to pursue that line of questions further.

Mr. Moss. Yes.

Mrs. DODGE. I now introduce Mrs. James Wells, of Brownsville, Tex., who is the present head of the organization now existing in Texas, which is a temporary State organization at this time.

STATEMENT OF MRS. JAMES WELLS, TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN TEXAS ASSOCIATION OPPOSED TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

Mrs. WELLS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I would like to call your attention to a few salient facts connected with the question whether this proposition should go through Congress, or be sent to the people directly. It is an unpleasant subject, but I will have the courage to open it.

There are some of our citizens who doubt seriously the wisdom of the fifteenth amendment to our Constitution. That affects us in the South. It is roughly estimated that there are over 4,000,000 colored women in the South. I have asked the suffragists whether, if the women are enfranchised in this country, they are going to allow those colored women to vote or not; and if they do not allow them to vote, how are they going to prevent it? And even if they can prevent it, is it wise to invite such a condition?

I asked this question of a leading suffragist in the city of New Orleans, at their headquarters on Camp Street, and she said, "Why, we have no problem to face at all; we do not intend to allow them to vote. We will disfranchise them, even though it should be necessary to sacrifice some of the white women."

A southern woman told me in Washington yesterday that she had become a suffragist-I did not open the conversation; I never open that subject with a suffragist. [Laughter]. But I was unexpect edly attacked at a social function, and she put me on the defensiveand it is very easy to put an antisuffragist on the defensive, because those are our only tactics-and she called upon me to say why we had so little consideration for our sex as to obstruct other women in what they wanted, and so on. She said, "I am a suffragist." I said, “You are a southern woman and a suffragist? I do not understand how that can be". She said, "The reason why I am a suffragist is because I have seen the negro servants have the vote when I had none." Then I said, "What are you going to do about the There are as many negro women as men, if not

negro women?

more."

Mr. NELSON. Do the negro men vote-their husbands?

Mrs. WELLS. No; she did not say whether they were married or not. She said that the negro men were voting, and that was the reason why she thought she should have a vote.

Mr. NELSON. But what I am trying to get is the point that you are making now; do the negro men vote there in the South? Mrs. WELLS. Yes.

Mr. NELSON. Why do you conclude that the negro men vote there? Mrs. WELLS. The suffragist said that; I do not know anything about whether they vote or not, of course, because I am not connected with politics. But the suffragist said that the reason she had become a suffragist was that she saw negro men voting when she could not vote. I doubted whether the negro men voted, because I had heard that they were not allowed to vote very freely in the Southbut I can not prove that. [Laughter.] She said that they did; that she knew it, because she had seen them going around in a limousine to cast their vote. [Laughter].

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I have seen them voting by thousands and tens of thousands; but they do not vote as much as they used to [Laughter.]

Mrs. WELLS. Well, that is germane; but we were not discussing that question; I wanted to get at the question of the negro women voting; and so I said, "What are you going to do about letting the negro women vote if you have woman suffrage?" She said, "We are not going to allow them to vote." I said, "How are you going to prevent them? I do not think you can." She said, "We can prevent it, just as we do or can prevent the negro men from voting." She had just said she had seen negro men voting, and I did not contradict her, because she said something so valuable to our argument in the next sentence that I let her go on with that.

Now, to come back to the negro question, some one said this morning, "We are going to have a white South because of the figures;" she said that if the women were enfranchised in this country we would have a white South politically, because there were more white men and women than the entire negro population in the South.

We contend that the change would result in a smaller proportion of white votes being cast than is now the case, because of these facts: These figures are taken from the United States Census reports-I do not know if I am very clear, because I am an inexperienced speaker, but I am very much in earnest; I have come 2,000 miles to help Mrs. Dodge in presenting our views.

Woman suffrage would incresae the power of negroes in politics, as the per cent of negro women to all women in the United States is 9.9 per cent, while the percentage of negro men to all the men of voting age is 9.1 per cent. In the 11 Southern States in which women are most numerous, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, the percentage of negro women of voting age to all women over 21 years of age is 35.3, while the percentage of negro men to all men is only 33.3. We take this from the abstract of the census of 1910. This is not a wild statement.

Who would doubt that a larger percentage of eligible negro women would vote than of white women? Two States have a larger negro population than white-only two. Many counties in the South have from two to three times as many negro as white residents. I heard

one of the ladies of the suffrage association say to-day that they numbered in their organization Democrats, Republicans, and Socialists, and every form of political activity. We are happy in including both the two great political parties; but I am equally happy to inform you that we include no Socialists-not in the anti-suffragists. We have no support from them, and we never support them. But we have many leading Democratic and Republicans citizens. I am a Catholic and a Democrat. I can not understand how Southern women—I speak for them; I claim no knowledge of the Northern women-I can not understand how Southern women can so far forget the memory of Thomas Jefferson and State rights as to insist upon having a minority of men in your Congress pass this constitutional amendment against our desire.

Now, you know that we have peace in the South-this is an unpleasant subject, but I have got the courage to open it, and I am going to open it-we have peace in the South after 50 years. Thirty years after Appomattox the rush of volunteers in the SpanishAmerican War showed a preponderence of Southern names that proved that peace in the South. We all live under the same flag and we love it and fight for it, and we enrolled many men of the South to fight for the Union in the Spanish-American War. A great many men of the South, and of the North too, believe that the question of race hatred would have been settled peacefully and wisely, had it not been for a few malcontents and the vitriolic pen of one woman. We all believe that.

Here are a few malcontents of our sex who are going to take the responsibility of opening up in the South the question of State rights. It will certainly be opened if the gentlemen on this committee do not hear our appeal, and pass it on to the next and then to the next, and allow this short cut that Mrs. Oliphant so well described to get this power into their hands.

Now, there is one thing I would like to refer to: Some years ago in the Texas Legislature there was a resolution known as the Burmaster resolution No. 19, the object of which was for the question of suffrage to be submitted to the voters; but the wording of the resolution said "to the people." I opposed this resolution, and a very dear friend, and an ardent suffragist, tried to dissuade me. I said, "Very well, then; why do you not let the people vote on it? You say that here women are not people, because they do not vote; construe the phrase as including women, and we will let it go through the legislature without opposition." Only men were "people" in Texas last April, but the Burmaster resolution did not provide for leaving the question to the qualified voters alone. I then proved to her that there is no woman suffragist in this country that is willing to leave this question to be submitted to the vote of the men and women of this country; when they do that, we will not oppose them. But they will never do it, because they fear the result. That would be pure democracy.

Mr. TAGGART. Do not ladies vote at school elections in Texas? Mrs. WELLS. I do not know, because I know nothing about politics. Mr. TAGGART. But do they not vote in school elections?

Mrs. WELLS. No, sir; I do not think they do. I do not think they vote on anything.

Mr. TAGGART. They certainly vote at school elections.

Mrs. WELLS. No, sir; I do not think they have any franchise; if they do I do not know anything about it. We do not oppose that on principle.

Mr. TAGGART. The colored women do not take any part in politics in any of the States-we have them in all the States.

Mrs. WELLS. But colored women would take part in sending a woman to the legislature if they had the right.

Mr. TAGGART. They would be in the same position as colored men. Mrs. WELLS. I think they would show far more zeal than colored men- —as I know them in Texas; of course, I do not know the darkies in any other State; but I know the Texas colored women would vote. Of course, I can only speak of my own State. It is a difficult proposition to discuss as to other States.

Mr. TAGGART. Do you think a colored woman would be a much more difficult person to deal with than a colored man?

Mrs. WELLS. Yes, sir; and she would vote in Texas. She would be proud to vote.

Mrs. DODGE. I will next introduce Miss Lucy Price.

The CHAIRMAN. Of what association?

Mrs. DODGE. She is the secretary of the Cleveland, Ohio, association. That is the branch in Cleveland of the State association of Ohio.

STATEMENT OF MISS LUCY PRICE, SECRETARY OF THE CLEVELAND ASSOCIATION OPPOSED TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

Miss PRICE. Mr. Chairman, you were told this afternoon that our opponents, or at least those who were speaking, put the question of woman's suffrage above every other question. Now, I do not think my association does that. We have two things that we are most vitally interested in, and we believe that they are one and the same thing; that is, first, the good of the country, the best thing for all the men and the women and the children of this country; and the second thing is democracy.

Now, I believe in democracy sufficiently to believe that in the end, democracy is going to mean the best thing for this country, whether at the time some vote is taken on some question and an affirmative vote is taken, whether we believe the negative vote is right or not. We do not believe we can progress as we have progressed, and that we can achieve the kind of progress which has made the nation what we are to-day without democracy.

You were told that if the minority could not control the great majority, this democracy would be a different thing. The very thing that differentiates this nation, as a nation, is that we do have majority rule. Now, I believe that on the question of woman suffrage, above every other question, we must consider what is going to be the best for the country, and what is in accordance with our basic principles of democracy. This morning I heard in this room the most outspoken, the most dangerous arguments against democracy that I have heard in many a year in any public forum. The appeal against democracy was that we want a Federal amendment, because we do not want the American voters to vote on this question, because they

will be driven in blocks on the question; and we do not want them to be given an opportunity to do that.

Mr. GRAHAM. Because they are ignorant and corrupt?

Miss PRICE. Because the American voters are ignorant and corrupt; you were told in these very words that such people as that control our elections and control our Government. You were told in effect, then, that you gentlemen were sent here by just such blocks of people as that-ignorant, corrupt aliens, who control our Government. Those were the exact words. It was an attack on the open door policy. I want to be fair to the speaker and say that she did say afterwards that she did not attack it; that she believed in it; but every argument she made was an argument along that line.

I am just as much an American as anyone else; my ancestors have fought in every war that we have had. But when they fought they were fighting for just such a democracy-which means that the voter votes on such questions in which he is interested, and upon which we can trust the voters of this country. We were told that the suffragists are going to get the vote, and it is simply a question of how they are going to do it.

Of course, we think that the question of how you are going to do a thing is just as important as what you are going to do, if we are going to have an honest and upright Government.

You were told that there were only two ways of getting this woman's suffrage; you were told that one way was too hard, and that was by the votes of the voters. Out in our State, of which I am very proud, we defeated a measure called the constitutional stability measure, which was to some extent to curtail the frequency of initiative and referendum elections at the time when more and more initiative and referendum measures were being passed all over the country. At this very time, when we had said it was the first time in our history that we were going to have the people vote directly for presidential nominations; you were told that at this time that "we will not get the people of the States, if we can help it, to vote upon this proposition, because it is too hard to do it-not because it is not fair or because it it not right, but because it is too hard to do; we want, therefore, some voters, some legislators, to settle this question for the whole country." The first method is too hard, and we claim that the second method is undemocratic.

You were told that the legislatures were more corrupt than you—I suppose they mean the legislatures. But, gentlemen, do not be too secure, because just as I was taking my seat a suffragist said, "Yes; I am going to sit here and watch them, for all of them belong to the vicious interests; and I want to see to what extent this committee is vicious and to what extent it is corrupt." [Laughter.]

And you see the great mass of the voters of this country, the aliens and all the others, are not the only people who are under the suspicion of being corruptible and of being corrupt.

Mr. GRAHAM. The committee has not arisen above its source. [Laughter.]

Miss PRICE. I am willing to trust the people of the States; I am willing to trust this committee, too. You were told that any man who believed in suffrage also believed in the constitutional amendment, and that any man who did not believe in suffrage talked about State's rights; and then I think, gentlemen, that all the men on this