The Women's Joint Congressional Committee and the Politics of Maternalism, 1920-30

5. Allies and Opponents during the Battle for Ratification, 1924

93 5 Allies and Opponents during the Battle for Ratification, 1924 The WJCC’s influence with lawmakers and the American public, first demonstrated in the committee’s successful lobby for the Sheppard-Towner Act, reached a climax with the passage of the child labor amendment. Encouraged by the overwhelming congressional vote in favor of the amendment and by what appeared to be widespread popular support for their sociopolitical agenda, the members of the WJCC launched their crusade for ratification of the amendment in the states with great optimism in the summer of 1924. The efficient mobilization of their grassroots networks and the public’s recognition of the inherent righteousness of their cause, members confidently assumed, would ensure swift ratification of the amendment by three-fourths of the states. Paralleling, and quickly dwarfing, the WJCC’s campaign on behalf of the amendment, however, was a concerted and systematic effort against ratification engineered by manufacturers and the members of patriotic associations. Tapping into every conceivable popular prejudice, groups like the National Association of Manufacturers and the Sentinels of the Republic masterfully utilized channels of publicity to convince the public and state legislators that the amendment was, at best, contrary to American ideals and habits and, at worst, a socialist scheme intended to revolutionize the nation’s economic and political system. Though the members of the WJCC had expected to encounter a certain level of resistance to their efforts on behalf of ratification, they had not antici- 94 women’s joint congressional committee pated the emergence of such a coordinated, efficient, and well-financed campaign from their opponents. Nor were they prepared for the degree to which the American public, still reeling from the impact of the red scare and World War I, proved receptive to this campaign. Summarizing their organized opponents’ efforts against the amendment in the states, Gladys Harris, a member of the League of Women Voters, commented, “The opponents built around the Amendment a palace of propaganda and set it in a gallery of mirrors—a ‘laughing gallery’ of false glass. Then they invited the public to gaze upon it, not the simple thing it was and is, but a crazy monstrosity. Caught unawares, the public instead of laughing at the distortion was frightened at what seemed the fact.”1 Similar to congressional opponents of the child labor amendment, members of right-wing and manufacturing groups drew on the language of liberalism and employed themes of socialism and communism to defeat the amendment and to discredit the proponents of federal reform legislation. Such themes figured prominently in attacks on the SheppardTowner Bill during the early 1920s. Against a gender-based health measure aimed at saving the lives of mothers and infants, red-baiting methods were largely ineffectual. But used against a class-oriented measure that proposed to expand the federal government’s role in industry and human welfare by amending the Constitution, such methods had the potential to stimulate public fears of socialism and federal centralization . Immediately following passage of the child labor amendment in Congress, WJCC organizations began preparing a legislative campaign to promote ratification of the amendment by state legislatures. Because the ratification battle took place in the separate states and not at the federal level, the WJCC’s campaign heavily depended on member organizations ’ grassroots networks. Such networks were crucial to educating the citizens of local communities on the purposes of the amendment and to garnering support for the measure in state legislatures. Following guidelines drafted by the WJCC executive committee and the officers of their respective national boards, state and local groups eagerly began their state campaigns for ratification in the summer of 1924. The local affiliates of the Women’s Trade Union League, for example, targeted wage earners in industrial cities by holding discussions of the amendment during union meetings and offering educational seminars in trade union colleges. The National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs’ network of local, state, and regional federations in forty-one states and its membership of nearly two hundred thousand women were instru- Allies and Opponents during the Battle for Ratification 95 mental to educational work in local communities throughout the nation, especially in the rural areas of the southern states and in the industrial centers of the eastern seaboard.2 Also crucial to the WJCC’s ratification struggle were the state affiliates of the National Consumers’ League. NCL state organizations in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Ohio...