Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and the Battle for a New South

9: "I cannot keep her from doing more than she ought to do" 1916-1918

192 Chapter 9 “I cannot keep her from doing more than she ought to do” 1916–1918 Although exhausted from her three years as president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association and ill with tuberculosis, Madge Breckinridge seemingly approached the 1916 legislative session with the same zeal and determination as always. Upon relinquishing the presidency of KERA, she accepted the position of legislative campaign chair, which gave her the responsibility for organizing the drive to get the General Assembly to pass a state constitutional amendment for woman suffrage. On January 4 she formally opened KERA headquarters in Frankfort. Madge stayed in the capital to work for the cause as often as her health would allow, but she found it necessary to delegate much of the responsibility. Nevertheless, she continued an active role in the struggle through her letter writing.1 Because suffragists considered the whiskey interests among their chief opponents, Madge compiled a list of prohibitionist members of the legislature . She felt these men might be persuaded to support suffrage because it would enable them to add many new votes for prohibition. She also invited the British suffragist, actress, and author Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale to speak to the legislature and to be a guest in the Breckinridge home. At the same time, Madge persuaded Senator Thomas A. Combs and Representative W. C. G. Hobbs, both Lexington Democrats, to introduce the suffrage bill in their respective chambers. KERA sponsored an elaborate luncheon for a number of house and senate members at the Capital Hotel on January 13, and five days later Madge attended a joint session of the legislature to hear Hale’s address. A week afterward, Madge, KERA president Elise Smith, and several others spoke to the Sen- 193 I Cannot Keep Her from Doing More ate Committee on Suffrage and Elections. After listening to the women, the committee voted to report the bill favorably, and on March 8 it passed the Senate by a 26-8 vote.2 Although encouraged by the senate’s action, Madge realized the chance for success in the house was not nearly so good since the new, “wet” Democratic governor, Augustus Owsley Stanley, would use the powers of his administration to defeat the bill in that body. A native of Henderson in western Kentucky, Stanley had been elected to Congress in 1902 and then had won the race for governor in 1915 by a mere 471 votes. He had made a name for himself as a flamboyant campaigner, eloquent public speaker, and opponent of monopolies and trusts. Although his administration would develop a record for progressive reform, he proved reluctant to embrace woman suffrage. Both Stanley and U.S. senator Ollie James sought to make the issue a partisan one, claiming that it was a movement of Republican women and would help only that party, while some antiprohibitionists came out in favor of submitting both a woman suffrage amendment and a statewide liquor prohibition amendment to the voters, presumably hoping both would fail. Speaking to the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments, Madge refuted the claim that suffrage comprised a partisan issue, pointing out that although Kentucky Republicans had officially endorsed woman suffrage while Democrats had not, many Democrats in Kentucky supported the cause, and the party’s national leader, President Woodrow Wilson, favored woman suffrage by state amendment. Despite the pleas of Madge and several others, the house committee voted 5-4 to report the bill unfavorably. The full house, however, voted 51-40 to put the bill on its calendar, and it also voted 37-35 to refuse to call from committee a bill that would have abolished woman suffrage in school elections. Madge and the other suffragists in the gallery cheered loudly at the announcement of these votes, although the 51-40 tally did not constitute a sufficient majority necessary to bring the suffrage bill to a vote of the full body.3 By the end of February Madge had concluded that the bill might pass the General Assembly, despite Stanley’s opposition. Allegedly, before the legislature even met, the House Rules Committee had been organized in Louisville with the purpose of defeating woman suffrage, but now the governor promised Mary LeBus that he would do nothing further to defeat the measure. In a continuing effort to woo the prohibitionists, the Lexington Women’s Christian Temperance Union gave a banquet for members 194 Madeline McDowell Breckinridge of the legislature...