Congressional Reports in Favor of An Amendment to the National Constitution Prohibiting the Disfranchisement of United States Citizens on Account of Sex.
[Harper, Ida Husted]. Congressional Reports in Favor of An Amendment to the National Constitution Prohibiting the Disfranchisement of United States Citizens on Account of Sex. (New York: National Headquarters [National-American Woman Suffrage Association], ND, but ca. 1899).
8vo, 12pp; Library of Congress duplicate stamp at last page (superimposed upon the first few lines without obscuring the text, however); “LC” perforated stamp at lower margin of last leaf; additionally Mrs. Harper has corrected one sentence in paragraph one; printed self-wrappers (stapled); wrappers dusty and darkened; about very good. In a custom-made lettercase.
Ida Husted Harper’s copy with her annotation, Prepared by Mrs. Harper, 1903, at upper margin of pamphlet and notation, Gift/Mrs. I.H. Harper/Jul-6-26, at lower margin of page two. An overview of the legislative hearings on the Sixteenth Amendment (which later would become the Nineteenth Amendment) from its introduction in 1869 through 1893. Language supporting woman suffrage is quoted from various of the 11 reports (five from the Senate and six from the House committee) favoring woman suffrage. The arguments cite the failure of the constitution to protect fully the rights of citizens to vote and hold office (failures which have been remedied except in the instance of women); the fact of dependency by one sex upon another is no bar to suffrage nor does the capacity for military duty have a “connection with a capacity for suffrage”; as property-owners subject to taxation and legislation, women are without representation; the legal discrimination against women which impedes their ability to earn a living would be alleviated; and, if “suffrage is to be given man to protect him in his life, liberty and property, the same reasons urge that it be given to woman...” This précis concludes:
No petitions for human liberty have equaled in the number of signatures those presented to Congress during the past thirty years by the women of this nation asking for their enfranchisement....Not a step in the progress of women—higher education, increased property rights, larger industrial opportunities—could have been gained if it had depended upon the individual votes of a majority of men. It would be only an act of simple justice for Congress to grant their prayer...
Ida Husted Harper (1851-1931), journalist and suffragist, grew up in Indiana and as a school girl displayed a gift for writing which she put to use throughout her life (NAW, pp. 139-140). She wrote a weekly column for a Terre Haute newspaper called “A Woman’s Opinions” for some 12 years and in 1890 became the editor-in-chief of the Terre Haute Daily News. Harper, who long had advocated woman’s suffrage, became secretary of the Indiana National Women’s Suffrage Association in 1887 and with its president Helen Mar Gougar helped to organize conventions in each of Indiana’s Congressional districts. A decade later after Harper had overseen, at Miss Anthony’s behest, press relations during the California campaign for a state suffrage amendment, Miss Anthony asked Mrs. Harper to become her official biographer. The two women read through Miss Anthony’s voluminous correspondence and papers and in 1898 the two-volume Life And Works Of Susan B. Anthony appeared (Mrs. Harper later published a companion third-volume). Harper also assisted Anthony in the writing of Volume IV of History Of Woman Suffrage (1902) and later completed Volumes V and VI. Though an able lecturer, she preferred to write on behalf of woman suffrage; from 1899 on, her columns, articles, and letters regularly appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout the country. When Carrie Chapman Catt returned as President of the NAWSA in 1915, she asked Mrs. Harper to take charge of the new Leslie Bureau of Suffrage Education. “Using public relations techniques that were remarkably modern, Harper sent out hundreds of pieces from the national headquarters in Washington that were repu
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