This story was published in the Aug. 26, 1930, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
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Washington, D.C., Aug. 25. — In nationwide celebration of the tenth anniversary of suffrage, women of America will turn again tomorrow to that 70-year-old pioneer campaigner of the woman’s cause, Carrie Chapman Catt, as chief spokesman.
Her anniversary address will be broadcast Wednesday to luncheon table festivities from coast to coast, between 2 and 2:30 eastern standard time. In relating the hope of the founders, she will translate past struggles for the ballot into terms of future world peace.
Mrs. Catt also will call attention of the nation to a $250,000 league of women voters foundation fund memorializing a “roll of honor” of women leaders who campaigned for suffrage.
Success gradual
Taking stock of what ten years had accomplished in official recognition to the women who battled for the ballot, their leaders today saw that feminine names gradually had filtered into high places.
None was on the list of cabinet or supreme court. And the senate, where the suffrage question was most bitterly fought, today was merely threatened by feminine invasion from the electorate, with Ruth Hanna McCormick, representative at large from Illinois, campaigning for the senatorial nomination.
But the house could show an 8 to 0 ratio as against ten years ago. In 1920 pioneer Jeannette Rankin (1917-19), Montana, had gone, and Alice Robertson, (1921-23) and Winifred Huck (1922-23) had not arrived.
Woman Register Joy
Today the “Little Women Bloc” of the 435-member house marked the suffrage anniversary celebration by appreciations as follow:
“Suffrage? A success!” pronounced Mrs. Pearl Oldfield, democrat, Arkansas, who has chosen to cut her political career short by not running for reelection to the seat formerly held by her husband.
“It justifies the faith of the pioneers,” said Rep. Katherine Langley, republican of Kentucky.
“We who are in politics owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the suffrage pioneers,” Rep. Mary T. Norton, democrat of New Jersey, said.
Awakening near
“Women are more and more awakening to political consciousness,” said Rep. Ruth Baker Pratt, republican, New York.
“Equal sharing of responsibility and privileges is so fundamentally right it is difficult to realize what courageous pioneering it took ten years ago,” said Rep. Ruth Bryan Owen, democrat, Florida.
“My thanks to Jeannette Rankin, who, being first, bore the brunt of the opposition,” said Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers, republican, Massachusetts.
“Just one half the country’s assets of intelligence were overlooked before women got the vote,” said Rep. Florence P. Kahn of California, republican.
48 have high positions
A decade ago the congressional directory, official who’s who in important positions, listed but 17 women in 1924 pages covering the ten executive departments. And some of them were in parenthesis. Today that list had been lengthened to 48 names in 34 pages, and all were in the open on equality of typography with the men.
