of Tennessee, September 30, 1920 Josephine Anderson Pearson

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE, (Retiring from Anti-Suffrage Leadership of Tennessee)

Josephine A. Pearson Monteagle , September 30, 1920 Faithful Associates of the Tennessee Division of the Southern Woman's League for the Rejection of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment- For several years it has been my privilege, by my pen, in my class-room and on the platform, to give the best within me for the cause of Anti-Suffrage, in other states before the honored leadership of the women of my native state fell to me as successor to the lamented Mrs. John J. Vertrees, President [ofl the Tennessee State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. This organization, by official action, was merged July 1920 into the Tennessee Division of the Southern Woman's League for the Rejection of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, of which Mrs. )as. S. Pinckard is President- General. This recent action I advised for the one distinctive purpose: to defeat ratification in Tennessee of the Federal Suffrage Amendment. Personally, I felt this name (of the League] alone, on paper, bears the hall-marks of the South and the latent sentiment in southern history of "States Rights"--the basic principle upon which the Democratic party has long rested. I felt this organization which embraces not only Anti-Suffragists but State Rights Suffragists opposed to the Federal Amendment, as well as those wishing to defend the Constitutional honor Of Tennessee, is the most potent creation that we, as Tennessee women, could sustain for the one purpose of the battle versus the Federal Amendment.

My own convictions as opposed to Female Suffrage were the results of intensive investigation as "To the Wrongs and Perils of Woman Suffrage." For several years teaching and visiting at various University centers in the West, I made a study of the results of Equal Suffrage in the Western States, making trips over Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, etc. collecting data as did my honorable opponent, Dr. Helen Sumner of New York, Suffiagist from whose interesting book many of our most convincing Anti-Suffrage arguments are obtained. During this period, working under one of the greatest sociological authorities in America, Dr. Chas. Elwood, I read all available literature and histories of European and American Feminists, and studied the trend of the Feminist movement, of which Equal Suffrage is a component part. I heard most of the noted Suffrage leaders, meeting many, in this country. The broader my knowledge and actual observation and experience became, the deeper were my convictions that female suffrage, with its "Dark and dangerous side," is not a flower indigenous in the South! Through three campaigns I have been called to lead against "Votes for Women" in Tennessee since 1916. Despite the last five years of supreme personal bereavement [following the death of her mother], I have tried to give a consecrated Service to this cause; only few (including my long loyal co-laborer, Mrs. Morgan Brown, Executive Chairman) have known Why the burden has been so a part of my life. The consciousness, only, of the sacred vow to my Mother resting upon me, has made me brave in the stand against friends who have often upbraided me and also [has] given me courage and faith to enter into this last (1920) August Campaign! I felt it to be a "Holy War," as it were, a crusade in memory of my Mother for Southern Motherhood, through which her guiding spirit has led me all the way! Somehow, I felt that we in Tennessee could not fail in this most crucial test of Southern rights and honor, when Tennessee became the pivotal battleground of the Nation! We are grateful that our valiant fight-no matter what the Courts decide-has saved our honor, the "States Rights" integrity, and the Constitutional record of Tennessee.

To "our men" in Tennessee, to our distinguished legal advisors, to our own brave yeomanry of the State----'The Red Rose Brigade'!--who fled to save us and returned to protect us-we justly give the glory of the victory; for we defeated Suffrage in Tennessee! We have proclaimed to the world that we will not, without protest, submit to the enforcement upon us of the lawless certification of an Amendment that all law-abiding peoples recognize was a pseudo-proclamation on false testimony! We believe that our Tennessee Manhood will take every step, honorable, to strangle, now and forever by the Courts) with a patriotic fervor, that brooks no dictatorship of any "man higher up," this Susan B. Anthony Amendment that, if ratified, would turn over the South to negro domination!

It is an open secret that 1, personally, have suffered, professionally, [from the disapproval of I the "intolerant" for my long and unswerving steadfastness of purpose opposed to Equal Suff-rage in the South! The professional world, so far, does not forgive or excuse one of its members who has not wanted "votes for women"! This almost pathetic intolerance first met in the West, served as one of the first convincing arguments to me of the inadvisability of women in politics! Here it becomes my unpleasant duty, certainly not for my own sake at this late date, but for the sake of Anti-Suffrage, to address to this organization a special section relative to the present attitude of the still opposing potent factor.

The teacher force, in this country upholding woman suffrage, whether organized or unorganized, bears the imprint of "The Modern Educator's Trust" for suffrage that sometimes seemed a reality, and I, at least, have on more than one occasion felt the fangs of this "octopus" upon me when positions of honor were offered and then suddenly withdrawn, with the honest explanation, that it was my position as a leader of Anti-Suffrage, that forced their attitude! Notice the rally of the West-Tennessee teachers to my state-opponent for Shelby! Also notice the public state-offices in Tennessee most generally held by the most partisan Suffragists, especially those supervising state and rural school departments, when the state and county taxes are being paid by 80% Antis, at a minimum reckoning. Some re-adjustment of all this should claim your attention. Notice also, a short time ago, the suffrage organizations in even some of our southern colleges for girls; many girls coming from the training of an anti-suffrage home became a member, often, just to keep from being unpopular, not only with girls but with her instructors. This, in the South, first claimed the attention of the late Mrs. John J. Vertrees, by complaints to her of Anti-leaders (in a sister-southen state), who had been importuned by the mothers of girl-students. I knew of a college for girls in the West, where certain inducements were offered to students to proclaim themselves for suffrage and to wear the "yellow ribbon," on occasions. There is a reason for this: First: My experience in the literary world with distinguished men and women educators, gives me the right to say, truthfully, that nearly all college-bred men are theorists, very few vision practically; instead they see great economic, sociological and physiological problems all settled on paper, which often applied to real life evaporates "as the baseless fabric of a dream!" Even the once great teacher, President Woodrow Wilson, went before Congress with the plea that if it did not give the "Votes to Women" we could not, as an American Nation, win the World-War! All this type of men, with few exceptions, are for Woman Suffrage, even before any enter the political life and become "card-indexed" by the suffragists.

Permit me to refer, gratefully, to the recent conversion of such a dynamic force to our views as Prof. Gus Dyer of Vanderbilt University, who, in the past, has been such a splendid suffrage propagator in the student ranks of this section of the Educational World.

Second: The segregation sometimes too long, of women in our larger Colleges, away from the normal relations and intercourse of life, has too often suggested the cultivation of [a] sex-independence among teachers, that is not always wholesome in results. Too often the college atmosphere for women creates sex- dominance: that invariably leads to Woman Suffrage (the mildest form of feminism), then alas! to a sex-party [the] "Women's Party," political, today. By way of parenthesis, I am not sure that this new party formation spells any more serious menace to civilization than the picture, recently, of the great international suffrage leader, Mrs. Catt, marching through the streets of New York, with a negro woman on either side of her! Was she thus proclaiming her ideal of the supremacy of the negro race that threatens the South, if Federal Suffrage should ever come to us?

By conclusion of the above first and second premises, we find much of the College leadership of women for women, has been augmented and led by the distinguished heads of colleges for women. Of course the smaller institutions must be educational satellites in thought and in action of the larger ones, all, alike not desiring to recall that these great colleges for women were founded many years before this country had a vote for women: (Mary Lyon, founder of the first college for women was opposed to Equal Suffrage). As the larger colleges and their instructors became prototypes for the smaller, so in turn city school- teachers and almost every little district school teacher has gotten the genn that she is not progressive unless she is for Woman Suffrage; still more amusing, she feels if you are fighting suffrage, you are fighting women, and (bless her dear soul) thinks "Votes for Women" is the panacea for every hu- man ill! Like the old man in the mountains, who a few years ago, I heard speak; "if Billy Bryan gits'lected, we'll git all the free-silver our whisky barrels can hold!" So, these women's-right's-women, think the vote will give them "all the rights" they want-- even to enter into "the Kingdom come!"

One of the most popular American feminists, Miss Jane Addams, writing in the "Independent" exclaims: "The un-enfranchised woman of today stands outside of the real life of the world!" Think of what this means! The woman who may not vote, says this noted leader of women, "is outside of the real life of the world!" That is to say: practical life is real life; business life is real life; public office is real life! Almost anything is real life that goes outside the home. Conclusion: Home making women are not really living; is the[rel a sadder requiem for Woman Suffrage?! We trust that some of out best and valued suffrage friends will investigate further, go deeper into the feminist movement, and that honest research into causes and effects will later make them out comrades, like our own great "National President Opposed to Woman Suffrage," Miss Mary 0. Kilbreath, succeeded by Mrs. Jas. Wordsworth of NY. Says a noted author: "I believe that the fancies and follies of woman suffrage or rather the woman's movement, is a movement towards progressive national degeneration and ultimate national suicide!" At any rate, the final test of the Woman's movement must succeed or fail according as it strengthens or weakens Woman's motherhood-physical, intellectual, spiritual! Take for example the recent apparent necessary upset condition of the women in the Tennessee Capitol, through these hot August days, when we united to oppose the first "outsider" (Carrie Chapman Catt) who came into our state to attempt a ..walkover sale" of it to her Federal Suffrage business; and draw your own conclusions what this "religious fight" (to us, for ultimate peace, quiet and conservation of home), would mean to our womanhood-if kept in perpetual motion every year! We could but rightfully rise, in the majesty of our instinctive rights to resent that attempted enforcement upon us of so-called "Enfranchisement," that means the leveling of Southern woman's standards to the equality of men, or to the "great outsider" herself, Mrs. Catt, proctaimer of Equal Sufftage for negro women!

This so-called liberation of women in making their lives and their work approximate to the lives and the work of men, has been attained more by college leaders than any other set of women, far more than the lives of their wage- eaming sisters in the stores and factories. [Their] innate instincts of womanhood causes them to shrink from the vortex of feminism, as was illustrated in the recent large number of young women in Nashville shops who were "Anti," and many voluntarily, during the campaign, wore the red rose, one even decorating thus her typewriter. Most of the best real busi ness women of America, among whom are our own splendid associates: Mollie Claiborne, Willie Field, Louise Sloan, Julia Hindman, Mary Shackleford, Zetta Armstrong, land] Anne Rankin, editors and writers; Willie Bettie Newman, artist of international fame; and a host of others all over Tennessee who wrote me, offering their services, such as Eleanor Gilispie, Fayetteville; Mrs. Paty, popular proprietor of The King Hotel, Tullahoma, Mrs. Moore (?) of Harriman, who for twenty years, has successfully organized, owned, enlarged and operated great mining interests. All these [antisuffrage women] superbly challenge "Votes for Women" as an instrument for assistance in the great business world of men! Facts are usually challenged, so I take them from the statistical publication of highest repute and unimpeachable integrity-the official Journal of the American Statistical Association. First, it is proven that half of the college graduates do not marry at all. This conclusion is accepted by women leaders themselves, as indisputable. Miss M. Carey Thomas, president Bryn Mawr College, once my honored hostess, in the Educational Review says: "that 50 percent of college women marry and 40 percent bear and rear children-a gracious condescension to Nature and to Society," which should, in her opinion, save them from all criticisms.

Do you, women peers of my native state, surmise, that any sacrifices ever made, or ambitions of a professional career ever attained, have recompensed the loss and love and companionship of home for the desolated spinster, no matter if her life giv[ingi service is voluntary? In way of my own Atonement I offer you this as my own conclusive evidence, in this message and as my personal tribute to the highest Coronation of Women-Motherhood!

I have given my life-work for what I have felt were the highest educational standards, ideals, progressively, for my sex. I do not believe that the object of woman's creation is merely to produce commodities and oddities, or to amass learning. I believe that the highest education for women is, to yet undergo radical scholastic and vocational changes; that real womanhood and her FAMILY may not perish from the Earth!

I ask you to take kindly these thoughts and suggestions and that you hold fast to the inheritances of our beloved Southland. Never let die its traditions of woman's protection against the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which bears the name of a woman as antipodal in birth and ideals to the South, as are the poles of the Universe!

Thank God Anti-Suffrage is now popular in dear old Tennessee! Educational revolutions and evolutions are sure to follow for the future Woman's welfare that the average suffrage-teacher, confined to her text-book and intolerant ideas, backed by no intelligent arguments, cannot possibly conceive.

Then I urge patience with these sisters and all our mistaken, to us, friends, whose convictions we trust may be re-awakened! Some of those in suffrage ranks are most dear to me. They have been true friends in many vicissitudes; some, as the loved contemporaries of my Mother, will never know what this campaign cost, my often-near "parting of the ways" [from] some I most cherish! Again, others, with the tents of their convictions pitched in the opposite camp, "have burning" for me still our mutual friendship! For the sake of these, all of them, I have never felt the least bitterness, during this the most desperate fight, I trust, you and I may ever be called to enter! Be this as it may, you, lantisuff'ragel women of the Tennessee Division, have been wonderful coworkers! Never were the hours too long for your faithful service; never the days too hot, or the nights too dark or full, for you to not, at once, loyally respond to a call from Headquarters! We all now know something of the spirit that led "our boys" to fight in the trenches! They gave us the faith for this great moral battle in Tennessee history!

I am very tired and wary, even in the hour of victory; I feel I must soon, formally, ask you to accept my resignation as President of this distinguished body of women. I sadly need all relief from responsibility of the headship of management. I have kept the faith; the race for the time being is won! The results now pending in the courts may bring new complexities for administration; so this is my final official and retiring message!

Our Vice President, and my successor, Mrs. George A. Washington, is a woman of rare charm, sincerity, and is very "level-headed!" She has done, modestly, so much in her own home county of Robinson, along lines that will of themselves, give her prestige as a woman of ability to "Carry on" any other woman's work for women in her native state!

I commend her to you, with my heart's best blessings! That she and you will ever rally to the banner of "States Rights" for our beloved Southland, I feel assured!

In conclusion, I ask that you be strong of heart, firm and determined in purpose, land] judicious in every action, and may the "red rose"-talisman of the (1920) August victory in Tennessee, "ever on your bosom wave," emblem in your hearts of hope and faith and courage through future years!

(Signed) Josephine A. Pearson, (Retiring President). Miss Josephine A. Pearson, Southern writer and educator, having held the chair of Philosophy and History and served as associate head of colleges for women in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Missouri, also later in Virginia, has for the last five years led the anti-suffrage women of her native state ....

Note This letter, part of which was printed in the Chattanooga Times, Oct. 31, 1920, is from a typescript in the Josephine Anderson Pearson Papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville. It is reprinted here exactly as found except that a number of typographical errors have been corrected. For biographical information about Josephine Anderson Pearson, see the publications listed here