Jeannette Rankin

Rankin's campaign for one of Montana's two at-large House seats in the congressional election of 1916 was financed and managed by her brother Wellington, an influential member of the Montana Republican Party. She traveled long distances to reach the state's widely scattered population. Rankin rallied support at train stations, street corners, potluck suppers on ranches, and remote one-room schoolhouses.[7] She ran as a progressive, emphasizing her support of suffrage, social welfare, and prohibition.[3][18] In the Republican primary, Rankin received the most votes of the eight Republican candidates.[19] In the at-large general election on November 7, the top two vote-getters won the seats. Rankin finished second in the voting, defeating Frank Bird Linderman, among others, to become the first woman elected to Congress.[7][20][lower-alpha 2] During her victory speech, she said, "I am deeply conscious of the responsibility resting upon me" as the only woman in the nation with voting power in Congress.[3] Her election generated considerable nationwide interest, including, reportedly, several marriage proposals.[21]

Shortly after her term began, Congress was called into an extraordinary April session in response to Germany's declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare on all Atlantic shipping.[3] On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson, addressing a joint session, asked Congress to "make the world safe for democracy" by declaring war on Germany. After intense debate, the war resolution came to a vote in the House at 3:00 am on April 6;[22] Rankin cast one of 50 votes in opposition. "I wish to stand for my country," she said, "but I cannot vote for war."[23] Years later, she would add, "I felt the first time the first woman had a chance to say no to war, she should say it."[24] Although 49 male Representatives and six Senators also voted against the declaration, Rankin was singled out for criticism.[25] Some considered her vote to be a discredit to the suffragist movement and to her authority in Congress, but others applauded it, including Alice Paul of the National Woman's Party and Representative Fiorello LaGuardia of New York.[3]

Rankin's portrait, by Sharon Sprung, in the House of Representatives Collection

Rankin used her office to push for better working conditions for laborers.[26] On June 8, 1917, the Speculator Mine disaster in Butte left 168 miners dead. Workers called a massive protest strike over working conditions. Rankin tried to intervene, but mining companies refused to meet with her or the miners, and her proposed legislation to end the strike was unsuccessful.[15] She had greater success pushing for better working conditions in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Rankin listened to the grievances of federal workers in the bureau, which included long hours and an excessively demanding work pace. She also hired investigative reporter Elizabeth Watson to investigate. As a result of her efforts to draw attention to the working conditions of the bureau, Treasury Secretary William McAdoo convened his own investigation and ultimately limited the work day to eight hours.[26]

By 1917, women had been granted some form of voting rights in about forty states. Rankin continued to lead the movement for unrestricted universal enfranchisement. She was instrumental in the creation of the Committee on Woman Suffrage and became one of its founding members.[3] In January 1918, the committee delivered its report to Congress,[27] and Rankin opened congressional debate on a Constitutional amendment granting universal suffrage to women. The resolution passed in the House but was defeated by the Senate. The following year—after Rankin's congressional term had ended—the same resolution passed both chambers.[lower-alpha 3] After ratification by three-fourths of the states, it became the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[28]

During Rankin's term, Montana's state legislature voted to replace the state's two at-large Congressional seats with two single-member districts.[29] With little chance of reelection in the overwhelmingly Democratic western district, Rankin chose instead to run for the Senate in 1918. After losing the Republican primary to Oscar M. Lanstrum, she accepted the nomination of the National Party and finished third in the general election behind Lanstrum and incumbent Democrat Thomas J. Walsh.[15]

Rankin arguing against fortification of Guam before the House Naval Affairs Committee in 1939

After leaving Congress, Rankin worked as a field secretary for the National Consumers League, and as a lobbyist for various pacifist organizations. She argued for the passage of a Constitutional amendment banning child labor, and supported the Sheppard–Towner Act, the first federal social welfare program created explicitly for women and children.[3] The legislation was enacted in 1921 but repealed eight years later,[30] though many of its key provisions were incorporated into the Social Security Act of 1935.[31]

In 1924, Rankin bought a small farm in Georgia. She lived a simple life there, without electricity or plumbing,[32] though she also maintained a residence in Montana.[33] Rankin made frequent speeches around the country on behalf of the Women's Peace Union and the National Council for the Prevention of War (NCPW). In 1928 she founded the Georgia Peace Society, which served as headquarters for her pacifism campaign until its dissolution in 1941, on the eve of World War II.[7]

In 1937, Rankin opposed President Franklin Roosevelt's proposals to intervene on the side of the British against Germany and its allies, arguing that both sides wished to avoid a second European war, and would pursue a diplomatic solution. She testified before multiple Congressional committees in opposition to a variety of preparedness measures. When it became clear that her lobbying efforts were largely ineffective, Rankin resigned her NCPW position and declared her intention to regain her seat in the House of Representatives.[33]

Rankin began her campaign for Congress in 1939 with a tour of high schools in Montana. She arranged to speak in fifty-two of the First Congressional District's fifty-six high schools to reestablish her ties to the region after years of spending much of her time in Georgia. Once again, Rankin enjoyed the political support of her well-connected brother Wellington, even though the siblings had increasingly divergent lifestyles and political views.[34]

In the 1940 race, Rankin—now 60 years old—defeated incumbent Jacob Thorkelson, an outspoken antisemite, in the July primary,[35] and former Representative Jerry J. O'Connell in the general election.[36] She was appointed to the Committee on Public Lands and the Committee on Insular Affairs. While members of Congress and their constituents had been debating the question of U.S. intervention in World War II for months, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, galvanized the country and silenced virtually all opposition.[15]

On December 8, Rankin was the only member of either house of Congress to vote against the declaration of war on Japan.[37] Hisses could be heard in the gallery as she cast her vote; several colleagues, including Rep. (later Senator) Everett Dirksen, asked her to change it to make the resolution unanimous—or at very least, to abstain—but she refused. "As a woman I can't go to war," she said, "and I refuse to send anyone else."[38]

After the vote, a crowd of reporters pursued Rankin into a cloakroom. There, she was forced to take refuge in a phone booth until Capitol Police arrived to escort her to her office,[39][40] where she was inundated with angry telegrams and phone calls. One cable, from her brother, read, "Montana is 100 percent against you".[41] Rankin remained unapologetic. "Everyone knew that I was opposed to the war, and they elected me," she said. "I voted as the mothers would have had me vote."[42] A wire service photo of Rankin sequestered in the phone booth, calling for assistance, appeared the following day in newspapers across the country.[43]

While her action was widely ridiculed in the press, Progressive leader William Allen White, writing in the Kansas Emporia Gazette, acknowledged her courage in taking it:

Probably a hundred men in Congress would have liked to do what she did. Not one of them had the courage to do it. The Gazette entirely disagrees with the wisdom of her position. But Lord, it was a brave thing! And its bravery someway discounted its folly. When, in a hundred years from now, courage, sheer courage based upon moral indignation is celebrated in this country, the name of Jeannette Rankin, who stood firm in folly for her faith, will be written in monumental bronze, not for what she did, but for the way she did it.[44]

Three days later, a similar war declaration against Germany and Italy came to a vote; Rankin abstained. Her political career effectively over, she did not run for reelection in 1942.[7] Asked years later if she ever regretted her action, Rankin replied, "Never. If you're against war, you're against war regardless of what happens. It's a wrong method of trying to settle a dispute."[45]