The West Virginia anti-suffragists, through their counsel, Joseph Holt Grimes, have filed an appeal to the courts for a writ of mandamus compelling the certification to the President and Congress of the rejection of the Federal suffrage amendment by the West Virginia Legislature instead of ratification, by Governor Cornwell and the two presiding officers of the Legislature.

Briefly, the appeal is based on the following grounds:

1st. The amendment was voted upon by the West Virginia Senate on March 1 and defeated by a tie vote of 14 to 14, reconsidered on March 3 and again defeated. Under Rule 52 of the West Virginia Senate no measure once decided, then reconsidered, can be acted upon again during the session. The substance of this rule is older than the United States, and comes down from the first free parliament of England as an essential parliamentary rule of procedure.

2d. Rule 69 of the West Virginia Senate requires a vote of two-thirds to suspend any rule.

3d. Senator A. R. Montgomery, an anti-suffragist, duly elected to the Senate from the largest and most populous district in the State, was unseated on March 10 by a bare majority vote, regardless of the State constitutional provision requiring a two-thirds vote to expel a member.

4th. After illegally unseating and expelling Senator Montgomery, who had been carried on the rolls of the Senate right up to the day he was unseated, the Senate, without suspending Rule 52, which would have required a two-thirds majority under Rule 69, again acted (for the third time in one session) on the Federal suffrage amendment, ratifying it by a vote of 15 to 14 by means of the vote of Senator Bloch, who came across the country from California to vote for suffrage.

The facts in regard to Senator Montgomery are as follows: Some months ago he went to Illinois, temporarily living in that State while on a contract as an engineer (somewhat as Mr. Hoover has traveled to Australia, South Africa, China and Europe while retaining a legal residence in California). The law provided that any man may travel and engage in business or contracts requiring his temporary residence outside of the State, and still retain his residence in the State. It will be remembered that Judge Hughes lived for eight or nine years in Washington and then went back to New York and voted from a room in a hotel in 1916.

At the time of his departure for Illinois, there being no regular legislative session until 1921, Senator Montgomery submitted a letter to Governor Cornwell, in which he offered his resignation. The resignation was never accepted, never transmitted to the Senate, although the Constitution makes it mandatory of the Governor, in case of a vacancy, to call a special election to fill it. Instead, Senator Montgomery’s name was carried on the rolls of the Senate, which knew nothing whatever about his offer to resign.

After completing his business in Illinois Senator Montgomery returned to West Virginia, publicly declared that he desired to perform the duties of his office as a Senator, called on the Governor and withdrew his resignation, and took his seat in the Senate March 9.

Even on the roll call which unseated him Senator Montgomery’s name was called, and his vote, cast against his own expulsion, was recorded until suffrage Senators proceeded, in defiance of the State Constitution, to unseat him by first taking away his vote and then voting to unseat him by a majority of one, where the Constitution required two-thirds!

“How can such things by done?” the average American will sk.

They cannot be done under the law, and can only be done illegally when suffragists have succeeded in demoralizing their legislative servants to the point where they would rather break the law than disobey the commands of their political mistresses!

We carefully confine ourselves “to the law and the testimony.” The bare facts are enough to convince anybody with any respect for law and order that the suffragists are poisoning the fountains of law when they compel legislators who make the statue law to break the fundamental written law which is supreme—the State Constitution.

When they an further compel fifteen “new men” in a State Senate not only to betray their constituents after the people in their districts gave a larger majority against suffrage than the whole State gave votes in favor; not only to expel a fellow member in defiance of the Constitution and common decency, but to violate and repudiate two of their own rules of procedure handed down from the first free parliament of the world—we have the full measure of the fruits of feminism.

West Virginia is no isolated incident. It was in June, 1918, that the suffragists refused a pair to Ollie James on his deathbed, thus “destroying the decencies and courtesies of the United States Senate,” in the words of Senator Reed, that had been in practice for one hundred and forty years. In 1919 they “roped, threw, tied and branded” no less than six State legislatures into violating their State Constitutions by passing illegal Presidential suffrage bills, forcing the Indiana Legislature to pass such a bill almost immediately after it had been declared unconstitutional by the Indiana Supreme Court, and forcing the Ohio Legislature to pass such a bill for a third time even after it had been repealed by the people once and referred to the people by petition a second time. From these facts, which nobody can successfully dispute, no sane, thinking citizen can avoid the conclusion that suffragism is polluting the law at its source, making the elected representatives of the people the supine servants of the female lobby, and henpecking politicians out of any resemblance to real men. Not only the observations of a great Cardinal, not only the studies of an expert scientist, but the demonstrations of the leading suffragists themselves in State legislatures all prove that “victory” for suffragism means the degeneration of the race.