The ever present prohibition issue again played an important if not a determining part.  A prohibition law was voted in by an immense majority in 1912, but the undismayed “wets” propose to secure a resubmission if possible.  They apparently regarded the woman suffrage amendment as an outer defense to be taken before the march on the main prohibition fort could be begun; and every “wet,” high and low, was on duty.  The “drys” who would do well to study Napoleon’s rule of strategy, that is, “find out what your enemy doesn’t want you to do, and then do it,” were much disturbed as to what St. Paul would think were he here, and concluded not to be over hasty about giving the women the vote.

At the Democratic convention an anti woman suffragist spoke.  The applause in the gallery and in the standing groups filling the outside aisles was uproarious and clearly represented an organized, carefully planted claque.  The leaders were an ex-brewer, an ex-saloonkeeper and the chief liquor lobbyist of the state.  It was evident that they were there to intimidate the party, and they did.  The Democrats threw a bouquet to the women in the form of a plank and then quietly repudiated it.  Practically the same thing happened in the Republican convention.  They, too, endorsed a plank and “double-crossed.”  There was apparently no difference between the two dominant parties on that score.  Men who had always been pronounced suffragists weakly confessed themselves afraid to speak for woman suffrage in the campaign lest votes be lost for their party.  Political campaigners who went into the state, with the exception of Senator Borah and Raymond Robins, were told not to mention suffrage, and they obeyed.  The wets apparently had the state literally by the throat and in order to save votes the great fundamental principle of “government by the people” was refused a public hearing.  Election Day came.  Women poll workers reported from many parts of the state that drunken hoodlums were marched in line into the precinct, saying boldly that they were going to vote “agin the ——­ women.”  The women workers testified with remarkable unanimity that their opposition was chiefly “riffraff and illiterate negroes and that it was under the direction of well-known ‘wets.’” Even an excise commissioner under pay of the National Government worked against woman suffrage all day in one precinct.

A premonition of what might happen appeared in September, when Judge John M. Woods of the circuit court instructed a grand jury to investigate the political situation in Berkely county.  He declared, as reported by the press, that election conditions had become intolerable and that in his judgment one-third of the votes in the county were purchasable.  Elections, he said, had degenerated into “an auction wherein offices went to the highest bidder.”

It was not surprising, therefore, that the cry of fraud arose from many localities as soon as the election was over, and was so insistent that the Governor called a special session of the Legislature for the announced purpose of an investigation into the charges.  Colonization, bribery, repeating and every known form of corruption was alleged to have been employed.  One of the chief newspapers of the state declared that the election scandals had surpassed all that had gone before.