Now in the Bull Moose Party -- there's a paradox for you -- the Bull Moose Party, women are given equal rights in a political party in a big way. And his nomination is seconded in 1912 at the Bull Moose Convention by Jane Addams. And the former president of Harvard, Charles W. Eliot, says, "It was a spectacular proceeding, but in exceedingly bad taste, because a woman has no place in a political convention." This from the liberal president of Harvard who was backing Woodrow Wilson. So that shows you where women were at that point.

The Progressive Party ensured that women would be represented on the national committee. It's the first time women ever literally vote for a President because states which had the right to vote had women electors for the first time and they voted for Theodore Roosevelt in that election. In 1913, Illinois gives women suffrage, because the Bull Moose Party has the balance of power in the legislature, and that's the first time a state east of the Mississippi grants women's suffrage. Going into 1912, only nine states had women's suffrage and you need three-quarters of the states to amend the Constitution.

So you get this sequence, you know, TR coming out for it, then the women stepping up the pressure in a bipartisan way in 1913, the Bull Moose victory in Illinois for women in 1913, and by that point TR is into it really big because he's working with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union right down on the strike lines in New York City, in Manhattan. So the reporters will follow. So the women workers will get publicity. He's testifying in front of the New York legislature and so on for women's labor, women's labor union movements and so on and going into 1914 he makes it a big issue. That's when the amendment is first introduced and, by the way, it's the Democrats who are the chief obstacle to the passage of it.