[1]The Woman"s Party started with a membership of all Congressional Union members in suffrage states. Anne Martin of Nevada was elected chairman.
{42}
power to free women; a party which became a potent factor of protest in the following national election.
This first step towards the solidarity of women quickly brought results. The Republican National Convention, meeting immediately.
after the Woman"s Party Convention, and the Democratic National Convention the week following, both included suffrage planks in their national platforms for the first time in history. To be sure, they were planks that failed to satisfy us. But the mere hint of organized political action on suffrage had moved the two dominant parties to advance a step. The new Woman"s Party had declared suffrage a national political issue. The two major parties acknowledged the issue by writing it into their party platforms.
The Republican platform was vague and indefinite on national suffrage. The Democratic Party made its suffrage plank specific against action by Congress. It precisely said, "We recommend the extension of the franchise to the women of the country by the states upon the same terms as men." It was openly stated at the Democratic Convention by leading Administration Democrats that the President himself had written this suffrage plank. If the Republicans could afford to write a vague and indefinite plank, the President and his party could not. They as the party in power had been under fire and were forced to take sides. They did so.
The President chose the plank and his subordinates followed his lead. It may be remarked in pa.s.sing that this declaration so solidified the opposition within the President"s party that when the President ultimately sought to repudiate it, he met stubborn resistance.
Protected by the President"s plank, the Democratic Congress continued to block national suffrage. It would not permit it even to be reported from the Judiciary Committee. The party platform was written. The President, too, found it easy to hide behind the plank which he had himself written,
{43}
counting on women to be satisfied. To Mrs. D. E. Hooker of Richmond, Virginia, who as a delegate from the Virginia Federation of Labor, representing 60,000 members, went to him soon after to ask his support of the amendment, the President said, "I am opposed by conviction and political traditions to federal action on this question. Moreover, after the plank which was adopted in the Democratic platform at St. Louis, I could not comply with the request contained in this resolution even if I wished to do so."
President Wilson could not act because the party plank which he had written prevented him from doing so!
Meanwhile the women continued to protest.
Miss Mabel Vernon of Delaware, beloved and gifted crusader, was the first member of the Woman"s Party to commit a "militant" act.
President Wilson, speaking at the dedication services of the Labor Temple in Washington, was declaring his interest in all cla.s.ses and all struggles. He was proclaiming his beliefs in the abstractions of liberty and justice, when Miss Vernon, who was seated on the platform from which he was speaking, said in her powerful voice, "Mr. President, if you sincerely desire to forward the interests of all the people, why do you oppose the national enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of, women?" Instant consternation arose, but the idea had penetrated to the farthest corner of the huge a.s.sembly that women were protesting to the President against the denial of their liberty.
The President found time to answer, "That is one of the things which we will have to take counsel over later," and resumed his speech. Miss Vernon repeated her question later and was ordered from the meeting by the police.
As the summer wore on, women realized that they would have to enter the national contest in the autumn. Attention was focussed on the two rival presidential candidates, Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican nominee, upon whom the new Woman"s Party worked diligently
{44}
for prompt statements of their position on the national amendment.
The next political result of the new solidarity of women was Mr. Hughes" declaration on August 1st, 1916: "My view is that the proposed amendment should be submitted and ratified and the subject removed from political discussion."
The Democratic Congress adjourned without even report ing the measure to that body for a vote, and went forthwith to the country to ask reelection.
We also went to the country. We went to the women voters to lay before them again the Democratic Party"s record now complete through one Administration. We asked women voters again to withhold their support nationally from President Wilson and his party.
The President accepted at once the opportunity to speak before a convention of suffragists at Atlantic City in an effort to prove his great belief in suffrage. He said poetically, "The tide is rising to meet the moon . . . . You can afford to wait" Whatever we may have thought of his figure of speech, we disagreed with his conclusion.
The campaign on, Democratic speakers throughout the West found an unexpected organized force among women, demanding an explanation of the past conduct of the Democratic Party and insisting on an immediate declaration by the President in favor of the amendment.
Democratic orators did their utmost to meet this opposition.
"Give the President time. He can"t do everything at once." "Trust him once more; he will do it for you next term." "He kept us out of war. He is the best friend the mothers of the nation ever had" "He stood by you. Now you women stand by him." "What good will votes do you if the Germans come over here and take your country?" And so on. Enticing doctrine to women-the peace lovers of the human race.
Although we entered this contest with more strength than
{45}
we had had in 1914, with a budget five times as large and with piled-up evidence of Democratic hostility, we could rot have entered a more difficult contest. The people were excited to an almost unprecedented pitch over the issue of peace versus war. In spite of the difficulty of competing with this emotional issue which meant the immediate disposal of millions of lives, it was soon evident that the two issues were running almost neck and neck in the Western territory.
No less skilled a campaigner than William Jennings Bryan took the stump in the West against the Woman"s Party. At least a third of each speech was devoted to suffrage. He urged. He exhorted. He apologized. He explained. He pleaded. He condemned. Often he was heckled. Often he saw huge "VOTE AGAINST WILSON! HE KEPT US OUT OF SUFFRAGE!" banners at the doors of his meetings. One woman in Arizona, who, unable longer to listen in patience to the glory of "a democracy where only were governed those who consented,"
interrupted him. He coldly answered, "Madam, you cannot pick cherries before they are ripe." By the time he got to.
California, however, the cherries had ripened considerably, for Mr. Bryan came out publicly for the national amendment.
What was true of Mr. Bryan was true of practically every Democratic campaigner. Against their wills they were forced to talk about suffrage, although they had serenely announced at the opening of the campaign that it was "not an issue in this campaign." Some merely apologized and explained. Others, like Dudley Field Malone, spoke for the federal amendment, and promised to work to put it through the next Congress, "if only you women will stand by Wilson and return him to power."
s.p.a.ce will not permit in this book to give more than a hint of the scope and strength of our campaign. If it were possible to give a glimpse of the speeches made by men in that cam-
{46}
paign, you would agree that it was not peace alone that was the dominant issue, but peace and suffrage. It must be made perfectly clear that the Woman"s Party did not attempt to elect Mr. Hughes.
It did not feel strong enough to back a candidate in its first battle, and did not conduct its fight affirmatively at all. No speeches were made for Mr. Hughes and the Republican Party. The appeal was to vote a vote of protest against Mr. Wilson and his Congressional candidates, because he and his party had had the power to pa.s.s the amendment through Congress and had refused to do so. That left the women free to choose from among the Republicans, Socialists and Prohibitionists. It was to be expected that the main strength of the vote taken from Mr. Wilson would go to Mr. Hughes, as few women perhaps threw their votes to the minority parties. But just as the Progressive Party"s protest had been effective in securing progressive legislation without winning the election, so the Woman"s Party hoped its protest would bring results in Congress without attempting to win the election.
History will never know in round numbers how many women voted against the President and his party at this crisis, for there are no records kept for men and women separately, except in one state, in Illinois. The women there voted two to one against Mr.
Wilson and for Mr. Hughes.
Men outnumber women throughout the entire western territory; in some states, two and three to one; in Nevada, still higher. But, whereas, in the election of 191, President Wilson got 69 electoral votes from the suffrage states, in the 1916 election, when the whole West was aflame for him because of his peace policy, he got only 5"7. Enthusiasm for Mr. Hughes in the West was not sufficiently marked to account entirely for the loss of these 12 electoral votes. Our claim that Democratic opposition to suffrage had cost many of them was never seriously denied.
{47}
The Democratic Judiciary Committee of the House which had refused to report suffrage to the House for a vote, had only one Democratic member from a suffrage state, Mr. Taggart of Kansas, standing for reelection. This was the only spot where women could strike out against the action of this committee-and Mr. Taggart.
They struck with success. He was defeated almost wholly by the women"s votes.
With a modest campaign fund of slightly over fifty thousand dollars, raised almost entirely in small sums, the women had forced the campaign committee of the Democratic Party to a.s.sume the defensive and to practically double expenditure and work on this issue. As much literature was used on suffrage as on peace in the suffrage states.
Many Democrats although hostile to our campaign said without qualification that the Woman"s Party protest was the only factor in the campaign which stemmed the western tide toward Wilson, and which finally made California the pivotal state and left his election in doubt for a week.
Again, with more force, national suffrage had been injected into a campaign where it was not wanted, where the leaders had hoped the single issue of "peace" would hold the center of the stage.
Again many women had stood together on this issue and put woman suffrage first. And the actual reelection of President Wilson had its point of advantage, too, for it enabled us to continue the education of a man in power who had already had four years of lively training on the woman question.
{48}
Chapter 3
The Last Deputation to President Wilson
Of the hundreds of women who volunteered for the last Western campaign, perhaps the most effective in their appeal were the disfranchised Eastern women.
The most dramatic figure of them all was Inez Milholland Boissevain, the gallant and beloved crusader who gave her life that the day of women"s freedom might be hastened. Her last words to the nation as she fell fainting on the platform in California were, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?" Her fiery challenge was never heard again. She never recovered from the terrific strain of the campaign which had undermined her young strength. Her death touched the heart of the nation; her sacrifice, made so generously for liberty, lighted anew the fire of rebellion in women, and aroused from inertia thousands never before interested in the liberation of their own s.e.x.
Memorial meetings were held throughout the country at which women not only paid radiant tribute to Inez Milholland, but reconsecrated themselves to the struggle and called again upon the reelected President and his Congress to act.
The most impressive of these memorials was held on Christmas Day in Washington. In Statuary Hall under the dome of the Capitol-the scene of memorial services for Lincoln and Garfield-filled with statues of outstanding figures in the struggle for political and religious liberty in this country, the first memorial service ever held in the Capitol to honor a woman, was held for this gallant young leader.
{49}
Boy choristers singing the magnificent hymn
"Forward through the darkness Leave behind the night, Forward out of error, Forward into light"