We were not concerned with the result of the election. Ours was a campaign in which it made no difference who was elected. We did not endorse any candidate. We did not care who won. We were not pro-Republican, pro-Socialist, pro-Prohibition—we were simply pro-woman. We did not endeavor to affect the result in the non-Suffrage States. What we did try to do was to organize a protest vote by women against Mr. Wilson’s attitude towards Suffrage. This we did. Every Democrat who campaigned in the West knows this. The Democratic campaign in the West soon consisted almost entirely of an attempt to combat the Woman’s Party attack.
Tribute to the strength of the Woman’s Party campaign is contained in the remark of a woman who had in charge the campaign of the Democratic women voters. Out of six leaflets which her organization got out, five were on the subject of Suffrage. A reporter remonstrated with her in regard to Suffrage not being an issue in the West. She agreed with him, but, she added, “We have to combat the Woman’s Party.”
The whole Western campaign of the Republicans was conducted as if they were assured of victory. In many cases the organizers of the Woman’s Party told the Republicans in the East that they were going to lose in certain districts. “Nonsense,” laughed the Republicans, “we are sure to win there, absolutely sure.” Alice Paul in Chicago received reports from campaigners through the West and all predicted Democratic victory. She went to Republican Headquarters with these reports, but she could not convince the Republicans of the truth of them.
Senator Curtis, Secretary of the Republican Senatorial Committee, said he got more information as to the situation in the West from the Woman’s Party than he got from any other source.
It became apparent soon that Wilson was going to win. It was then that advisors came to Alice Paul and said, “Withdraw your speakers from the campaign, so that you will not have the humiliation of defeat before the country.”
And it was then that Alice Paul answered, “No. If we withdraw our speakers from the campaign, we withdraw the issue from the campaign. We must make this such an important thing in national elections that the Democrats will not want to meet it again.”
Commenting on this campaign, Alice Paul said the Democrats made a strong appeal to the women voters but for the Republicans the women did not exist, and in fact the chief recognition that the Republicans made of the women in the West was to send there the Hughes so-called “Golden Special,” which, on leaving Chicago, announced that it was not a “Suffrage Special.”
After the campaign was over, Vance McCormick, Chairman of the Democratic Party, was talking with a member of his committee. He said, in effect: “Before the election of 1918, we must patch up our weak places. Our weakest spot is the Suffrage situation. We must get rid of the Suffrage Amendment before 1918 if we want to control the next Congress.”
The Sixty-fourth Congress met for its second and last session on December 4, 1916. President Wilson delivered a message which made no reference to the subject of Woman Suffrage. The Congressional Union, always having advance information, knew this beforehand. And so on that occasion, by a bit of direct action, they brought Suffrage vividly to the attention of President Wilson, Congress, and the whole country. This was the only action of the Woman’s Party which Alice Paul did not give out beforehand to the press.