The original purpose for which the Woman’s Party, as an organization confined to women voters alone, was formed, has, we believe, been served. In the first three years of our work we endeavored to call the attention of political leaders and Congress to the fact that women were voting and that these voting women were interested in Suffrage. But words alone did not have much effect. We found we had to visualize the existence of voting women out in the West and their support of the Suffrage Amendment. The Woman’s Party was formed as one means of doing this.
The Woman’s Party did, I believe, have an effect on the political leaders. It was very clear, I think, at the convention in Chicago and in St. Louis that the idea that women were voting and that those women were interested in the Federal Amendment was at last appreciated. This November’s election completed our work in getting that fact into the minds of Congressmen and political leaders. There is no longer any need to draw a line around women voters and set them off by themselves in order to call attention to them. They now enter into the calculations of every political observer.
If we amalgamate and make ourselves one great group of voters and non-voters all working for the Federal Amendment, the question arises: What name shall we be called by, the Congressional Union or the Woman’s Party? Our Executive Committee felt that we ought to keep the name of the Woman’s Party, because it stands for political power.
The objections brought against this are, I think, two. First, that non-voters should not, according to custom, be part of a political Party; second, that if they are included, that Party will not command as much respect as would a Party composed solely of voters. There are non-voters in the Socialist, the Progressive, and the Prohibition Parties; there is no reason why, if we are interested in precedent and custom, they should not be in our Party also. As to the second point: The Congressional Union has the reputation of being an active, determined, and well-financed organization. When the political world realizes that this young Woman’s Party has been strengthened by the influx of twenty-five thousand workers of the Congressional Union ready to give their service and money it will consider that the Woman’s Party stands for more power than if formed of the women of the Western States only.
Wage Earners Picketing the White House, February, 1917.
Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.
All of us in the Congressional Union feel an affection for it. But that is no reason for continuing the organization. The Congressional Union has served a useful purpose, we believe. But now that we have created the Woman’s Party we ought, it seems to me, to develop and make that the dominant Suffrage factor in this country because that, through its name and associations, throws the emphasis more than does the Congressional Union on the political power of women.
The following officers were elected unanimously at the morning session: Chairman of the National Woman’s Party, Alice Paul; Vice-Chairman, Anne Martin; Secretary, Mabel Vernon; Treasurer, Gertrude Crocker. The executive board elected were: Lucy Burns, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, Mrs. J. W. Brannan, Mrs. Gilson Gardner, Abby Scott Baker, Mrs. William Kent, Maud Younger, Doris Stevens, Florence Bayard Hilles, Mrs. Donald Hooker, Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis.
At that Convention, various resolutions were passed; the most notable in regard to the attitude of the National Woman’s Party towards the rapidly developing war situation. That resolution runs as follows:
Whereas the problems involved in the present international situation, affecting the lives of millions of women in this country, make imperative the enfranchisement of women,