VI
PRESSURE ON CONGRESS
The Suffragist of January 24, 1914, carried the following editorial. In it is repeated the policy which the Congressional Union had in the beginning adopted—that of holding the party in power responsible.
The policy of the Congressional Union is to ask for a Woman Suffrage Amendment from the Party in power in Congress, and to hold them responsible for their answer to its request.
This policy is entirely non-partisan, in that it handles all Parties with perfect impartiality. If the Republicans were in power, we would regard them in their capacity as head of the Government as responsible for the enfranchisement of women. If the Progressives or Socialists should become the majority Party, and control the machinery of Congress, we would claim from them the right to govern ourselves, and would hold them responsible for a refusal of this just demand.
Today the Democrats are in power. They control the executive office, the Senate, and the House. They can, if they will, enfranchise women in the present session; their refusal to do so establishes a record which must necessarily be taken into consideration by women when the Party seeks the re-indorsement of the people at the polls.
This policy simply recognizes the effect of our American system of Government. Ours is a government by Parties. The majority by secret caucus, by the control of committees, by the power of patronage, by their appeal to Party responsibility, by the interest of Party solidarity, control the legislation of the House. The present government recognizes this method of administration with especial, and indeed admirable, frankness. It owes much of its popularity today to its willingness to assume full responsibility for all the legislation enacted in Congress; for whatever is done, and what is not done. The two great measures of the last session, tariff and currency, passed rapidly and successfully through both Houses by the frank use of Party discipline.
Let us by all means deal directly with the people who can give us what we want. The Democrats have it in their power to enfranchise women.... This is not only our most logical method of work, but it is also the most economical and expeditious. Assuming that the Democrats yield nothing in the present session, we can, when Congress closes, concentrate our forces on those points where the Party is weakest, and thus become a force worth bargaining with. At the present moment, the Senate is the weakest point in the Democratic armor. To defeat even a few Democratic Senators in November, 1914, would make a serious breach in the Party organization.... If, on the other hand, we set out to attack every anti-Suffragist in Congress, we should have hundreds to defeat, and every man would be safe in whose constituency we did not organize. Imagine that, if at the end of arduous labor, we had contrived to defeat a number of Democratic anti-Suffragists, and an equal number of Republican anti-Suffragists, we should by immense sacrifice have completely nullified our own efforts, and left the strength of the Parties just where it was before....
What should we do in our enfranchised States, if we confined ourselves to the plan of supporting individual Suffragists and attacking individual anti-Suffragists, irrespective of their Party affiliations? All the candidates for office in the enfranchised States are Suffragists. Is it suggested that we be inactive in the only places where we possess real political power? Our problem at the present moment is to use the strength of women’s votes in national elections so as to force attention to the justice of our claim from the present administration....
But the Congressional Union cannot make it too clear that we are not opposed to any Party today. We are asking the Democrats to help us; we are awaiting their answer. We will frame no policy for or against them or any other Party until this session closes, and the great opportunity of the present Administration has come to an end. We entertain steady and undiminished hopes that the Administration will recognize the justice and expediency of women’s claims to self-government. The movement is making immense strides in every part of the country; our present voting strength is great, and will undoubtedly be increased in the present year. It takes no great imaginative reach for the ordinary Congressman to foresee the day when Woman Suffrage will be an established fact throughout these United States.