The Story of the Woman's Party

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

Lucy Burns made a magnificent speech on that occasion. She pointed out that the Democratic Party was in complete possession of the National Government, controlling the Presidential chair, the Senate, possessing an overwhelming majority in the House. She analyzed the working of Congress: she showed that our government is a government by Party: that no measures of importance had passed through the Sixty-third Congress without the backing of the Party in power: and that no measure could pass that Congress if opposed by that Party.

She amplified this thesis. She showed that the President, the leader of the Party, had seven times refused his powerful aid to the movement. She showed that in the Senate the Democratic leaders blocked the Suffrage measure by bringing it to a vote at a time when they acknowledged it would be defeated. She showed that in the House, the Rules Committee had consistently blocked the Amendment, both by preventing the creation of a Suffrage Committee and by preventing consideration of the Amendment in the House. And she proved by the words of the acting chairman of the Rules Committee that that Committee had in its keeping “the policy of the Democratic Party.” She showed that the Democratic Caucus had taken definite action against the Suffrage Amendment. It had declared that Suffrage was not a question for national consideration and so it had refused to sanction the creation of a Suffrage Committee.

Alice Paul, first asking the press to withdraw, outlined the proposed election program. She asked the members of the Conference not to reveal it until the middle of September when the Congressional Union would be ready to put it into practical operation. This is her speech on that occasion:

From the very beginning of our work in Washington, we have followed one consistent policy from which we have not departed a single moment. We began our work with the coming in of the present Congress and immediately went to the Party which was in control of the situation and asked it to act. We determined to get the Amendment through the Sixty-third Congress, or to make it very clear who had kept it from going through. Now, as has been shown, the Democrats have been in control of all branches of the Government and they are therefore responsible for the non-passage of our measure.

The point is first, who is our enemy and then, how shall that enemy be attacked?

We are all, I think, agreed that it is the Democratic Party which is responsible for the blocking of the Suffrage Amendment. Again and again that Party has gone on record through the action of its leaders, its caucus, and its committees so that an impregnable case has been built up against it. We now lay before you a plan to meet the present situation.

We propose going into the nine Suffrage States and appealing to the women to use their votes to secure the franchise for the women of the rest of the country. All of these years we have worked primarily in the States. Now the time has come, we believe, when we can really go into national politics and use the nearly four million votes that we have to win the vote for the rest of us. Now that we have four million voters, we need no longer continue to make our appeal simply to the men. The struggle in England has gotten down to a physical fight. Here our fight is simply a political one. The question is whether we are good enough politicians to take four million votes and organize them and use them so as to win the vote for the women who are still disfranchised.

We want to attempt to organize the women’s vote. Our plan is to go out to these nine States and there appeal to all the women voters to withdraw their support from the Democrats nationally until the Democratic Party nationally ceases to block Suffrage. We would issue an appeal signed by influential women of the East addressed to the women voters as a whole asking them to use their vote this one time in the national election against the Democratic Party throughout the whole nine States. Every one of these States, with one exception, is a doubtful State. Going back over a period of fourteen years, each State, except Utah, has supported first one Party and then another. Here are nine States which politicians are thinking about and in these nine States we have this great power. If we ask those women in the nine Suffrage States as a group to withhold their support from this Party as a group which is opposing us, it will mean that votes will be turned. Suppose the Party saw votes falling away all over the country because of their action on the Trust question—they would change their attitude on Trust legislation. If they see them falling away because of their attitude on Suffrage they will change their attitude on Suffrage. When we have once affected the result in a national election, no Party will trifle with Suffrage any longer.

We, of course, are a little body to undertake this—but we have to begin. We have not very much money; there are not many of us to go out against the great Democratic Party. Perhaps this time we won’t be able to do so very much, though I know we can do a great deal, but if the Party leaders see that some votes have been turned they will know that we have at least realized this power that we possess and they will know that by 1916 we will have it organized. The mere announcement of the fact that Suffragists of the East have gone out to the West with this appeal will be enough to make every man in Congress sit up and take notice.

This last week one Congressman from a Suffrage State came to us and asked us if we would write just one letter to say what he had done in Congress to help us. He said that one letter might determine the election in his district. This week the man who is running for the Senatorial election in another Suffrage State came to us and asked us to go out and help him in his State—asked us simply to announce that he had been our friend. Now if our help is valued to this extent, our opposition will be feared in like degree.