The Story of the Woman's Party

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

Further striking evidence of the importance which the Democratic leaders of Colorado attached to the Union’s activities was furnished by a leaflet sent far and wide through the State, issued from the Colorado Democratic State Headquarters, under the names of Wellington H. Gates, Leo U. Guggenheim, and John T. Barnett, National Democratic Committeemen. The leaflet began: “Permit us to call your attention to the apparent aims and purposes of the organization calling itself The Congressional Union.”

It then devoted four pages to letters and statements opposing the policy of the Union, and ended with an appeal to the women voters to elect the Democratic candidates for Congress “with larger majorities than ever before, to show the world that the Democratic women of Colorado are not only loyal, but consistent, voters.”

This was the last leaflet sent to the voters by the State Democratic Committee. From the first word to the last, it dealt only with the Congressional Union. Could better evidence be desired of the important part which the Democrats themselves felt that Suffrage was playing in the election?

Nowhere did the Congressional Union election work arouse greater opposition than in Utah. “Intimidation, coercion, and what were equivalent to threats of political banishment from the State of Utah,” said the Republican Herald of Salt Lake City (October 15), “were exercised toward Miss Elsie Agnes Lancaster, the New York Suffragist, by W. R. Wallace, the Democratic generalissimo, and his gang of political mannikins.”

“They invited Miss Lancaster,” the Herald continued, “to come to Democratic State Headquarters, and there kept her on the grill for two and a half hours. This term of cross-examination, during which she was under fire of cross-questioning and denunciation from practically all of the Democratic politicians present, was a vain endeavor to have her bring to an immediate close her campaign against the Democratic nominees for the United States Senate and Congress. For two hours and a half, the hundred pounds of femininity withstood the concentrated cross-fire of the ton of beef and brawn represented by the dozen or more distinguished Democrats who acted as attorney, judge, and jury all in one. After they had finished, she went her way, telling Mr. Wallace that neither he nor his hirelings could swerve her from her duty in Utah as a representative of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage.

“The greatest outburst of Generalissimo Wallace,” concludes the Herald, “was when, in a moment of rage, he brought his fist down on the table and threatened to advertise Miss Lancaster the country over by means of the Associated Press as being in league with ‘sinister influences’ in Utah.”

One of the candidates for Congress from Kansas (Representative Doolittle) called at the Washington Headquarters of the Union shortly after the inauguration of work in Kansas, and urged the Union to withdraw its campaigners from his district, at least, if not over all the Western States. Finding the Union determined to continue its opposition through the women voters, as long as his Party continued its opposition to the National Amendment, Mr. Doolittle delivered a speech in the House of Representatives (occupying more than a page of the Congressional Record), denouncing the Union, and assuring the members of Congress that its appeal to the women voters was not authorized by the Suffragists of the country.

Representative Hayden of Arizona also endeavored, in a speech in the House, to answer the appeal of the Congressional Union to the Western women to cast their votes against him, together with the other national Democratic candidates. Nearly three pages of the Record was consumed by Mr. Hayden’s speech, which he reprinted, and sent far and wide through the State of Arizona in an attempt to counteract the havoc which it was apparently believed was being wrought by the Congressional Union workers.

A prominent Democratic candidate for the Arizona Legislature testified to the fear which the Union campaign had aroused among the Democratic element in that State by an appeal to Dr. Cora Smith King, a member of the Advisory Council of the Congressional Union, urgently imploring her to use her influence with the Union to terminate its election activities in Arizona. Dr. King replied: “The more the local Democrats complain, the more they advertise the slogan of the Congressional Union, that the Democrats put Suffrage second to Party. Do, for Heaven’s sake, raise the Democratic roof in Washington for involving you in this dilemma.”

Among the concrete results showing the effectiveness of the Congressional Union election activities was the inclusion of a Federal Suffrage Amendment plank in the platforms of each of the State parties in Colorado, the first time that this occurred in that State, and the inclusion of a similar plank in the Arizona Democratic platform.