The Story of the Woman's Party

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

We have sent a request to our branches in the East to select one or more representative women who will go out to the West and make a personal appeal to the women voters to stand by us even more loyally than they have before—to form a stronger organization than has ever before existed.

Today we must consider what concrete plan we shall ask these envoys who go out to the West to propose to the voting women. I do not think it will do very much good to go through the voting States and simply strengthen our Suffrage organizations. That will not be enough to terrify the men in Congress. Suffrage organizations, unfortunately, have come to stand for feebleness of action and supineness of spirit. What I want to propose is that when we go to these women voters we ask them to begin to organize an independent political Party that will be ready for the elections in November. They may not have to go into these elections. If they prepare diligently enough for the elections they won’t have to go into them. The threat will be enough. We want to propose to you that we ask the women voters to come together in Chicago at the time that the Progressives and Republicans meet there in June, to decide how they will use these four million votes that women have, in the next election.

Now, if women who are Republicans simply help the Republican Party, and if women who are Democrats help the Democratic Party, women’s votes will not count for much. But if the political Parties see before them a group of independent women voters who are standing together to use their vote to promote Suffrage, it will make Suffrage an issue—the women voters at once become a group which counts; whose votes are wanted. The Parties will inevitably have to go to the women voters if the latter stand aloof and do not go to the existing political Parties. The political Parties will have to offer them the thing which will win their votes. To count in an election you do not have to be the biggest Party; you have to be simply an independent Party that will stand for one object and that cannot be diverted from that object.

Four years ago there was launched a new Party, the Progressive Party. It really did, I suppose, decide the last Presidential election. We can be the same determining factor in this coming election. And if we can make Congress realize that we can be the determining factor, we won’t have to go into the election at all.

What I would like to propose, in short, is that we go to the women voters and ask them to hold a convention in Chicago the first week in June, and that we spend these next two months in preparation. We could not have a better opportunity for preparation than this trip of the envoys through every one of the Suffrage States, calling the women together to meet in Chicago, the place where the eyes of the whole country will be turned in June.

We want very much to know what you think about this plan and whether you will help us in carrying it through. It is not an easy thing to launch a new Party and have it stand competition with the Republican and Democratic Parties. If we undertake it, we must make it a success. We must make it worthy to stand beside these great Parties. That is the biggest task that we have ever dreamed of since we started the Congressional Union.

It was unanimously decided by the Conference to send an appeal to all members in the Suffrage States to meet in Chicago on June 5, 6, and 7, to form a Woman’s Party. Envoys to carry this appeal to the West were elected.

Mrs. W. D. Ascough, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Abby Scott Baker, Lucy Burns, Agnes Campbell, Mrs. A. R. Colvin, Anna Constable, Edith Goode, Jane Goode, Florence Bayard Hilles, Julia Hurlburt, Caroline Katzenstein, Winifred Mallon, Mrs. Cyrus Mead, Agnes Morey, Katherine Morey, Gertrude B. Newell, Mrs. Percy Read, Ella Riegel, Mrs. John Rogers, Mrs. Townsend Scott, Helen Todd, Mrs. Nelson Whittemore.

All of these women were chosen by State groups of the National Woman’s Party; they therefore went to the West as the spokesmen of the unenfranchised women of their own States. Ahead of them went the organizers.

This Suffrage Special must not be confused with Hughes’ “Golden Special,” which in October—six months later—toured the West and with which the National Woman’s Party had no connection.