The Suffragist, vol. 2, no. 37, September 12, 1914, p. 6

Boxes

1510 H Street N. W. Fifth Avenue and 46th Street waso . . J Giing & (du. New Yor SUITS Ps Canc Du, Mi. WRAPS GCOATS BLOUSES HOVELTIES MILLINERY GOWNS FURS

be political, because nine-tenths of the people of the world, men as well as women, have not a political hair in their heads. Now, since I am a person who has a few political hairs in my head, mingled with the gray, and since I profoundly recognize, and with gratitude, that some of the young women have political hairs in their heads, I have today joined the Council. I am thrown into the position where I must take sides, unfortunately. The reason I would not join the Advisory Council was because, as I was centered upon the work in New York State, I saw no reason for taking this side or that side in national affairs, but, alas, now I must; because two policies are presented to me and as an intelligent human being I have to decide on which side I am. And in this position I find myself absolutely standing with the national policy as stated by Miss Paul.

“Yesterday those of you who were at the luncheon may perhaps remember that I referred to one fact in political history—that different classes of men in seeking enfranchisement had always had classes of enfranchised men helping them, but that we women had been singularly lonely in having marched on ever since 1848 without the slightest help from the inside. But at last, as I said yesterday, there is a great band of women voters in the West who can extend their hand to us and help us. My heart as well as my head responds to this suggestion of Miss Paul to go out to those women of the West, reminding them in those nine suffrage states where they can ielp us, that now at last the opportunity has come and that they can be like the enfranchised men who reached out their hand to men who were struggling for their political freedom—that they can reach out their hand to disfranchised women.

“This proposed election plan means that we ask the Western women to stand against any party or administration that is against us. It simply happens today that the party that has the power in the center of things is Democratic and so we ask them to discipline those men now in power and if tomorrow there comes in another party, then that party shall be disciplined if it does not fall gracefully under the yoke, which I think it will, because, as Miss Paul stated, to nothing are politicians, and statesmen even, more sensitive than to just how a voter is going to vote. So I believe thoroughly in this campaign that the Congressional Union has laid down. I regret that I personally have been forced right into the position of taking part in national affairs, but there seems to have come a parting of the ways, and I feel it my duty not only privately to make up my mind but publicly to state it."

Mrs, Kelley Speaks Mrs. Blatch was followed by Mrs. Florence Kelley, also a member of the Advisory Council of the Union and known the country over as the General Secretary of the National Consumers' League.

“I am quite sure," said Mrs. Kelley, “that what Mrs. Blatch and Mrs. Rogers has said expresses the feeling that will animate the members of the Women's Political Union, but I have to confess that up to noon yesterday I did not understand the proposal. I think there has been a great deal of intentional misunderstanding abroad throughout the country, because garbled statements of the Union's policy have been given out, I do not know by whom. But I had certainly derived the

opinion that there was to be a campaign indiscriminately, state, local, and national, against the Democratic Party and I had some fear that there might be a good many cases in which the Democrats may really be the friends of suffrage locally and such a campaign seemed ill judged and disproportionate. I cut off a week from my vacation to come down from Maine for the express purpose of having the Conference make some statement that we are not going to make such a campaign, but after the statement of the policy which has been made this afternoon and which I have been hearing in detail, yesterday and today, I see that the apprehensions which I had been cherishing were unfounded. I do not see how there could possibly be a more statesmanlike proposal than this which has been made this afternoon."

Point of View of a Democrat Mrs. Bayard Hilles of Delaware, another member of the Advisory Council of the Union, was then introduced. Mrs. Hilles' remarks were listened to with great interest, as she is a member of an old Democratic family and the daughter of a member of President Cleveland's Cabinet. She said:

“Miss Burns has shown you who are the responsible ones for the failure of suffrage in this country, and Miss Paul has given a program of action. She has told us that we must go to the Western states and we must go to attack the Democratic Party. This question is more important than party—it is a national question— it is a suffrage question first. And until we get suffrage as a national matter, we had better leave off being Republicans or Democrats either. We must have the weapon of politics in our hands before we can choose what kind it must be. It is no easy matter for me as a Democrat to want to defeat Democrats, but I say to you that, though traditionally a Democrat with a long line of male relatives who have served their country in the Democratic Party, I would willingly go out to those states and devote my time to defeating every Democrat if it were going to bring women the right to vote. I hope very much that those of you who had any doubt in your minds when you came here this afternoon about the Congressional Union's policy will now see that it is a very plain, straightforward matter. There is no underhand dealing—we are telling what we mean to do to those men with their own weapon. That is the way that politics goes. Without political action we will gain nothing at all and therefore I beg you, as a Democrat, if there are other Democrats here, to put party behind the great national matter of suffrage and to stand for that until we have it an accomplished fact before us."

Effect on the Campaign States The effect of this national policy upon state work was then taken up by Mrs. Porritt, press chairman of the Connecticut Suffrage Association, who said: “I do not think that this policy will hurt a single state. Just think how many states there are which are extremely backward And even if there were the possibility of hurting a little bit in the states that have campaigns in 1915 or 1916, ought not there be a little unselfish

feeling for the women all over the United State We in Connecticut cannot be enfranchised i 1915 by state action; we can be enfranchised i 1915 by national action. Why, for the sake your particular state for 1915 which will onl give your own women the vote, will you stan in the way of a policy which might give all we men the vote as soon as you could possibly ge it by your state action? You say 'wait a little or you “are afraid just now. That simply mean that there can be no national action. If there i to be national action, if we are to get anythin nmationally, there is only one policy and tha policy is to get the party for us instead of tryin to get individuals. You might get a two-third majority in each house individually, and lose en tirely, because you would not get a majority the caucus. We can do nothing nationally ex cept through party because our government is government by party. We may like it, we ma not like it, the fact remains."

Mr nt A ca at D rot e f at ic ate t tild at tz

The question of the effect of the propose election policy upon state work was further dis cussed by Mrs. Crystal Eastman Benedict, whe was one of the leaders in the Wisconsin cam paign in which the suffrage amendment was de feated at the referendum to the people afte having passed the legislature.

“I want to speak," she said, “as a person whe was very badly defeated in a hard-fought cam paign. We can only say what we think the effec of this policy will be on the ‘campaign states. My judgment is that the states that are going to win next fall out there in the West are the state in which the liquor interest is not strong enough to fight the truly liberal spirit of the voters. do not believe that the result in those states tha have a chance for success—in those states where the liquor interest is not big enough to defea us—will be influenced by the fact that other women in suffrage states are making a great appea on a high plane to women voters to stand by them and to administer a rebuke to the Democratic Party in a national way. I had a long hard experience in just such a campaign as is being conducted out there, and I give you that as my judgment.

“I also want to say that this meeting here today has seemed to me a little like an old-fashioned prayer meeting. One by one we have riser and announced our conversion. It is a conversion through information, through complete understanding, and I want to say that, though am a member of the Executive Committee, I have not been in close touch with the committee for some little time and my complete understanding antedated Mrs. Kelley's about twenty-four hours but it has led me to an absolut ly firm stand for this policy.

“In addition to what has been so splendidly stated this afternoon I want to say something to those who think that it would be better to defeat anti-suffrage Democrats. I came here with such an idea as that—that we ought to choose weak unpopular, anti-suffrage Democrats and defeat them. The final clinching argument that we should not fight individual Democrats is this If we are going to select individual Democrats who have gone on record against us we can't appeal to the women voters, because Democrats from suffrage states do not go on record against woman suffrage. If we go out with this one great idea to those suffrage states we are on a higher plane than that on which any political campaign has ever been carried on."