Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
Men outnumber women throughout the entire western territory; in some
states, two and three to one; in Nevada, still higher. But, whereas, in
the election of 191, President Wilson got 69 electoral votes from the
suffrage states, in the 1916 election, when the whole West was aflame
for him because of his peace policy, he got only 57. Enthusiasm for Mr.
Hughes in the West was not sufficiently marked to account entirely for
the loss of these 12 electoral votes. Our claim that Democratic
opposition to suffrage had cost many of them was never seriously
denied.
The Democratic Judiciary Committee of the House which had refused to
report suffrage to the House for a vote, had only one Democratic member
from a suffrage state, Mr. Taggart of Kansas, standing for reelection.
This was the only spot where women could strike out against the action
of this committee—and Mr. Taggart. They struck with success. He was
defeated almost wholly by the women’s votes.
With a modest campaign fund of slightly over fifty thousand dollars,
raised almost entirely in small sums, the women had forced the campaign
committee of the Democratic Party to assume the defensive and to
practically double expenditure and work on this issue. As much
literature was used on suffrage as on peace in the suffrage states.
Many Democrats although hostile to our campaign said without
qualification that the Woman’s Party protest was the only factor in the
campaign which stemmed the western tide toward Wilson, and which
finally made California the pivotal state and left his election in
doubt for a week.
Again, with more force, national suffrage had been injected into a
campaign where it was not wanted, where the leaders had hoped the
single issue of “peace” would hold the center of the stage. Again many
women had stood together on this issue and put woman suffrage first.
And the actual reelection of President Wilson had its point of
advantage, too, for it enabled us to continue the education of a man in
power who had already had four years of lively training on the woman
question.
Chapter 3
The Last Deputation to President Wilson
Of the hundreds of women who volunteered for the last Western campaign,
perhaps the most effective in their appeal were the disfranchised
Eastern women.
The most dramatic figure of them all was Inez Milholland Boissevain,
the gallant and beloved crusader who gave her life that the day of
women’s freedom might be hastened. Her last words to the nation as she
fell fainting on the platform in California were, “Mr. President, how
long must women wait for liberty?” Her fiery challenge was never heard
again. She never recovered from the terrific strain of the campaign
which had undermined her young strength. Her death touched the heart of
the nation; her sacrifice, made so generously for liberty, lighted anew
the fire of rebellion in women, and aroused from inertia thousands
never before interested in the liberation of their own sex.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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