The Story of the Woman's PartyGillmore, Inez Haynes
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The Story of the Woman's Party
Gillmore, Inez Haynes
National Woman's Party; Paul, Alice, 1885-1977; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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