The most practical move the New York Suffragists have made was the
organization, early in 1910, of the Woman Suffrage Party, a fusion of
nearly all the suffrage clubs in the greater city into an association
exactly along the lines of a regular political party. At the head of the
party as president is Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the
International Woman Suffrage Association. Each of the five boroughs of
the city has a chairman, and each senatorial and assembly district is
either organized or is in process of organization.
[Illustration: THE WOMEN'S TRADES PROCESSION TO THE ALBERT HALL MEETING,
APRIL 27, 1909]
Absolutely democratic in its spirit and its organization, the party
leaders are drawn from every rank of society. The chairman of the
borough of Manhattan is Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, wife of a prominent
Wall Street banker. Mrs. Frederick Nathan, president of the New York
State Consumers' League, is chairman of the assembly district in which
she lives. Mrs. Melvil Dewey, whose husband is head of a department at
Columbia University, is chairman of her own district. Other chairmen are
Helen Hoy Greeley, lawyer; Lavinia Dock, trained nurse; Anna Mercy, an
East Side physician; Maud Flowerton, buyer in a department store;
Gertrude Barnum, sociologist and writer. Practically every trade and
profession are represented in the party's ranks.
The object of the Woman Suffrage Party is organization for political
work. Last winter the party made the first aggressive move towards
forcing the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly to report on the bill to
give women votes by constitutional amendment. They succeeded in getting
a motion made for the discharge of the committee, sixteen legislators
voting for the women.
New York is the present center of the progressive suffrage movement,
with Chicago not very far behind.
In rather amazing fashion are women in many American communities
beginning to realize that politics are as much their business as men's.
In Salt Lake City when a city council undertakes to give away a valuable
water franchise, or extend gamblers' privileges, or otherwise follow the
example of many another city council in bending before the god of greed,
the women of Salt Lake send the word around. When the council meets the
women are in the room. They don't say anything. They don't have to say
anything. They can vote, these women. More than once the deep-laid plans
of the most powerful politicians in Salt Lake City have been completely
frustrated by a silent warning from the women. The city council has not
dared to pass grafting measures with a roomful of women looking on.
[Illustration: HELEN HOY GREELEY]