League of Women Voters

“ Well-known professors of many Western universities and colleges have spoken and written in favor of equal suffrage. In New York City a flourishing Voters' League for Equal Suffrage has been formed, with a membership running into the hundreds.
To the average unprejudiced man the old arguments against political equality have almost entirely lost weight. The theory that women should not vote because they cannot fight is now rarely argued. Municipal governments certainly no longer rest on physical force. ”

“ It appears, therefore, that the secondary object of the Anti-Suffrage League, "the representation of women on municipal bodies," would be best served by extending the Parliamentary franchise to women. ”

“ How different was the atmosphere from that of the typical drawing-room meeting, where many women came together with the remark: “I am all for propertied women having the vote,” but their fear is lest the electorate should be flooded with working women voters. I have never yet been asked by a working-class woman whether our Bill, to give votes to women for the same reason as men have it, would not give undue power to propertied women. ”

“ The great majority of the women admitted by the Bill would be unmarried, and if women were to be enfranchised at all, married women were the best qualified. Only 25 or 30 per cent. of the municipal women electors voted, and an insignificant number stood. To give women the vote would entail their admission to Parliament and the Cabinet. The militant organisation was widespread and powerful, and militancy was widely connived at by other organisations, such as the Church League for Women's Suffrage. Would it cease if women got the vote, or be carried into politics? ”

“ We want the right of representation for all the people, women as well as men. Women have been disfranchised in our country long enough and we now ask for that measure which will constitutionally grant the right to vote to the women of our land. We believe that women ought to be free agents, free selectors, free voters. ”

“ The original purpose for which the Woman’s Party, as an organization confined to women voters alone, was formed, has, we believe, been served. In the first three years of our work we endeavored to call the attention of political leaders and Congress to the fact that women were voting and that these voting women were interested in Suffrage. But words alone did not have much effect. We found we had to visualize the existence of voting women out in the West and their support of the Suffrage Amendment. ”

“ Resolutions were passed pledging the association not to cease its efforts until the unjust discrimination with regard to voting is swept away; that in the election of president, and of all officers where the qualifications of voters are not prescribed by the State constitution, the experiment should be tried of allowing women to vote ”

“ The Women's Journal in recounting the gains for suffrage concluded: "In this year, 1900, the woman suffragists, after a half-century of unbroken national organization, can go before Congress and claim the support of members from four States who were elected in part by the votes of women. They can enforce their pleas before presidential nominating conventions with the concrete fact that thirteen members of the electoral college have a constituency of women voters." ”

“ They believe the true remedy is to make woman's work honorable and remunerative, and that the suffrage agitation does not tend to this, but rather to drain off the higher classes of cultivated women from those more important duties to take charge of political and civil affairs that are more suitable for men.
Now if women are all made voters, it will be their duty to vote, and also to qualify themselves for this duty. ”

“ It was noteworthy that, though the bill was opposed as undemocratic by Mr Lloyd-George and other Liberals, it was supported by 32 out of 40 of the Labour members, and evidence was given that a large proportion of the new voters would have been working women.
The leading women's suffrage societies may here be mentioned. All these societies have advocated precisely the same view, namely that women should have the same electoral privileges as men, whatever franchise system be adopted. ”

“ Women are the mothers and instructors of men, and if the general opinion among women was earnestly for the right to vote there would in two or three generations be a body of men voters taught to believe in the justice of woman suffrage.
The existing political powers will not offer the voting franchise to women till they eee some selfish gain in it. Women must, and only women can, make them see that gain — the hope of new recruits or the fear of moral revolt. ”

“ The Women's Freedom League endeavoured to render the election void, because they objected to any election being held at which women might not vote. The W. S. P. U. were against this, because their policy was to prove that the electors were prepared to defeat the Government candidate in order to show their belief in [458] Votes for Women. The attempt of the Freedom League members to render the election void was carried out in the following manner. ”

“ Catt. Her address, The Nation Calls, was a strong appeal for an organization of Women Voters to be formed in the States where they were enfranchised. The plan was outlined and she asked: "Shall the women voters go forward doing their work as free women in the great world while the non-free women are left to struggle on alone toward liberty unattained?" She showed how powerful an influence such a coordinated body could wield and among its primary objects she pointed out the Federal Suffrage Amendment, corrections in the present laws and true democracy for the world. ”

“ Having referred to what he considered to be the defects in the existing electoral provisions, dwelling especially on that of plural voting, he explained that, though the Government intended to introduce a Reform Bill, Woman's Suffrage was to have no place in it, but that when the Bill had been laid before the House, those Members of Parliament who believed in giving Votes to Women might move an amendment to that effect. ”

“ 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 151voters 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 ”

“ Three days before the end of the contest it was suggested that a women's procession should march to the various polling booths, in order to remind the men to vote against the nominee of the Government that had refused to allow women to become voters too. ”

“ Other influences were operating to open political activity to women. Their help and co-operation were warmly welcomed by the Anti-Corn Law League. Cobden, at one of the great meetings of the League held in Covent Garden Theatre in 1845, said that he wished women could vote. ”

“ The course for the State Suffrage Association is clear. We must play our part in this sector of the national suffrage struggle and we must let our opponents see that they can not keep American citizens out of their fundamental rights with impunity.
A committee of Republican women circulated a pledge to give no money or work for the Republican party as long as women had no votes. ”

“ Questions are upon you which you can not solve without the moral sentiment of womanhood. You need us more than we need suffrage. In our large cities the vicious element rules. The reserve force is in the womanhood of the nation. Woman suffrage is necessary for the preservation of the life of the republic. To give women the ballot is to increase the intelligent and law-abiding vote. The tramp vote is entirely masculine. By enfranchising the women of this country, you enfranchise humanity. ”

“ The two large suffrage organisations make the same demand, as does every suffrage society in existence, including the Men's League for Women's Suffrage, the Church of England Suffrage Society, the Free Church Suffrage League, the Catholic Suffrage Society, the Women's Freedom League, the Women Writers' Suffrage League, the Actresses' Suffrage Society, and the Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association. This demand is, and has consistently been, votes for women on the same terms as men. ”

“ At the time of elections the right to vote is the inalienable right of women, and the entrance of women into all human departments is an irrefutable and incontrovertible question. No soul can retard or prevent it. ”

“ The ballot does not make those men happy nor respectable nor rich nor noble; but they guard it for themselves with sleepless jealousy, because they know it is the golden gate to every opportunity; and precisely the kind of advantage it gives to one sex, it would give to the other. It would arm it with the most powerful weapon known to political society; it would maintain the natural balance of the sexes in human affairs, and secure to each fair play within its sphere.
But, sir, the Committee tell us that the suffrage of women would be a revolutionary innovation ”

“ Are we ready to expose the country to the demoralization, and our institutions to the strain, which would be placed upon them for the gratification of a minority of the virtuous and good of our female population at the expense of the mortification of a very large majority of the same sex?
It has been frequently urged with great earnestness by those who advocate woman suffrage that the ballot is necessary to the women to enable them to protect themselves in securing occupations, and to enable them to realize the same compensation for the like labor which is received by men. ”

“ It is just so with the Democrats; hence we almost always have a mixture of office-holders. I have seen the effects of female suffrage, and, instead of being a means of encouragement to fraud and corruption, it tends greatly to purify elections and to promote better government.' Now, 'scratching' is the most difficult feature of the art of voting, and if women have mastered this, they are doing very well. ”

“ As the question is likely to become a prominent theme of discussion during the next few years, the Times will now say that it is decidedly and unequivocally in favor of woman suffrage. We believe that women have the same right to vote that men have, that it is impolitic and unjust to deprive them of the right, and that its free and full bestowal would conserve the welfare of society and the good of government. ”

“ Shall we go still further, and say that they ought to take an equal part with men in the caucus, at the ballot-box, in the senate, at the bar, on the bench, and elsewhere? If universal suffrage be the true theory of government, then, logically, women are entitled to vote; because they, equally with men, represent humanity. Every asserted disqualification, on the ground of ignorance or preoccupation, is sophistical; because the same plea would disqualify four-fifths of the men too. If a government of all by all be the true theory, it is a wrong to exclude women. ”

“ If, for example, the Senate of the United States should be entirely composed of women, but two in each State would be withdrawn from the pursuit of domestic happiness."
How could "the class of men now elected" help resigning, if women enough chose to put up a woman and give her a majority of votes,—provided, as Suffragists say, that the vote secures the office and retains it by a mere mandate? But it is not one office, or set of offices, which we have to consider. It is the entrance upon political life, permanently, of a large body of women. ”

“ If an Irish vote, or a German vote, or a Catholic vote, or a Hebrew vote is to be dreaded, say the men, how much more of a menace would a woman vote be. I heard a man, a delegate from an anti-suffrage association, solemnly warn the New York State Legislature, at a suffrage hearing, against this danger of a woman vote. "When the majority of women and the minority of men vote together," he declared, "there will be no such thing as personal liberty left in the United States." ”

“ The National Union adopted a different election policy—that of obtaining declarations of opinion from all candidates at each election and supporting the man, independent of party, who gave the most satisfactory assurances of support. In the view of the National Union this policy was infinitely more adapted to the facts of the situation than that adopted by the militants. What was desired was that the electorate should be educated in the principles of women's suffrage, and made to understand what women wanted, and why they wanted it ”

“ Suffragists are not labouring under the impression that because women now have votes no further reform is needed in our representative system. A large proportion of suffragists are probably in favour of proportional representation, and would favour its adoption mainly on the ground that it would secure a much fairer reflection of the whole nation than the present system, which may, and frequently does, result in the practical exclusion from representation of large masses of the voters. ”

“ Unorganized and without the protection of a vote they were underpaid and a menace to working men. In self-defense, therefore, the labor unions were compelled to demand the ballot for women. They were followed by other organizations of men until hundreds were on record as favoring woman suffrage. Men trying to bring about civic or political reforms in, the old parties or through new ones and feeling their weakness turned to women with their great organizations but soon realized their inefficiency without political power. ”