National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies

“ Nowadays, it is true, no quite similar result is likely to happen in any state or country which from now on receives enfranchisement, for the reason that there are now other organizations, such as the General Federation of Women's Clubs here, and the active women's trade unions, and suffrage societies on a broad basis and these are every day coming in closer touch with one another and with the organized suffrage movement. ”

“ If all the "suffragists" of all the States could see eye to eye on this point, and stand shoulder to shoulder against every party and politician not fully and unequivocally committed to "Equal Rights for Women," we should become at once a moral balance of power which could not fail to compel the party of highest intelligence to proclaim woman suffrage the chief plank of its platform. "In union alone there is strength." ”

“ The Cabinet in 1919 proposed a bill which would give a vote to all women over 23 years old and it was placed on the program of the Republican party. There are eight or ten suffrage societies in different cities united in a Supreme Feminist Council, which holds congresses and has presented to the Parliament petitions signed by thousands of women asking for complete political and legal equality. ”

“ We are all agreed that Woman Suffrage Associations, local, State and national, are and must be non-partisan. But a clear distinction should be made between the attitude of a society and that of the individual women and men who compose its membership. Suffrage societies, being composed of men and women of all shades of political belief, can not take sides on any other question without violating each member's right and duty to have and express personal political opinions. But, as individuals, it is our duty to be partisans. Woman suffrage is not the only issue. ”

“ The question was finally decided in her favor after the adoption of the following resolution: "The National Labor Congress does not regard itself as indorsing her peculiar ideas, or committing itself to her position on female suffrage." A first attempt to bring working women into the suffrage movement was made in the same year, when leading suffragists organized the Working Women's Association of New York. The founders of this association declared that it was their aim to bring together in one organization various groups of women all working for the improvement of their condition. ”

“ The aim of the association was "to increase general interest in the opposition to universal woman suffrage and to educate the public in the belief that women can be more useful to the community without the ballot than if affiliated with and influenced by party politics." It held mass meetings during campaigns; sent delegates to hearings given by committees of Congress on a Federal Suffrage Amendment and other matters connected with national woman suffrage ”

“ The Conservatives were in office, the National and other Unions of Conservative Associations had already on several occasions given enthusiastic votes in favour of extending "an ownership and occupation" vote to women, the Women's Liberal Unionist Association, backed by the Women's Liberal Federation and the Women's Co-operative Guild and the British Women's Temperance Associations petitioned in its favour, and yet the Government would not lend any facilities. ”

“ We should not have believed it possible that the convention could have been induced to adopt them. They will make forever memorable in the history of the organized woman movement, this thirtieth anniversary of its birth. They put the National Woman Suffrage Association in an inconceivably higher and nobler position than that occupied by any similar society. They go to the very root of the matter. ”

“ If the association ever loses the idealism which is still its backbone it will be a political machine of much power; it seems likely to be for the present a decided force in the direction of civic reform.
For a quarter of a century during the first session of each Congress committees of Senate and House had given a hearing to representatives of the National Suffrage Association to present arguments for the submission of an amendment to the Federal Constitution which would enfranchise women, and at an earlier date to advocate other suffrage measures. ”

“ The Labour Party, preparing its programme for the next General Election, placed in the forefront of its demands "a Government Reform Bill, which must include the enfranchisement of women." Within the Women's Liberal Federation a Liberal Women's Suffrage Union was formed, pledging its members to undertake no work in support of antisuffrage Liberal candidates. A Liberal Men's Association for Women's Suffrage was also formed, under the chairmanship of Mr. ”

“ Resolved, That as neither free trade, finance, prohibition, capital and labor, nor any other political question, can be so vital to the existence of the Republic as the enfranchisement of women, it is clearly our duty to aid and support the great National party that shall first inscribe woman suffrage on its banner. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Families' Association, Schools for Mothers, Girls' Clubs—into everything the Suffrage societies fling themselves with ardour, zeal and ability. No women knew better how to organize, no women better how to educate and win help. They formed an admirable Women's Interests Committee, and looked after all women's interests excellently.
When the Government issued its first appeal for women volunteers for munitions and land, etc., it asked the Suffrage societies to circulate them and to help them to secure the needed labour from women. ”

“ The first Women’s Unions were started in the early ’seventies of the last century, by middle-class women who were also in the forefront of the battle for the Suffrage. The authorities dissolved the societies. Women-workers did not long maintain the alliance with the “Women’s Rights” Party. An independent organisation was formed, which greatly exceeded the previous efforts in numbers and significance. ”

“ The culmination of seventy years' continuous effort was about to be reached in the complete and universal enfranchisement of women and now a new generation, under the guidance of the older workers who remained, was bravely taking up another great task, that of bringing about cooperation among women in the effective use of this supreme power for the highest welfare of the State. On the last afternoon of the convention the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the League of Women Voters held a joint session for discussion of matters in which they had a mutual interest. ”

“ As soon as might be after the Royal Assent had been given to the Reform Bill in February, 1918, the various suffrage societies held their several council meetings to discuss their future action. Some societies dissolved and formed themselves into women citizens' associations. ”

“ In all parts of the country Republican and Democratic women organized clubs and marched in processions; but she called attention to the fact that these methods are not advocated by the suffrage societies so long as women remain disfranchised. Over two hundred clubs were formed for political study. All of the parties placed women on their platforms to speak in behalf of the candidates. A Central Republican Headquarters was opened in New York and put in charge of a national committee of women who sent out hundreds of thousands of campaign documents. ”

“ Women's suffrage always has been, and will remain, a non-party question. The Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association is working as keenly as any of the other suffrage societies. We shall not succeed in 1912 unless we are successful in attracting the support of Conservatives as well as Liberals and Radicals. To aid us in the final struggle it is of no little value that we have the promise of a week's Government time for the Conciliation Bill, if our hopes of carrying a satisfactory amendment to the Reform Bill should be frustrated. ”

“ We favor the admission of women to wider spheres of usefulness, and welcome their co-operation in rescuing the country from Democratic mismanagement and Populist misrule.
A whole plank to exploit Republicanism and a small splinter to cajole the women, who had not asked for the suffrage to "rescue" or to defeat any political party!
No Democratic national platform ever has recognized so much as the existence of women, in all its grandiloquent declarations of the "rights of the masses," the "equality of the people," the "sovereignty of the individual" and the "powers inherent in a democracy." ”

“ At all events it was the action of the men, who by an overwhelming vote refused to the women delegates from the Anti-Slavery Societies in America the right to sit and deliberate in that assembly, that gave the impetus to the Women's Suffrage agitation in America. This refusal to allow their fellow-workers recognition must have aroused in the minds of English women working at that time for social reforms serious reflections on the position women occupied in regard to the State. ”

“ Our protest is not that all men are lifted out of the degradation of disfranchisement, but that all women are left in. The Revolution and the National Woman's Suffrage Association make woman's suffrage their test of loyalty, not negro suffrage, not Maine law or prohibition. Do you believe women should vote? is the one and only question in our catechism. In this period of reconstruction the Woman Suffrage Associations sent their first delegates to National political conventions. ”

“ The membership and campaign funds have likewise tripled in the United States and every president of an auxiliary national society has reported increase in numbers, funds and activity.... No human power, no university professor, no Parliament, no government, can stay the coming of woman suffrage. It is a step in the evolution of society and the eternal verities are behind it.... Of the 24 nations represented in this congress the women of 15 have more political rights than they had seven years ago. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She urged on its behalf that the women of the country should be enfranchised during that very year, either by a clause in the Plural Voting Bill then before Parliament, or by a separate measure. Assuring the Prime Minister that the members of the Union believed that no business could be more pressing than this, she stated calmly and firmly that a growing number of them felt the question of Votes for Women so deeply that they were prepared, if necessary, to sacrifice for it life itself, or what was perhaps even harder, the means by which they lived. ”

“ Through the Civic Federation, the Municipal Leagues, and the Women's Clubs, an enormous amount of work for the good of all has been undertaken; but the suffrage members of these associations far from welcoming all public spirited workers, attempt to make the belief in woman suffrage the test of a worker's value, and introduce party politics and petty strife into these great, non-partisan bodies of women, thereby impairing their services to the Commonwealth to such an extent that the eyes of many women have been opened to what the state of affairs would be if all women were in politics. ”

“ But when the new spirit touched the Women's Co-operative Guild, the demand had to take another shape. An organisation of married working women cannot so stifle its individuality as to abstain from asking the vote for its own members. A demand for liberty cannot be self-denying. Unless they want the vote themselves, co-operative housewives can only bring an academic support to the suffrage movement. ”

“ But in 1891 before the suffrage was a live subject, before it had entered the region of practical politics, the women suffragists in six weeks obtained 30,000 signatures of adult women. The first and the most natural result of the anti-suffrage movement has been to bring down enquiries on the United Council from all parts of the Colony how to help Women's Suffrage. ”