Women's suffrage convention

“ The Democratic women brought every possible influence to bear on the State convention of that party but it adopted the following resolution: "We oppose woman suffrage as tending to destroy the home and family, the true basis of political safety, and express the hope that the help-meet and guardian of the family sanctuary may not be dragged from the modest purity of self-imposed seclusion to be thrown unwillingly into the unfeminine places of political strife." ”

“ The National Woman Suffrage Convention opened in Lincoln Hall this morning with a full house.
Miss Anthony opened the meeting by reading the call, and then briefly [Pg 539] stated its purposes, which were to bring influences to bear upon Congress that will secure National protection for women in their right to vote. Black men are the only ones guaranteed by the National Constitution in their right to vote. Women ask for the same security. ”

“ Each Convention too will send Representatives to a culminating Convention of women voters, to be held at San Francisco during the course of the Panama-Pacific Exposition, on September 14th, 15th, and 16th. At this first Convention of women voters to be held on their own 100territory in behalf of the National Suffrage Amendment, delegates will be appointed to go to Washington, D. C., the week Congress opens, to lay before their Representatives and the leaders of the majority Party in Congress, the demand of women voters for the national enfranchisement of women. ”

“ As the women were thus illegally restrained from voting for delegates, the opponents of their enfranchisement were enabled to elect a convention with a majority sufficient to prevent a woman suffrage clause in the constitution for Statehood. ”

“ This is the fourth convention we have held in Washington, and the effect can hardly be estimated in the education of the American people toward woman suffrage. I feel more anxious about how women will vote than in their speedy enfranchisement. So many important political questions are seen in the horizon that woman's influence is needed to guide safely through all storms the ship of state. ”

“ Any Legislature at any session by a majority vote of both Houses, either separately or in joint session, without any change of State constitution, can empower women to help select the presidential electors on the same terms as male citizens. The power is absolute and unqualified. Let women in every State petition their Legislature to enable women to take part in this most important form of suffrage known to the American people. It is objected to our demand for woman suffrage that women do not want it and will not exercise it if granted. ”

“ I have never yet been able to see that the right of voting is secured legally to women under any instrument which is recognized as having the force of law. A republican form of government does not mean universal suffrage. We know that the framers of the Constitution never dreamed that the idea of a republic would include even all the males of the country. ”

“ Where they do not want it, the suffrage should not be forced upon them." When the new administration assumed office in March, 1913, the friends of suffrage worked to secure a constitutional amendment which should make votes for women universal in the United States. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And it is noticeable that the arguments of the opponents are coming more and more to be based on expediency, and hardly attempt to answer the claim that as American citizens women are entitled to the right. If the whole body of American women desired the practical exercise of this right, it is hard to see what valid opposition to their claims could be made. All this however does not amend the constitution. Woman suffrage must become a matter of policy for a political party before it can be realized. Congress does not pass revolutionary measures on abstract considerations of right. ”

“ We now ask Congress to do the same for women. We ask you to enfranchise the women of the District this very winter, so that next March they may go to the ballot-box, and all the people of this nation may see that it is possible for women to vote and the republic to stand. There is no reason, no argument, nothing but prejudice, against our demand ”

“ Especially is it strange that in States where iron-bound constitutional restrictions forbid any exercise whatever of local or municipal woman suffrage and where the social conditions make an amendment of State constitution almost impossible, suffragists allow year after year to elapse without any effort to get the only practical thing possible, action by the State Legislature conferring Presidential suffrage on women. Suffrage in school or municipal elections cannot give us a full and fair test of the value of equal suffrage or of woman's willingness to participate. ”

“ But I shall vote for the pending joint resolution because I am in favor of the proposed amendment. I have been for many years convinced that the demand made by women for the right of suffrage is just, and that of all the distinctions which have been made between citizens in the laws which confer or regulate suffrage the distinction of sex is the least defensible. ”

“ It is unthinkable that a national government which represents women, and which appeals periodically to the Suffrages of women, should ignore the issue of their right to political freedom.
We cannot wait until after the passage of the scheduled administration reforms. These reforms, which affect women, should not be enacted without the consent of women. Congress is free to take action on our question in the present Session. We ask 43the administration to support the Woman Suffrage Amendment in Congress with its full strength. ”

“ In every instance she has taken a vote of those vast audiences as to whether they were in favor of woman suffrage or against it, and in no single instance has there been a solitary vote against the extension of the right, but affirmative and universal action of those great assemblies demanding that it be extended to women. ”

“ Up to this time there was no mention of suffrage in the Federal Constitution except the provision for electing members of the Lower House of Congress but now for the first time it actually discriminated against women by imposing a penalty on the States for preventing men from voting but leaving them entirely free to prohibit women. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If they value in the slightest degree the assistance which educated, public-spirited women are able to give in securing enlightened legislation, they will certainly not favor votes for women; for what woman suffrage does is to take the power out of the hands of these women, who without the vote exert a strong moral influence toward good legislation, and put the power gained through an increase in the electorate into the hands of the bosses who can control the largest woman's vote. ”

“ When women ask Congress to extend to them the right of suffrage it will be proper to consider their claims. Not one in a thousand of them at this time wants any such thing, and would not exercise the power if it were granted to them. Some few who are seeking notoriety make a feeble clamor for the right of suffrage, but they do not represent the sex to which they belong, or I am mistaken as to the modesty and delicacy which constitute the chief attraction of the sex. Do our intelligent and refined women desire to plunge into the vortex of political excitement and agitation? ”

“ The injustice and absurdity of allowing women in one State to be sovereign rulers, and across the line in every direction obliging them to occupy the position of a subject class, taxed without representation and governed without consent—and this in a nation which by its Constitution guarantees equal rights to all the States and equal protection to all their citizens—must soon be manifest even to the most conservative and prejudiced. We therefore congratulate the friends of woman suffrage everywhere that at last there is one spot under the American flag where equal justice is done to women. ”

“ For any men who would give up the law-making power to women in order to remedy existing evils, would surely be those most ready to enact the needful laws themselves.
The woman suffrage party is so extensively organized, with such energetic and persistent leaders and such ably conducted papers and tracts, that those of our sex who are opposed to this measure begin to feel disturbed and anxious lest it should finally be consummated. ”

“ 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." ”

“ This view may be correct, but surely it need not prevent you from advising a provision by which the Legislature would be empowered to extend suffrage to women at its discretion, and this we greatly desire. A conservative measure of this nature could not call out a large amount of antagonism from the voters, while it would be a great help to women in their efforts to obtain a voice in such matters of [Pg 913] public concern as are of vital importance to their interests. ”