In the meantime, the Congressional union had been forming an Advisory Council which continued to Support the Congressional union—and later the Woman’s Party—with advice and work during the rest of its history. The personnel of the Advisory Council has changed from time to time; but always it has been a large body and an able one.
The list of membership has included many famous names; women political leaders; women trades-unionists; women of wealth and position; women active in their communities. It included professional women of every sort; doctors, lawyers, clergymen. It included artists of every description; actors, singers, painters, sculptors. It included publicists of every kind; fictionists, poets, dramatists, essayists. It included social workers of every class. And these women have represented all parts of the union.
On August 29 and 30, this newly-formed Advisory Council met at Newport. Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont did everything to make the occasion a success. She threw open Marble House which, hung with the great purple, white, and gold banners of the Congressional union and flooded with golden light, made an extraordinary background for the deliberations of the Conference. In every way possible for her she used the beauty and social prestige of Newport to give the occasion dignity, prominence, and publicity. Her daughter, the Duchess of Marlborough, had joined the Congressional union just previous to this Conference. Little she thought and little the Congressional union thought that as an English woman, she would be a voter, would be elected to the London City Council before her mother, an American woman, was enfranchised.
74Here, for the first time, the plan of holding the Democratic Party—the Party in power—responsible for the slowness with which the Suffrage work was progressing, and, in consequence, of working against it, was adopted as a program actually to be carried out.
Lucy Burns made a magnificent speech on that occasion. She pointed out that the Democratic Party was in complete possession of the National Government, controlling the Presidential chair, the Senate, possessing an overwhelming majority in the House. She analyzed the working of Congress: she showed that our government is a government by Party: that no measures of importance had passed through the Sixty-third Congress without the backing of the Party in power: and that no measure could pass that Congress if opposed by that Party.
She amplified this thesis. She showed that the President, the leader of the Party, had seven times refused his powerful aid to the movement. She showed that in the Senate the Democratic leaders blocked the Suffrage measure by bringing it to a vote at a time when they acknowledged it would be defeated. She showed that in the House, the Rules Committee had consistently blocked the Amendment, both by preventing the creation of a Suffrage Committee and by preventing consideration of the Amendment in the House. And she proved by the words of the acting chairman of the Rules Committee that that Committee had in its keeping “the policy of the Democratic Party.” She showed that the Democratic Caucus had taken definite action against the Suffrage Amendment. It had declared that Suffrage was not a question for national consideration and so it had refused to sanction the creation of a Suffrage Committee.
Alice Paul, first asking the press to withdraw, outlined the proposed election program. She asked the members of the Conference not to reveal it until the middle of September when the Congressional union would be ready to put it into practical operation. This is her speech on that occasion:
75From the very beginning of our work in Washington, we have followed one consistent policy from which we have not departed a single moment. We began our work with the coming in of the present Congress and immediately went to the Party which was in control of the situation and asked it to act. We determined to get the Amendment through the Sixty-third Congress, or to make it very clear who had kept it from going through. Now, as has been shown, the Democrats have been in control of all branches of the Government and they are therefore responsible for the non-passage of our measure.
The point is first, who is our enemy and then, how shall that enemy be attacked?
We are all, I think, agreed that it is the Democratic Party which is responsible for the blocking of the Suffrage Amendment. Again and again that Party has gone on record through the action of its leaders, its caucus, and its committees so that an impregnable case has been built up against it. We now lay before you a plan to meet the present situation.
We propose going into the nine Suffrage States and appealing to the women to use their votes to secure the franchise for the women of the rest of the country. All of these years we have worked primarily in the States. Now the time has come, we believe, when we can really go into national politics and use the nearly four million votes that we have to win the vote for the rest of us. Now that we have four million voters, we need no longer continue to make our appeal simply to the men. The struggle in England has gotten down to a physical fight. Here our fight is simply a political one. The question is whether we are good enough politicians to take four million votes and organize them and use them so as to win the vote for the women who are still disfranchised.
We want to attempt to organize the women’s vote. Our plan is to go out to these nine States and there appeal to all the women voters to withdraw their support from the Democrats nationally until the Democratic Party nationally ceases to block Suffrage. We would issue an appeal signed by influential women of the East addressed to the women voters as a whole asking them to use their vote this one time in the national election against the Democratic Party throughout the whole nine States. Every one of these States, with one exception, is a doubtful State. Going back over a period of fourteen years, each State, except Utah, has supported first one Party and then another. Here are nine States which politicians are thinking about and in these nine States we have this great power. If we ask those 76women in the nine Suffrage States as a group to withhold their support from this Party as a group which is opposing us, it will mean that votes will be turned. Suppose the Party saw votes falling away all over the country because of their action on the Trust question—they would change their attitude on Trust legislation. If they see them falling away because of their attitude on Suffrage they will change their attitude on Suffrage. When we have once affected the result in a national election, no Party will trifle with Suffrage any longer.
We, of course, are a little body to undertake this—but we have to begin. We have not very much money; there are not many of us to go out against the great Democratic Party. Perhaps this time we won’t be able to do so very much, though I know we can do a great deal, but if the Party leaders see that some votes have been turned they will know that we have at least realized this power that we possess and they will know that by 1916 we will have it organized. The mere announcement of the fact that Suffragists of the East have gone out to the West with this appeal will be enough to make every man in Congress sit up and take notice.
This last week one Congressman from a Suffrage State came to us and asked us if we would write just one letter to say what he had done in Congress to help us. He said that one letter might determine the election in his district. This week the man who is running for the Senatorial election in another Suffrage State came to us and asked us to go out and help him in his State—asked us simply to announce that he had been our friend. Now if our help is valued to this extent, our opposition will be feared in like degree.
Our plan is this: To send at least two women to each of those nine States. We would put one woman at the center who would attend to the organizing, the publicity and the distribution of literature. We would have literature printed showing what the Democratic Party has done with regard to Suffrage in the Sixty-third Congress. We would have leaflets printed from the Eastern women appealing to the Western women for help, and we would have leaflets issued showing how much the enfranchised woman herself needs the Federal Amendment because most important matters are becoming national in their organization and can only be dealt with by national legislation. We could reach every home in every one of those nine States with our literature, without very great expense. One good woman at the center could make this message, this appeal from Eastern women, known to the whole State. The other worker would 77attend to the speaking and in six weeks could easily cover all the large towns of the State.
Why Is the Girl from the West Getting All the Attention?
Nina Allender in The Suffragist.
This is the plan that we are considering, and that we are hoping to put through. We would be very much interested to hear what you think about it and want, of course, to have your co-operation in carrying it through.
The Conference voted to unite behind the Bristow-Mondell Amendment in Congress and to support an active election campaign against candidates of the Democratic Party. It raised over seven thousand dollars to meet the expense of this campaign.
The details of the election campaign project were immediately worked out; organizers were selected and after a farewell garden party on September 14, they started for the nine enfranchised States. Headquarters were opened in San Francisco under Lucy Burns and Rose Winslow; in Denver, Colorado, under Doris Stevens and Ruth Noyes; in Ph?nix, Arizona, under Jane Pincus and Josephine Casey; in Kansas City, Kansas, under Lola C. Trax and Edna S. Latimer; at Portland, Oregon, under Jessie Hardy Stubbs and Virginia Arnold; in Seattle, Washington, under Margaret Whittemore and Anne McCue; at Cheyenne, Wyoming, under Gertrude Hunter; at Salt Lake City, Utah, under Elsie Lancaster; at Boise City, Idaho, under Helena Hill Weed.
In these centers, open-air, drawing-room, and theatre meetings followed each other in rapid succession. In many districts, the campaigners canvassed from door to door. Window-cards, handbills, cartoons, moving-picture films, and voiceless speeches, calling upon the women voters to refuse their support to the Party which had blocked the National Suffrage Amendment, appeared everywhere from Seattle to Ph?nix. A pithily worded Appeal to the Women Voters was placed in the hands of the women voters. Press bulletins describing the campaign against the Democratic candidates for Congress and reiterating the record made by the Democratic 78Party on the Suffrage question, were issued daily. Literature dealing with the record of the Democratic Party and with the value to the woman voter of a national Suffrage Amendment, were sent to innumerable homes in every Suffrage State.
The Suffragist, which teemed with reports of what these vigorous campaigners were doing, presents pictures which could have occurred nowhere in the world but the United States, and nowhere in the United States but the West. The speakers were interesting, amusing, full of information and enthusiasm. With a sympathy and understanding typically western, men and women responded immediately, responded equally to this original campaign.
All the time, of course, these speakers were educating the people of the United States in regard to the work of Congress. This was a new note in Suffrage campaigns; but it was the policy of the Congressional union at all times whether campaigns were being waged or not.
From the Suffragist of September 19, I quote from a report of the enterprising Jessie Hardy Stubbs, who actually began her work on board the North Coast, Limited:
Here we are—all bound for the field of battle. Miss McCue, Miss Whittemore and I are together. Miss Whittemore joined us at Chicago full of earnestness and zeal. We have put up signs in each car that there will be a meeting tonight in the observation car, and that we will speak on the record of the Democratic Party in Congress and Women Suffrage. There is much interest. We have sold ten Suffragists today on board the train, secured new subscribers to the Suffragist, and contributions for the campaign.
Doris Stevens writes in the Suffragist of October 3:
Friday afternoon, Mrs. Lucius M. Cuthbert, a daughter of ex-Senator Hill, gave us a drawing-room meeting in her beautiful Denver home. She invited representative women from all Parties to come and hear of the work of the union, to which invitation about one hundred women responded. One Democratic lady came up to me after the meeting and said, “I had no idea 79you women had been so rebuffed by my Party. I am convinced that my duty is to the women first, and my Party second.” Another: “You have almost convinced me that we women must stand together on this national issue.” And so it went. And, as our charming hostess pointed out, the applause was often led by a prominent Democratic woman. Offers of help, loans of furniture, and general expressions of eagerness to aid were made on every side. The meeting was a splendid success, judging from the large number of women who joined the union and the generous collection which was given.
In the Suffragist of October 10, Lola Trax writes:
The meeting at Lebanon was especially well advertised. The moving picture shows had run an advertising slide; the Wednesday prayer meeting had announced my coming, and the Public Schools had also made announcements to their pupils. The Ladies’ Aid Society invited me to speak in the afternoon, while they were quilting; and thus another anti-Suffrage argument was shattered; for quilting and politics went hand in hand.
At Phillipsburg the meeting was on the Court House green. It is fifty-seven miles from Phillipsburg to Osborne and the trip has to be made by freight. I was on the road from six-thirty o’clock in the morning until three P.M. About a dozen passengers were in the caboose on the freight, and we held a meeting and discussion which lasted about forty-five minutes. Upon reaching Osborne at three o’clock I found about one hundred people assembled for an auction sale in the middle of the street. Cots, tables, and chairs were to be offered at sacrifice prices. The temptation to hold a meeting overcame fatigue. I jumped into an automobile nearby and had a most interested crowd until the auctioneer came. I had been unable to secure the Town Hall because a troupe of players were making a one night stand in the town. The meeting at night was also in the open air.
In the Suffragist of October 10, Jessie Hardy Stubbs continues:
On Tuesday evening, September 28, I spoke in the Public Library, explaining our mission in Oregon. Mr. Arthur L. Moulton, Progressive Candidate for Congress from the Third District presided, and made a very clever introductory speech. Many questions were asked by Democratic women which brought out a spirited defense on the part of several of those present. 80One Democratic woman maintained that it would be a most ungrateful position on the part of the Oregon women to vote against Chamberlain, who had always been a friend of Suffrage, whereupon a distinguished-looking woman arose and said: “Oh, no. It would merely be a case of not loving Chamberlain less, but of loving Suffrage more.”
I spoke before the Sheet Metal Workers’ union last night, and expect to address every union before the campaign is over. There are only two women’s unions here; the garment workers and the waitresses. We intend to make a canvass of the stores and meet the clerks personally and to get into all the factories, as far as possible, where women are employed, and urge these western women voters to stand by the working women of the East. Tonight we have our first open-air meeting.
In the Suffragist of October 31, Ge............