The Congressional union was now to undertake another gigantic task—the formation of a new political Party.
For this purpose, a conference of national officers, state officers, members of the Advisory Council of the Congressional union from the unenfranchised States met at the Little White House April 8 and 9, 1916. Brilliant speeches were made by Anne Martin and Lucy Burns. Alice Paul summed the whole matter up in her usual convincingly incisive and logical way:
This is the third time we have called together the members of our Advisory Council and our state and national officers to lay before them a new project. The first time was at Newport when we proposed a campaign against all Democratic candidates for Congress in the Suffrage States. The second time was a year ago in New York when we proposed to convert the Congressional union into a national organization with branches in the different States. Today we want to lay another plan before you for your consideration—that is the organization of a political Party of women voters who can go into this next election, if it is necessary to go into it, as an independent Party.
I think we are all agreed on certain essential points. First—from what source our opposition comes. We are agreed that it comes from the Administration. We do not have to prove that. Second—we are agreed as to where our power lies—that is in the Suffrage States. Third—we are agreed as to the political situation. We know that the two Parties are about equal, that both want to win. We know that the Suffrage States are doubtful States and that every one of those States is wanted by the political Parties. We know that many of the elections will be close. The State of Nevada was won by only forty votes in the last Senatorial election. In Utah it was a week before the campaign was decided. In Colorado, the same. Going back over a period of twenty years it would have been necessary to have 150changed only nine per cent of the total vote cast in the presidential elections in order to have thrown the election to the other Party. This gives us a position of wonderful power, a position that we have never held before and that we cannot hope to hold again for at least four years, and which we may not hold then.
We have been working for two years to effect an organization in the Suffrage States and have finally completed such an organization. Our last branch was formed about ten days ago in the State of Washington. We now have to demonstrate to the Administration, to the majority Party in Congress, that the organization in the Suffrage States does exist and that it is a power to be feared. There are many months still remaining, probably, before Congress will adjourn. If in these months we can build up so strong an organization there that it really will be dangerous to oppose it, and if we can show Congress that we have such an organization, then we will have the matter in our hands.
We have sent a request to our branches in the East to select one or more representative women who will go out to the West and make a personal appeal to the women voters to stand by us even more loyally than they have before—to form a stronger organization than has ever before existed.
Today we must consider what concrete plan we shall ask these envoys who go out to the West to propose to the voting women. I do not think it will do very much good to go through the voting States and simply strengthen our Suffrage organizations. That will not be enough to terrify the men in Congress. Suffrage organizations, unfortunately, have come to stand for feebleness of action and supineness of spirit. What I want to propose is that when we go to these women voters we ask them to begin to organize an independent political Party that will be ready for the elections in November. They may not have to go into these elections. If they prepare diligently enough for the elections they won’t have to go into them. The threat will be enough. We want to propose to you that we ask the women voters to come together in Chicago at the time that the Progressives and Republicans meet there in June, to decide how they will use these four million votes that women have, in the next election.
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; whose votes are wanted. The Parties will inevitably have to go to the women voters if the latter stand aloof and do not go to the existing political Parties. The political Parties will have to offer them the thing which will win their votes. To count in an election you do not have to be the biggest Party; you have to be simply an independent Party that will stand for one object and that cannot be diverted from that object.
Four years ago there was launched a new Party, the Progressive Party. It really did, I suppose, decide the last Presidential election. We can be the same determining factor in this coming election. And if we can make Congress realize that we can be the determining factor, we won’t have to go into the election at all.
What I would like to propose, in short, is that we go to the women voters and ask them to hold a convention in Chicago the first week in June, and that we spend these next two months in preparation. We could not have a better opportunity for preparation than this trip of the envoys through every one of the Suffrage States, calling the women together to meet in Chicago, the place where the eyes of the whole country will be turned in June.
We want very much to know what you think about this plan and whether you will help us in carrying it through. It is not an easy thing to launch a new Party and have it stand competition with the Republican and Democratic Parties. If we undertake it, we must make it a success. We must make it worthy to stand beside these great Parties. That is the biggest task that we have ever dreamed of since we started the Congressional union.
It was unanimously decided by the Conference to send an appeal to all members in the Suffrage States to meet in Chicago on June 5, 6, and 7, to form a Woman’s Party. Envoys to carry this appeal to the West were elected.
Mrs. W. D. Ascough, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Abby Scott Baker, Lucy Burns, Agnes Campbell, Mrs. A. R. Colvin, Anna Constable, Edith Goode, Jane Goode, Florence Bayard Hilles, Julia Hurlburt, Caroline Katzenstein, 152Winifred Mallon, Mrs. Cyrus Mead, Agnes Morey, Katherine Morey, Gertrude B. Newell, Mrs. Percy Read, Ella Riegel, Mrs. John Rogers, Mrs. Townsend Scott, Helen Todd, Mrs. Nelson Whittemore.
All of these women were chosen by State groups of the National Woman’s Party; they therefore went to the West as the spokesmen of the unenfranchised women of their own States. Ahead of them went the organizers.
This Suffrage Special must not be confused with Hughes’ “Golden Special,” which in October—six months later—toured the West and with which the National Woman’s Party had no connection.
Five thousand people gathered in the union Station at Washington to see the envoys off—what the Washington Times describes as a “banner-carrying, flag-waving, flower-laden cheering crowd.” Automobiles flying the tri-color brought the envoys to the station. Two buglers sounded the assembly for the farewell. The Naval Gun Factory Band greeted them with the Marseillaise, and in the half-hour before the train’s departure, it continued to play martial music. When it struck up Onward Christian Soldiers and America, the crowd sang with them.
The envoys made a tremendous impression in the West. Whenever their train arrived—purple, white, and gold decorations floating from all the windows—that arrival became an event and created excitement.
“I wish you might see some of these meetings,” Abby Baker wrote to the Suffragist of April 29, “and see the looks of amusement of the men as our train pulls in, gay with our Congressional union colors. They invariably call out, ‘Here come the Suffragettes,’ but very soon they are saying, ‘She’s all right,’ and ‘That’s straight lady,’ or some such approving phrase, and as the train pulls out of the station, we hear, ‘Bully for you!’ ‘Good luck!’ and so forth.”
“At Williams, Arizona,” said another letter in the same number of the Suffragist, “there was nothing in sight but a water tank, a restaurant, a picture postal card shop, and yet we had a tremendous meeting.”
153At El Tova, in the same State, they carried the message of the unenfranchised women of the East to the very rim of the canyon, a mile below sea level!
Leaving very early in the morning, at Maricopa they found a group of women waiting, who said plaintively, “Oh, if you could only stop longer, so that we might drum up all the women out of the sage brush!”
It was not the people alone or the civic authorities who made this trip of the envoys so attractive. When the Suffragists came to breakfast on the road from Maricopa to Tucson, they found that the management of the railway had decorated the breakfast tables in the dining car with purple, white, and gold—sweet peas and yellow laburnums. At Tucson, Eugene Debs came with the crowd to meet them.
At a meeting in Cheyenne, Mrs. Blatch was presented with a framed copy of a facsimile of the Governor’s signature attached to the act enfranchising the women of Wyoming when the State came into the union.
In San Francisco, where there was a large meeting in the Civic Auditorium, presided over by Gail Laughlin, Sara Bard Field spoke. At the close of the meeting, she asked if the people present who put Suffrage before Party affiliations would say, “I will.” The audience arose as one man, and answered roundly, “I will.”
At Sacramento, California, where they were given a reception and luncheon by the Chamber of Commerce, the annual fruit show was in progress and the envoys were presented with an immense box of raisins and two boxes of Sacramento Valley cherries.
At Seattle, the station was decorated with Congressional union banners; the national colors; hanging baskets of flowers. A bugler called together the big crowd—including the Acting Mayor—which had gathered to welcome the envoys.
“Ladies,” Mrs. Blatch ended her speech, “we are here after your votes.” A man’s voice in the audience cried: 154“You’ll get them,” and when Mrs. Blatch said, “Men, we need yours too,” the whole crowd burst into applause.
Immediately after the address, the envoys were taken on a tour of the city in a procession of a hundred and fifty automobiles, all, of course, flying the purple, white, and gold. They attended court, where Seattle’s only woman judge, a member of the Congressional union, presided—Reah Whitehead.
It was in Washington State that the doctrine of Suffrage first reached what the Suffragist described as “the height of its career.” Lucy Burns, as the guest of Flight Lieutenant Maroney of the Naval Militia at Washington, flew to a height of fourteen hundred feet over Seattle, scattering leaflets as she went. When she started, Miss Burns carried a Congressional union banner, but the eighty-mile-an-hour gale soon tore it from her hand. When last seen, it reposed gracefully on the roof of a large Seattle mill. At Bellingham occurred one of the biggest out-of-door meetings the envoys had had. For a solid block, the street was packed with people from one side to the other.
At Spokane, they participated in an interesting and rather poignant event, the planting of a tree in memory of May Arkwright Hutton, pioneer Suffragist of Washington.
At Helena, Montana, a huge mass-meeting was held in the Auditorium. A sand storm, which had greeted their arrival, grew worse towards night, the wind howling louder and louder. In the midst of Mrs. Rogers’s speech the lights suddenly went out. She did not even hesitate, and in the absolute darkness continued to urge women to stand by women. There was not a sound from the audience; they listened in perfect quiet till the end.
In one State, the Governor declared the coming of the Suffrage Special a legal holiday. Everything on wheels turned out to meet the envoys at the train, including the fire engine.
A Convention at Salt Lake City on May 11 closed the swing of the Suffrage Special round the circle of the twelve 155free States, and brought the Western tour to its highest stage of success. The envoys passed from the station under a great purple, white, and gold flag, through a lane of women, their arms full of spring blossoms, to a long line of waiting automobiles flying banners of purple, white, and gold.
The Convention passed resolutions demanding from Congress favorable action on the Suffrage Amendment in the present session and elected three women voters to carry these resolutions to Congress.
These women accompanied the envoys to Washington. There they were welcomed by a luncheon in the union Station. Then, in automobiles, brilliantly decorated, they drove through streets lined with huge posters which said COME TO THE CAPITOL. As they approached the Capitol, two buglers, from the broad platforms at the top of the high, wide stairway, alternately sounded a note of triumphant welcome. A huge chorus of women in white sang America. Through the aisle formed on the Capitol steps by ribbons held in the hands of other women in white, the envoys passed up the steps into the Rotunda. In the Rotunda, they grouped themselves into a semi-circle facing another semi-circle—nearly a hundred Senators and Representatives. The Senate had taken a recess especially to meet these women.
The envoys, elected at the Salt Lake City Convention, then presented to the assembled Congressmen the resolutions passed at that Convention and speeches followed.
While the envoys were rousing the West, the Congressional union was sending deputations to great political leaders in the hope of getting declarations of support which would influence the coming National Political Conventions. To a deputation consisting of Mary Beard, Elizabeth Gerberding, Alice Carpenter, and Mrs. Evan Evans, Theodore Roosevelt, who had long been converted ............