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niyad

(112,432 posts)
Mon Oct 20, 2014, 10:11 PM Oct 2014

Today in 1915: Alice Paul Speaks Out on a Suffrage Defeat in New Jersey


Today in 1915: Alice Paul Speaks Out on a Suffrage Defeat in New Jersey




October 20, 1915: Though the focus of most suffragists is now on upcoming referenda in New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts on November 2nd, Alice Paul spoke out today about yesterday’s defeat of the suffrage referendum in her home State of New Jersey.
Since her goal and that of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage is adoption of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which would enfranchise women nationwide once passed by 2/3 of Congress and ratified by 3/4 of the State legislatures, Tuesday’s debacle only strengthens her belief that the days of campaigning for suffrage on a State-by-State basis should be over:

For more than sixty years women have been trying to win suffrage by the State referendum method, advocated by President Wilson. This has meant the expenditure of an enormous amount of energy, of time, and of money. Women are now beginning to feel that the State referendum campaigns in which the question of women’s political freedom is left in the hands of the most ignorant men voters in the State are too wasteful and indirect to be much longer continued.

They are turning to the national Government, asking enfranchisement by action of the United States Congress. We approach the next session of Congress full of hope that the leverage which the suffrage movement possesses in Congress as a result of the fact that one-fourth of the Senate, one-sixth of the House and one-fifth of the electoral vote for President now comes from suffrage States will mean the passage of the national suffrage amendment, thus doing away with costly and laborious State campaigns such as has just been unsuccessfully waged in New Jersey.

Of course, other organizations, such as the Women’s Political Union and the National American Woman Suffrage Association still support State referenda. Though N.A.W.S.A. president Rev. Anna Howard Shaw agreed that there should now be more emphasis on national suffrage, both her group and the W.P.U. are pressing ahead at full speed with their upcoming State campaigns. In fact, plans for an election night celebration at the W.P.U.’s “Suffrage Shop” on New York’s Fifth Avenue were in high gear today, as workers shrugged off yesterday’s setback and cheerfully looked 13 days ahead.

. . . .

http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/10/20/today-in-1915-alice-paul-speaks-out-on-a-suffrage-defeat-in-new-jersey/
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