CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT

POLITICAL PARTIES AND WOMEN VOTERS

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt has lectured in nearly every state and has been the leader in the campaign for woman suffrage. This address was delivered at the Congress of the League of Women Voters, Chicago, February 14, 1920.

I AM going to ask your indulgence while I make a few remarks on the subject of the League of Women Voters.

Bismarck one time said that it was "impossible to overestimate the stupidity of the human race." Now, it is true that we are all stupid; we are so stupid on the one hand that we can't express an idea so that other people will get the same understanding we have, and on the other, we are so stupid that we can't take in other people's ideas as they understand them. The result is that there is always confusion about every idea which makes its appearance. The League of Women Voters is no exception to this worldwide rule. What I am going to say is not necessarily your interpretation of what the League of Women Voters is, or ought to do, because it is only my own personal view. We have certain opposition to the League of Women Voters and that opposition is pretty largely political. The people who are interested in enrolling large numbers in political parties have expressed here and there rather cutting criticisms of the League of Women Voters. They have represented it according to their own viewpoint, which is a different view from that which we hold. These critics seem to think it is going to keep women out of the political parties. Fellow suffragists, we have come to a turn of the road. For about sixty years we have been appealing to political parties to give us the vote, for there was no possible way of ever getting that vote until the political parties were willing that we should have it. I don't think we

have ever won the vote in a single state, even by a state referendum, where one or both of the political parties have not tacitly given their consent that it should go through. Certainly ratification would not have been possible without their aid.

Well then, is it our intention to continue on the outside of those political parties where we have been for sixty years and to go on appealing for their favor as we have always been doing? Are we going to petition them as we have always done? Well, if so, what was the use of getting the vote? [Applause.]

It certainly was never any idea of the proposed League of Women Voters that we should remain out of the parties and appeal to them for the things that we wanted to do. The only way to get things in this country is to find them on the inside of the political party. [Applause.] More and more the political parties become the power through which things are accomplished. One cannot get congressional action or legislative action unless the political parties represented there are willing, so powerful are they.

It is not a question of whether they ought to be powerful or ought not to be powerful; they are. It is the trend of the present political development and instead of appealing to them for the things you want, it is better to get on the inside and help yourself to the things you want. [Applause.]

Recently we have been forced to an observation in the western states that we never had before. It was an amazing thing to us that the western governors did not call their special sessions immediately after the passing of the Federal Amendment. Those governors were all suffragists, their states were all for suffrage, but they assumed a peculiar and inexplicable "States Rightsy" attitude. They said, "Why, everybody knows how we stand. What is the use of our ratifying? Let's wait and see if the suffragists can get enough other states and then we will make up the last twelve."

And they couldn't see it any other way, because there were always the little local questions that looked so much bigger than the national question. To my mind, that is not important. What was important was that there were no women that could bring about those special sessions until a good

deal of time had elapsed. That made us ask the reason why, and we found that although the women had been voting for many years in some of those states, and they had enrolled in political parties, their positions were pretty largely those of a mere "ladies auxiliary." [Laughter and applause.]

The old suffrage association had gone to pieces. There was no common body which could stand for a special session and bring political influence to bear. There were organizations. There was a federation of clubs which helped tremendously in several states, but it isn't an organization that is designed for that kind of campaign and it doesn't have the machinery with which to work politically. There was no nonpartisan organization. The Republican women within a Republican state or the Democratic women within a Democratic state did not have the means or the machinery with which to call themselves together and to say to the governor of their own party, "You ought to call this special session for us."

To the parties they were an auxiliary; they had no place and little influence on the inside. That may happen in the future and especially if the women do not go into the political parties with the intention of being something more than a me-too inside those parties. [Applause.]

As I read the signs of the present political progress of women within the parties, you are going to have a continuation of the old familiar strife and it is just this: women must persuade men to respect and to have confidence in the capacities of women just as we have been doing for sixty odd years; and on the other hand, they must stimulate other women to forward movement and encourage them to increased self-respect. This is the same old struggle but in a new field. Because women have the vote, it doesn't follow that every man who is an election district ward or a country chairman has suddenly become convinced that women can do things as well as men. Many must be converted to that conclusion and converted by the actual political work of women.

Men will say that it is right for women to vote, but when it comes to administrative work within the party, that is still the exclusive man's business. The mass of women will be