Catt, Carrie Chapman  Speech, Article, Book File Speech, "Partisans or
Non-Partisans"

Excerpt from speech of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt at Banquet
State League of Women Voters - Hotel Ten Eyck, Albany, New
York, January 27, 1921.
Release January 28, 1921
Partisans or Non-Partisans
A few days ago a group of Republican women meeting in Albany
devoted a considerable period to a discussion of the League of Women
Voters. If the press reports are correct, they showed an enormous
amount of misinformation and so shocking a spirit of intolerance as
to be wholly un-American. If there is any one thing to which our
Republic is more sacredly pledged than to another, it is to free
thought, free speech, freedom of organization and freedom of political
action. These are and ever have been the four corner stones of
our boasted American liberty. Yet these women were quoted as saying
that members of the League of Women Voters are not wanted in the
Republican Party. That was apparently said by more than one delegate.
Even the Governor is reported as warning the women to beware of groups.
In view of the fact that many thousands of members of the
league of Women Voters are Republican by tradition this challenge
takes on peculiar significance. Can it be that the Republican Party
of the State of New York means to demand of women that they choose
between the Party and the League of Women Voters? That women cannot
belong to both?  Does it issue this demand as an ultimatum?
Since when has the Republican party renounced the principle
of free organization and free political action? What is it that
Republicans find objectionable about the League of Women Voters. Its
national constitution defines its objects:
"The object of the National League of Women Voters shall be to
foster education in citizenship and to support improved legislation.
The National League of Women Voters urges every woman to become an
enrolled voter but as an organization it shall be allied with and
support no party".  Do Republicans find "education in citizenship"
or "improved legislation" dangerous aims? As matters stand it is not
the League of Women Voters which needs to rise to defend its platform,
but Republican women within the League of Women Voters do merit an
explanation.

-2-
It is true enough that this is a government of parties and
that every voter should therefore join one, but while that is the
truth, it is not the whole truth. Parties administer government but
progress is compelled by groups. I can recall no really important
change in our institutions which has been brought about by party initiative
and I can think of no policy more certainly destructive of normal
progress than the dissolution of those organizations which are promoting
measures of reform. As a matter of historical fact every great
act of any political party has been brought about by group action.
The very party these political ladies serve was for years a
group before it was a party. It pommelled Whigs and Tories with its
unanswerable appeals, and as parties do, they shirked and dodged the
issue, until the nation arose in revolt and blew both old parties into
oblivion and made a young fighting party of what had been a fighting
group.  
Prohibition has never been noticed in the national platform of
either political party, yet by group agitation it is a law. The
examples are plentiful. The facts are that no party adopts an idea
until that idea is supported by sufficient sentiment to indicate that
the party will lose votes unless it takes it up; or because the idea
promises additional votes. In so doing parties merely obey the law
of self preservation. Whoever fails to recognize that behind the
parties are the people; and that among them independent groups are at
all times educating, agitating, arguing, contending, urging, appealing
for their various causes, has missed the determining factor in governments
by the people.  Those ideas swell and grow and press for recognition
and parties give heed when they can evade action no longer.
Ours is a government by majorities but the compact, consecrated
earnest minorities compel the majorities to think and to act. The
League of Women Voters aspires to be a part of the big majorities
which administer our government, and at the same time, it wishes to be
a minority which "agitates and educates" and shapes ideas today which
the majority will adopt tomorrow. Its members in the main will wish
to be partisans if by so doing their individual freedom to think and
to act according to the mandates of their own consciences, is not
curtailed; collectively the organization will remain non-partisan. 
Women to whom party loyalty is a superstition and a fetish will not be
able to hold to both aims; they will be partisans only. Women who
fail to see good in parties because they know much they cannot admire,
will be Leaguers only, but the majority will possess the vision and
the fundamental knowledge of how changes are wrought in such a nation
as ours, and will follow the lead of majority and minority without
confusion of thought or act. The League has a work to do and it
invites cooperation and friendly relations with all parties. If it
receives them, its work will be soon done.

Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.