CATT, Carrie Chapman SPEECH, ARTICLE, BOOK FILE Speech, "Women Voters At the Crossroads" [1919] Women Voters At the Crossroads [*Miss D 2 copies on white paper*] By Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the NAWSA There was a triple significance in the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association held at St. Louis in the last week of March of this year. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of equal suffrage as a working principle of government; it was the Jubilee of the National Association, and it saw the inauguration of a new force in American political life. A half century ago, the legislature of the Territory of Wyoming had granted women the same political privileges as the men of the Territory enjoyed. This was the first commonwealth in the world to give women the ballot on equal terms with men. It stood, therefore, as [a] the working model of a new [step] ideal in democracy. [When Wyoming became a state, this governmental principle was challenged at the nation's capital and the statehood of Wyoming was menaced unless the woman electorate was dropped.] ["We will stay out of statehood a hundred years; but we will not go into the Union without our women," was the unhurried response of those western men, thus establishing a new record in chivalry of men to w] In the same year that Wyoming gave equal rights to women -- 1869 -- the National and the American Suffrage Associations were formed for the purpose of gaining equal political rights for women [by federal enactment. ] throughout the country. [This meant, of course, the acceptance by the United States government of woman suffrage as a fundamental part of the democracy it proclaimed before the world.] [?] [Both of these steps were the outcome of the freeing of the negro and of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Those amendments, by excluding women, made a mock of their own asseverations.] [Wyoming accepts this as a fact.] For fifty years The National American American Woman Suffrage Association and its two predecessors has been seeking [for fifty years] to persuade the national and state governments to [accept it also and] follow the example of Wyoming and incorporate Justice to women There was a triple significance in the convention of the National Ameri The St. Louis Convention The enfranchisment of Wyoming -- 2 [in the Constitution of the United States by the adoption of the federal suffrage amendment.] in their constitution. The St. Louis Convention was therefore the Golden Jubilee of [the] [?] National fight for [federal] recognition of women's political existence. But the convention was more than [a] commemorative; it was prophetic and constructive. The federal suffrage amendment [fight] struggle is now on the eve of victory. Nothing delays it but the [last kicks] futile protests of a dying opposition. In the meanwhile, woman suffrage as an actual factor in the vote for the next President has been won in twenty-[eight]nine states. This means that women share in choosing 306 out of a total 531 electoral votes, [women may now share.] It means that almost two-thirds of the women of voting age in this land now live in territory which concedes their right to vote for its chief executive. In seventeen of these twenty-[eight]nine states, women may have a voice in electing the [congress]men who represent them in the United States Congress. In fifteen of them, women may vote on equal terms with men. Therefore however wonderful the past of the women suffrage cause has been in its sacrifices, its struggles and its attainments, the greatest of all the reasons for the St. Louis Convention did not rest upon celebrations. The eternal feminine beckons on to new duties and new responsibilities -- and, first of all, to a stable organization which shall "carry on" after the vote [was] is won and correlate the activities of the emancipated women of the country. Women have learned much in these fifty years of effort. They have learned, for example, some of the blind spots in our democracy. They know where, and, to some extent, to what influences the electorate is vulnerable. They have found out, at great cost to themselves, how The St. Louis Convention-----3. votes may be manipulated and ignorant men, unconsciously to themselves, made to thwart the freedom of their sisters and wives. They have also learned [in their national discussions] how any [one] backward section of the country may retard the development of [good laws for women and children.] the country as a whole. Therefore as women, vitally concerned with the honor of the nation and with the welfare of the race, those [women] suffragists who met at St. Louis had [for] a third [plan] object, an [plan which] object facing towards the future. [Instead of celebrating the past] This [plan] was the formation of the League of Women Voters, whose main [object] aim [was] is to catch up and use to the full the newly gained political freedom of millions of women. It was never at any time feared that these enfranchised women would fail to work for that which is worthiest. It had, however, been clearly foreseen that their energies might be sucked up in the local conflicts within their state borders, and that, having gained freedom for themselves, they might unthinkingly leave it to the women of other parts of the country to gain freedom for themselves. They might, [indeed], fail to remember that the child unprotected in one state leaves childhood everywhere exposed to the onslaughts of the enemies of progress. They might even forget, in their own content, that there were [?] women [any]elsewhere [not as free as themselves and so a] whose civic status is a menace to a united womanhood. With [bitter] experiences fresh in their minds, these women thus banded themselves into a non-partisan, non-sectarian body, to accomplish eight forms of service for their native land. Two things had been written deep in their consciousness. As war workers--for every suffrage association in the country gave of its best to service at home and abroad throughout the war-- they had learned that a grave meance to The St. Louis Convention-------4. Allied victory lay in the [great percentage] Army of illiterates [illiteracy which] now existing in the United States. Women of the country had met this illiteracy at the polls in their suffrage campaigns. They had been defeated by it more than once. Having whole-heartedly worked for their political freedom, as no men had ever worked for it, having proved by [this]their very loyalty to American institutions that they are worthy to be counted among those whose patriotism is tried and proved, the women of the voting states, united in this League of Women Voters, determined that their first [united] collective act should be to raise the standards of citizenship for both sexes [men and women]. A committee on American Citizenship, therefore, heads the list of the eight committees to which the League has dedicated its first year of work. The reforms in the electorate [to be worked for] which they are projecting include: Compulsory education from 6 to 16; education of adults; English, the national language; higher qualification for citizenship; direct citizenship for women; naturalization for married women; compulsory publication in foreigh language newspapers of lessons in citizenship; schools of citizenship; an oath of allegiance from every man and every woman, and an educational qualification for the vote. This high standard for an American elctorate, this maintaining of the morale of a free people, seems the [first] essential step to be taken towards a better democracy [ by women who have worked for fifty years to gain citizenship for themselves]. Next in order of immediate importance [has been] is the stabilization of conditions [of] for that [part] portion of their sex which is concerned in the industrial enterprises of the country. That this host of women, The St. Louis Convention ------6. every year growing larger and larger, until it now numbers nearly 13,000,000, mostly young, [women] mostly potential mothers or actual mothers, shall not be so exploited as to imperil the future of the race or the welfare of [the] women [of the land] themselves is a [?]. The remaining six committees, adopted and approved by the League, cover: Child welfare, Improvement of Election Laws and Methods; Social Hygiene; Unification of Laws Concerning Civil Status of Women; Food Supply and Demand, and Research. The last is a committee supplementary to all the others and one upon which all [the others] will depend. It [will] may readily be seen that the problem faced by the League of Women Voters are [all] practical [ones]. They are concerned with the preservation of American institutions; with the protection of the home and of the child; with better standards of living, and with the maintenance of a stable government. There has been much talking about [and about as to] whether the League of Women Voters is a women's party, antagonistic to men. If it is not a sex-conscious, politically hostile group, how will it achieve its ends? It is not a party; but it has a party's weapon--the ballot-- It is, above all, not a sex segregation. While this idea of working outside of any political party for the protection of those Ameican ideals for which America was founded, was initiated by a group of women, they are very far from planning to work without the assistance of men. Their plan do not aim at sex hostility. It is no [Epraim] outcast among political parties, hand against every man. But neither is it a parlor uplift movement. The women who compose it are backed up by the possession of the [right] the right to express their convictions at the polls. They will not hesitate to [do] their [ballots] voting fearlessly whether it is with, or against, the party of their inheritance. Having already attained enfranchisement, they will be no longer inhibited by fear that action may imperil the political status of the women in their several states. They can dare, as they have never dared before. This League of Voters is an effort to make into a working reality those dreams of a free America which have been potent in the long fight women have made for the ballot. They have for so long declared that democracy is something worth giving a life-time to obtain, that they will not rest until there is an all-American democracy which comes [lives] up to [its own beasts] their dreams of it. Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.