CATT, Carrie Chapman 

Article: "What the Vote Will Do For the Woman"

(stamped: SPEECH, ARTICLE, BOOK FILE)

[*1917- Oct*]

WHAT THE VOTE WILL DO FOR THE WOMAN 

The woman with a vote can stand straight and look Godward. 
She is no longer a part of life's furniture established in this
 place or in that at the will of another. She is a part of the 
world's motive power. 

Power without direction and control is a great danger. 
To ask of woman that their splendid powers of organization in 
social affairs be confined to the tortuous methods of indirect 
influence tends to make them timid or self distrustful. The mother 
who can go straight to her ends by the honest use of her citizen's 
privilege--the ballot -- is a better leader for her sons than 
the mother who must seek by clever or adroit indirection to carry 
her point. 

What women have done with their votes has been heralded 
by statesmen and politicians in every equal suffrage state and 
nation. Women have socialized and humanized politics. They have 
looked after the welfare of their children. They have stretched 
out a hand to other mothers' children---but the vote will do something 
for the woman herself. By its use she will feel herself a 
responsible citizen. The sore spots in her city will no longer 
be matters of academic discussion. They will be matters for which 
she must answer to her conscience and to her social ideals. 
[*CCC*]

[*1917- Nov Es. Mail*]

In New York's Suffrage victory, we women who have dedicated 
our lives to the attainment of a real democracy in the United 
States of America, captured a huge sector of the battle line. It 
has brought final conquest so much the nearer. In New York where 
the longing for women's enfranchisement was born, there can be no 
stopping in this fight until every least progressive state is born 
into the kingdom of liberty.
 
 We are now on our way to the Nation's capital to ask of 
Congress that "Government of the people, for the people, by the 
people" shall neither be aborted nor delayed in this country while 
the battle for democracy rages in Europe. 

We are asking for the women of American only what President 
Wilson, on December 5, asked for the world. Women have been forced 
into the struggle for their own enfranchisement "to save the very 
institutions we live under from destruction." For democracy is a 
seamless garment; it is not one thing for men in Europe and another 
for women in America. In the high phrases of the President's explanation 
of the essential wrong done to the German people we also may 
say "Women are allowed to have no opinion of their own which might 
be set up as a rule of conduct for those who exercised authority over 
them." 

This sentence expresses well the fundamental principle which 
suffragists are now, in the midst of a great war, pressing on the 
Congress of the United States. In the words still of the President, 
"The cause being just and holy, the settlement must be of like motive 
and quality. For this we can fight, but for nothing less noble or 
less worthy of our traditions. For this cause we will battle until 
the last gun is fired."  [*CCC*]

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