NAWSA Gen. Corresp. Young, Rose

Rose Young
43 Fifth Avenue
New York City
August 24

My dear Alice,
  Here is a small 
check for Miss Blackwell.
Wish I could make it 
larger.
   Success to the fund!
   Affectionately,
       Rose

Miss Rose Young
Property of
Leslie Woman Suffrage Commissoin
171 Madison Ave., N.Y.C.

Nine East thirty-ninth st.
New York
Aug. 8, 1916.
My dear Mrs. Catt,
   Now that I have seen
at close range 
the effect of C. U. methods
on the politicians, I can't put
suffrage aside for the things
that come next without expressing
the hope that the
National is on the eve of
a mighty change in its
campaign procedure. It is 
coercion only that wins [and] at
Washington.  It is fear,

it's the big stick. No philosophy
is any good if it won't work
and how can the National's 
work when it is a mass of 
conflicts. It decrees that we
are not to fight parties but individuals,
but are we fighting,
are we in any position to fight
Mr. Wilson? Every time you
fight a Democrat or a 
Republican who is your
enemy you hurt the feelings
of a Democrat or a Republican
who is your friend,
so it would seem to save 
time, breath and explanation

to come out in the open in the 
straight party fight, It's the
one way visible in which to
get around the involvements
between national and state
politics. Don't, I entreat you,
let that September conference
end with a reaffirmation of 
our present self- defeating dual
program. I would be better
for the national to go out of
business and free you for
work that has some outlook
of hope. Do, I entreat you,
get the national committed


to the one thing or the other.
To my mind there is no choice
against the federal amendment,
partisan policy.
   You know, of course, that
I am not writing this as advice,
but merely that you
may get the impression, and
indelible one, made on my
mind by my experiences in
my brief sitting-in with
the Democrats as one of
them.
   Faithfully yours,
    Rose Young

65 Central Park West,
November 14, 1916

My dear Mrs. Catt:
   I believe that we must make it the particular
business of the press department to get the National
American so dominantly featured in relation to the federal 
amendment that there won't be room on the map for
the C.U. to get a grip on popular imagination again. My
plan would be to start a very active campaign of news,
personality stories, cartoons, propaganda features of varied
kinds. Say we lead off with your federal amendment
special editions: let's feature the National strongly in
that-- pictures, biography its personnel, its federal amendment 
policy, its record, along with federal amendment
arguments from all over the country [and] through the pens and mouths
of the most prominent men and women whom we can line up
for contributions.
   Meantime, we can be organizing and strengthening
active press departments in all the states. With these departments
going we ought to be able to arrange for a periodical
plate service, so many columns as needed at so much per
issue, the press departments of each state to stand the
expense of any and all plate that they may order for their
respective states. Even if a state took only two services a 
month at a maximum cost to it of $3.00 per month, 24 of the 
most important rural papers of each state could be used in
rotation as common carriers of suffrage education.  I 
should expect to be able to build up a much more extensive 


plate service per state than this-- and at no cost to
the National for the plate itself.  Even the minimum service
could be made of great educational value on suffrage
in general and on the federal amendment in particular. In
the suffrage states we can work directly with editors and
publishers in behalf of news and plate services featuring
the federal amendment.
   Now, Madam, I believe I'll organize what I'll
call "The Press Table" of the National and invite all the 
press chairmen to sit around it, each as her state's representative,
put their name on the press department's stationary,
keep up a running fire of personal correspondence 
with them, send out to them periodic instructions as to what
constitutes good and effective suffrage journalism (a sort
of correspondence school of suffrage journalism) and get
in from them news and suggestions from all the states. I
think I can develop a character of professional journalism for
the press work that will be personally stimulating to the
press chairmen and their helpers. They nearly always have
literary inclination and ambition, I find, and they take to
the idea of learning how to write in a professional way
through their suffrage apprenticeship.
   Apropos of an editorial service-- I am pleased to
inform you that the editor of the Evening Post has just offered
me his editorial columns through which to speak for
suffrage--as editor of the Evening Post, bless you! This was
personal, but it encourages me to believe that as press
chairman I can induce other papers to let us speak for suffrage
through their editorial columns.
   Don't tear your hair because this letter is so
long. Think how much longer it might have been if I had not
stopped right here!
   Yours ever, 
        Rose Young

55 Central Park West,
November 22, 1916

My dear Mrs. Catt,
   I find that I can arrange to go down to Washington
for the opening of Congress if you want me to. In order
to do it I shall have to give over the preparation of some
stuff that Harper's Magazine had asked me for, but I am willing
and will give my time without salary for such part of
December as I may be needed down there with the understanding
that the National will pay my traveling and hotel expenses.
After January 1, I can go back and forth or can go to other
states as may be desirable, the National to pay traveling
and hotel expenses when I am a knight of the road.
   If your Iowa press woman is not to be available
for the office routine, is it all right for me to go on and
make my arrangements for an assistant and what salary can I
offer her?
   Also tell me, please, how many pages to prepare
for the Federal Amendment special editions. I want to begin 
to assemble copy on that at once.
   And listen-- I met yesterday E.G. Lowry, who has been
in London for two years on that job of distributing our Belgian
Relief Fund. Said he, "How funny it seems that you women 
over here are going on with this tremendous organization work
when your battle is won. It is in England, at least. Women," 
says he, "have justified their existences. Women of parts
are driving taxis in London streets. They are hoeing potatoes
in country fields, Many of them will never wear skirts again. 
The vote for women will be the first thing after the war."
    Justified their existences!
    How I hate men!!
       Rose Young

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