Elizabeth Cody Stanton SPEECHES & WRITINGS FILE Suggestions for the National Women's Suffrage Assoc. Spring, 1872 .1. The Republican party is petrifying rapidly & is in nearly the same fossil state as the Whig party 30 years ago, when the Liberty party took the field. The democratic party is in a state of decomposition. Nothing is to be hoped from either for the ideas born of the war. The Labor party at Columbus, as always heretofore, proves itself incompitent to organize, or accept any large programme. The way is therefore clear & the need imminent of a third party composed of the men & women of the future. The Republican Party cannot live long on the thin diet of its past history but the Ku Klux business has been a Godsend to it, & will probably tide it over the approaching election, & launch it on another four years career. But the clans are gathering who are to conquer the power & administer the government. A very important work was done in Washington by Mrs. Hakes & others in testing first the Republican party in Congress & then [*383*] the Democratic Party. It soon became evident that the former with vulgar assurance had determined to give the go-by to woman’s enfranchisement. The overtures made to the Democrats were at first cordially received, but a wave of caution followed which told the whole story of their moribund condition They had not even life enough to grasp hold of the new elements which are to rule American politics. The immediate issue now & the practical point is the May convention. I feel sure it cannot be a meeting of all stripes on an equal footing for conference, neither can it be a nominating convention; that must come later. There is a great deal of work to be done before that, & the May convention has its supreme function in this preparatory work. The May convention is called really by the National woman’s suffrage committee, although it will 2 seek influential signers to the public call. Its work obviously is to marshall all the practical reforms which are pressing for settlement under the woman’s banner to invite all such reforms to send representatives to consider the (womanly) solution of the problems of government & especially our national problem. The convention should make a declaration (not resolutions) of womans method & purpose in entering the political field. The distinctiveness of this from the masculine methods should be shown. It should be the woman’s departure in politics. Above all it should be shown that woman holds in her hands the only peaceful constructive solution of the labor question, the temperance question &c &c All this should be preparatory not to a proposition to nominate a clean ticket of women for office or to a proposal for women to take exclusive possession of the government but to the subsequent steps of organization of the new third party say at Buffalo or Niagara on the 4th of July to which the [*385*] women of America wish to constitute their grand new conception of government weilded by both men & women. It is quite premature to attempt to organize a third party in New York in May The convention should be a woman’s convention more important & practical than any ever hitherto held. If it were a general convention woman would lose her place in the next campaign. There are various other reasons why the third party organization should be prefigured but not (delayed?) (consummated?) To attempt to organize the third party in May would be to assume a responsibility most undesirable & burthensome. It would inevitably lack dignity & maturity. I think the convention should solemnly declare the dangers to our government & society in the want of woman’s participation It should arraign all the existing abuses of 3 society from the woman’s standpoint & propose her remedy. My interpretation of woman’s method in dealing with public conflicts where there are good elements in both sides is reconciliation but where there is unpardonable or unmitigated wrong direct action. On the Labor question woman’s word is to design for labor a progressively increasing share of the profits of work replacing wages so as to inaugurate the partnership of capital & labor or else pure cooperative industry, labor partnerships or cooperations This is peaceful & constructive & the only bridge over the gulph of revolution not far ahead. In temperance woman will not I think theorize & violate individual function & responsibility by saying that a man shall not buy, or sell, a drink, but they will deal directly with drunkeness & with public drinking dens, closing up the latter as nuisances [*386*] the women I think will extend the mantle of charity & common sisterhood to prostitutes, and save the horror by making the condition redeemable (Thank God I never spoke a harsh word to a prostitute. The condition of prisons, poor houses, & insane asylums, with all their outrages & oppressions cries to heaven for redress. Men have been too faithless heedless penurious or what not to revolutionize their infamies. In all these things woman will of course demand a change at once. In connection with prisons woman will demand a repent of all vindictive punishments The prisons are to be asylums not places of torture. Capital punishment must of course go by the board. Our courts must be reformed so the justice may be impartially administered to the poor as well 4. as the rich. The whole police system where government comes violently in contact with the people & especially with the lowest social stratum must be revolutionized. The existing brutality in our cities is beyond words In education woman should demand an extension of our common school system at both ends to infant schools & public colleges. The children of women dependent on daily labor should be cared for during the hours of labor including the noon intermission. They should be accounted as little cadets of the state & should be furnished with ginger snaps milk &c as well as with kindergarten”objects” (I do not propose to put the ginger snaps into the declaration of the convention. The colleges for graduates of the high schools should educate say 200 of the brightest boys & girls in each congressional district & they should if necessary be cadets of the state [*387*] & receive enough rations of salary to keep them alive as in West Point a reward for faithful competitive study up through all the inferior grades. As regards international peace obviously the woman's mission is to recognize the bond of humanity between all the peoples, the human solidarity deeper & prior to the national. The purpose of the May convention [is too] should be to mark woman's advent in government, to make her claim to equal rights & to show her different methods. Then while claiming a share in the new political organization to recognize the place & share of others, asking to work with men equally I do not think the May convention should be called as one for Radicals but of the Woman's National association .5. in conference with all earnest thinkers & lovers of their country looking forward to a future better than the past & seeking redress for the evils that afflict society many of which flow primarily from the disfranchisement of woman & all of which find their true solution in her entrance into the political field The labor movement ought to be specially mentioned in the call The spiritualists are a religious not a political body & cannot be specifically mentioned. The marriage question should be referred to in the declaration only (I guess) incidentally with prostitution. In the Declaration there is one more thing a protest against union of church & state grants to sectarian schools, the bible in common schools & patronage of God by putting him in the American constitution [*388*] 382 N Some suggestions for the National Woman Suffrage Association in the Spring of 1872 Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.