Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/1045

 M. Hill, said in her official report: "The People's Party was composed of Silver Republicans, Populists and Democrats. At the State convention these met in separate sessions. The Democrats voted down a resolution demanding that the Committee on Platform bring in a report favoring the amendment. The Silver Republicans passed one 'commending the action of the Free Silver party in presenting to the people the proposed amendment to the constitution.' The Populists inserted in their platform a plank declaring that 'direct legislation without equal suffrage would be government by but one-half of the people,' and unequivocally favored the amendment.

"Although each of these three parties had its own platform, the combination formed the People's Party and made its fight upon one composed of eleven planks, or articles of faith, to which all three agreed, but equal suffrage was not one of them. Therefore the so-called union platform, minus suffrage, was the one generally published and used as the basis of the campaign speeches. Because of this no speaker of the People's Party was obliged to mention the amendment, and it was avoided as an issue in the campaign; the State Central Committee permitted each speaker to say what he pleased personally, but he was not allowed to commit the party or to urge men to vote for if. Nearly every one, however, advocated equal suffrage.

"The Republicans, in convention at Tacoma, adopted the following: 'Firmly believing in the principle of equal rights to all and special privileges to none, we recommend to the voters of the State a careful consideration of the proposed constitutional amendment granting equal suffrage;' and this always was published as part of the platform. A few of the leading Republican orators advocated the amendment and none spoke against it. Its defeat is commonly attributed to the fact that 20,000 of the People's party did not vote upon it, and that the Republicans passed the word a short time before election to vote against it.

"Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, who was sent out by the Albany (N. Y.) Anti-Suffrage Association, did not hold a meeting of women or a public meeting in the State. She conferred with men whom the anti-suffrage representative, Alfred Downing of