Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/539

 opportunity with Senators and Representatives to further the work of securing suffrage planks in the Republican and Democratic national platforms. Its chairman was put in charge of drafting for submission to Mrs. Catt the planks which were to be offered to the two conventions on behalf of the National Association. Its members who went to Chicago and St. Louis concentrated their efforts on the planks. The two demonstrations of women planned and supervised by the National Board were the culmination of the campaign on behalf of these planks. In cooperation with your Congressional Committee, many State delegations of women who came for the demonstrations did special eleventh-hour work with the delegates to the conventions.

Your committee regrets that the planks in the two dominant national party platforms, since they mention method at all, do not specifically endorse Federal action, but they will be of great value in the States and progress there will help the Federal work. Every man in Congress is keenly alive to the strength of our movement in his district and State. For that reason we urged the women of each State to secure planks in the State platforms endorsing the principle of woman suffrage. As a last resort, if they could not secure a separate plank in their State platforms. we asked them to make sure that each State convention endorsed its party's national platform, that the plank might in this way have the equivalent of a State endorsement.

With the final yielding of the two dominant parties to the justice of woman suffrage all are now on record in favor of the principle: all except the Republican and Democratic endorse the Federal Amendment. Republicans have been strengthened in their advocacy of Federal action by Judge Hughes' personal endorsement of the amendment. Your committee must sound a note of warning here against over-confidence. Some too zealous suffragists, including one suffrage organ, state quite seriously. notwithstanding the fact that their attention has been called to their error. that "the Republican party has specifically declared for the Federal Suffrage Amendment." Alas! it has done no such thing. It has not done one bit more than the Democratic party. The personal endorsement of the Republican candidate for President can not properly be construed as party endorsement. Those of us who have had some years of experience have witnessed the worming and screwing, fallacy and treachery exhibited by members of a party after their leading candidate has endorsed a particular measure. We know that we can not hold the party responsible for one man's utterances made after the plat-