Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/742

 When the Democratic party met in national convention in Denver July 7-11, all the delegates and alternates received an appeal which read: "You are respectfully requested by the National American Woman Suffrage Association to place the following plank in your platform: 'Resolved, That we favor the extension of the elective franchise to the women of the United States by the States upon the same qualifications as it is accorded to men'. We ask this in order that our Government may live up to the principles upon which it was founded and in order that the women in the homes and the industries may have equal power with men to influence conditions affecting these respective spheres of action. In making this demand for justice our association calls your attention to the fact that more than 5,000,000 women who are occupied in the industries of the United States are helpless to legislate upon the hours, conditions and remuneration for their labor. We call your attention to the fact that through the commercialized trend of legislation the children of our nation are being sacrificed to a veritable Juggernaut cheap labor while this same trend is wasting our mineral land and water resources, imperiling thereby the inheritance of future generations. We call your attention to the moral conditions menacing the youth of our country. Justice and expediency demand that women be granted equal power with men to mould the conditions directly affecting the industries, the resources and the homes of the nation. We therefore appeal to the Democratic convention assembled to name national standard bearers and to determine national policies, to adopt in its platform a declaration favoring the extension of the franchise to the women of the United States." This appeal was signed by Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, president, Kate M. Gordon, Rachel Foster Avery, Alice Stone Blackwell, Harriet Taylor Upton, Laura Clay and Mary S. Sperry, national officers. It received no consideration whatever, but, although the suffragists did not know it, this was the last year when the two powerful political parties of the country could stand with a united front hostile to all progressive movements. There was shortly to be brought to the assistance of such movements strong forces which could not be resisted. Early in 1912 President William Howard Taft and U. S.