Equal Suffrage
when more than half of the Republican party temporarily separated itself from the general organization in order the more to emphasize the demand for attainment of the advanced aims to which the party was committed. The Progressive Republicans in their platform unequivocally declared for the complete enfranchisement of women. They said:
“The Progressive party believing that no people can justly claim to be a true democracy which denies political rights on account of sex, pledges itself to the task of securing equal suffrage to men and women alike.”
With the reunion four years later of the Progressives with the regular Republican party, that unequivocally expressed principle of the former was fully and heartily adopted by the latter, so that the Republican national convention of 1916 declared in its platform:
“The Republican party, reaffirming its faith in government of the people, by the people, for the people, as a measure of justice to one-half the adult people of this country, favors the extension of the suffrage to women, but recognizes the right of each state to settle this question for itself.”
Meanwhile, what of the Democratic party? While the Republicans at intervals during nearly half a century were making these half dozen explicit declarations in favor of the rights of women, what did the Democrats say? Not one word. The subject of the civil and electoral rights of women was never so much as referred to in a Democratic platform until 1916 when, under sheer compulsion and most reluctantly, there was inserted this dodging and begrudging plank:
“We recommend the extension of the franchise to the women of the country by the states upon the same terms as to men.”
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