Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/730

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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

the committee be made up of a representative from each of the great national organizations of women.

It was moved by Mrs. John L. Pyle (S. D.), seconded by Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton (O.) and carried by the convention that, Whereas, all women citizens of the United States would today be fully enfranchised had not James W. Wadsworth, Jr., misrepresented his State and his party when continuously and repeatedly voting, working and maneuvering against the proposed 19th Amendment to the Federal Constitution, be it Resolved, That we, representing the enfranchised women of the country, extend to the women of New York our appreciation and our help in their patriotic work of determining to send to the U. S. Senate to succeed the said James W. Wadsworth, Jr., a modern-minded Senator who will be capable of comprehending the great American principles of freedom and democracy.

Before the convention opened there were eight conferences followed by dinners presided over by the chairmen of the departments. The voting members of each conference were the chairman and forty-eight State members and representatives of other agencies doing the same work. The purpose of each conference was to formulate a legislative program combining the best judgment and experience of all workers for the same cause. This program was presented to the convention of the League of Women Voters for its consideration and after adoption it became the platform to which the league was pledged. These conferences were open to visitors without speaking or voting privileges.

The program as submitted by the chairmen, approved by the conferences and amended and adopted by the convention was as follows: Women in Industry, Mrs. Raymond Robins; recommendations presented by Miss Grace Abbott (Ills.):

I. We affirm our belief in the right of the workers to bargain collectively through trade unions and we regard the organization of working women as especially important because of the peculiar handicaps from which they suffer in the labor market.

II. We call attention to the fact that it is still necessary for us to urge that wages should be paid on the basis of occupation and not on sex.

III. We recommend to Congress and the Federal Government: 1. The establishment in the U. S. Department of Labor of a