WHAT POLITICAL PARTIES OFFER WOMEN
Brown, Harriet Connor
What Political Parties Offer Women National Woman's Party Convention is Described as "a Breath of Fresh Air Let Into a Musty Room" By HARRIET CONNOR BROWN EVERY session of the convention held by...
...He declared that the true name had a fatal lack, the lack of the "poetic ring...
...On this important point, the next speaker, Dr...
...Mrs...
...As her hand swung back to the side encountered a little ivory elephant, a symbol of the G. 0. P., swinging from a long chain about her neck...
...The Farmer-Labor Party was represented by Mrs...
...Anyway, though Dr...
...so they put their heads together and evolved a plan...
...Didn't the women know that, unaided, they had got it for themselves...
...You can't look for help in the Republican or Democratic ranks," he declared...
...why, that means spring is here...
...To most of the audience it was probably news to learn that the party had been born in Bridgeport, Conn., and might have been properly described as a Labor Party, except that farmers were not yet accustomed to think of themselves as laborers...
...They heard hin...
...Riley's Literary Joke IN THE budding days of his career James Whitcomb Riley, the poet, thought he deserved from magazine editors more attention than he received...
...is the strong, intelligent, brave minority that wins in the long run, that leady the world...
...The political deadline in this country," he continued, "is the line that separates the moral from the financial interests...
...The last and, in many respects, most effective speech of the evening was made by Congressman-elect Meyer London from New York, He told the audience that the Republicans and Democrats ought to be ashamed to tell the members of the National Woman's Party that they had obtained the ballot for them...
...It was characteristic of all the old-line speakers that there was nothing that seemed to alarm them like the possibility of women staying outside the parties...
...HOPKINS, who spoke next as a representative of the Committee of 48, is so extremely good-looking with his white hair and his young face that he is rather a distracting person to expound political truth to a woman's convention...
...Riley was running a newspaper in the neighboring town of Anderson...
...The poet wrote in Poe style a production which he labeled "Leonainie...
...with a quick intake of breath that started our to be a groan and ended up by being only a polite gasp...
...The burden of Miss Williams' advice to women was to join a party and work for it...
...Fess in defense of the Democratic party, was developed sharp difference of opinion as to who had bestowed on grateful coun-try the benefits of the Federal Reserve system...
...Simeon Fess, National Congressional Chairman of the Republican party, agreed with Miss Williams, though disagreeng with her on all others...
...Senator Stanley was eloquent, quoting poetry to the women, and saying that, as to the bow the arrow is, so to the man the woman is and so on, just like Longfellow...
...Brown, the dainty blue and gold chairman, declared ought to be called the "Laboring-Farmer" Party...
...W. Riley" could write verse, equal to that of the great Edgar Allan Poe...
...She held it up saying, "See, it went with me all through the campaign and brought me here...
...A dissipated young man had occupied a room one night, vanished without paying his bill, but had left the poem inscribed on the flyleaf of the dictionary...
...When Henderson published "Leonainie" and the story of its finding, American and English critics accepted it as a genuine composition by the departed genius...
...It was all good-natured enough on the part of the speakers but certain sharp thrusts were dealt the balloons of bombast and buncombe which some of the speakers essayed to fly and a few body blows were even administered by the audience itself when speakers grew too boastful...
...It was very exhilarating...
...Fess declared it was the child of the Aldrich-Vreeland bill, a Republican measure, and then Senator Stanley said that, if so, the baby was now so changed that no one would recognize it...
...To think of the tender things wandering unherded on the bleak hills of non-partisanship was too pathetic a sight for any of them to contemplate without emotion...
...In the atmosphere of such free discussion, the public mind might sooner regain health and a sense of security...
...And as she turned to leave the stage she pleased them once more, for with one sweep of her arm she gathered up the bouquet on the speaker's desk, exclaiming in delight: "Pussy willows...
...Henderson agreed...
...The scene itself was gay and brilliant, the long room bright with the purple and gold of the National Woman's Party, and the delicate evening dresses of women, the stage aglow with lights and flowers...
...Fess attempted an answer, he hardly got away with it to the satisfaction of the audience...
...Perhaps it is the best of omens for the country And with spring, a plain, kind, honest, woman will enter Congress and everyone feels kindly toward her and wishes there were more such people coming with her...
...but many persons stoutly maintained Poe's authorship and called the Hoosler poet an interloper...
...With moving eloquence he reviewed the part played by the two old parties in the suppression of freedom during recent years and set forth the ideals of the party which he represents...
...W. G. Brown, chairman of the West Virginia Branch of the Women's Party, better known to Washington by her stage name of Izetta Jewel, presided gracefully and wittily over the evening's entertainment and added to the beauty of the scene by her handsome presence...
...And he, too, urged them to join a party and not to forget what the Democrats had done for them, when they bestowed the ballot on them...
...Brown said she was herself a farmer and ought to know...
...How about the Republican party...
...He contended that privilege might be abolished by a sane party of reconstruction, and called on women to join The Committer of 48, "the liberal party of the future...
...To the delighted audience It was like a breath of fresh air let into a musty room...
...Dearborn Independent...
...A. P." The two conspirators found another, a butcher, who was to tell how he bad discovered the book while he was waiting at the home of a friend...
...Did any of you hear any sudden clarion call from Republican or Democrat...
...queried some one in the audience—I think it was Western Starr who propounded the mischievous question...
...Story of Alice Robertson THE first speaker she introduced was Miss Alice Robertson, Member-elect of Congress from Oklahoma, said to be an anti suffragist, but nevertheless the only woman of the thirty odd representatives of her sex who ran for Congress at the last elections who had obtained a seat In that body...
...Need of Change MR.J.A.H...
...Again the crowd applauded...
...As an academic treatise on the history of the Democratic party from the time of Thomas Jefferson to Woodrow Wilson it was admirable except in those spots where it left the discussion of principles to touch on the actual deeds of Democratic heroes...
...I don't think it is any stranger to come to Congress as an anti-suffragist in these suffrage days," she said, "than it is to come as a Republican from Oklahoma...
...she ended with a deprecating sweep of her hand that delighted her audience...
...And then she told how it happened, how she had not sought the place, but it had come to her...
...In sarcastic language he described the rule of what Roosevelt once called "the invisible government" of those financial interests which, through their control of transportation, control all government and heap upon us "the intolerable burden of taxation for military and naval purposes...
...how she had once been a teacher going about the country visiting schools in what was formerly the Indian Territory, and how that did not suit her much because she had to leave her aged mother at home alone and so Theodore Roosevelt, who was her friend, had appointed her postmaster in her town, in order that she might remain at home with her old mother...
...What Political Parties Offer Women National Woman's Party Convention is Described as "a Breath of Fresh Air Let Into a Musty Room" By HARRIET CONNOR BROWN EVERY session of the convention held by the National Woman's Party had its brilliant speakers but no meeting was perhaps more generally interesting and entertaining than the symposium held Thursday night on: What the Political Parties Offer to Women...
...And then last year, some of her Republican friends had accosted her one morning as she was setting out to do the day's marketing for her cafeteria and suggested that she run for Congress It was a new idea, but since they wanted her, she made no objection...
...Nor can you look for leadership to the Socialist or Farmer-Labor Party...
...The new congresswoman-elect Is elderly, white-haired, plain of face and dress and speech...
...Spring is here...
...When the truth finally came out, Riley was severely censured as an imposter, and so he was...
...The two journalists frequently saw each other...
...Fess, and Senator A. Owsley Stanley of Kentucky, who followed Dr...
...The story bore a close resemblance to Irving's account of Knickerbocker...
...Fess went so far as to state that, even for a third party, there was little hope, that no third party had ever become politically powerful in the United States...
...She gave much interesting statistical information about what Mrs...
...It is too bad that tours de force like that are not held nightly all over the country...
...The next speaker was Miss Charl Williams, National Vice-Chairman of the Democratic Party, whose record of speech-making and organization effort was so considerable as rehearsed by the chairman of the evening as to lead one to expect to see a venerable dame...
...One day he confided to J. Oscar Henderson, manager of a Kokomo, Indiana, newspaper, that "J...
...But he did it as forcefully as if he had been the ugliest of centaurs, telling women in language so unequivocal that there was no danger of misunderstanding it that they could not look to any of the old established parties to preserve for them the fruits of their victory...
...But Miss Williams is a very youthful woman of handsome appearance and apparently sanguine temperament who, as one man in the audience said, mace the most graceful opeech of the evening with hardly a sound statement in it...
...Americans are not yet class-conscious or radicals...
...An expert penman, supplied with a sample of Fee's handwriting, transcribed Riley's verse on the flyleaf of an old dictionary and signed the initials, "E...
...And the crowd cheered and laughed and saluted her as if she had let fall some precious words of political wisdom...
...In the deep and beautifully modulated voice which is her chief charm she called the meeting to order, reminding the members of the National Woman's Party that they had heard, the night before, how the women of other countries ere watching the progress of American women and waiting for them to take the lead...
...I wrote it but I did not," the father of the faked verse said, "and I am a liar any way yoB put it...
...A notice of this meeting would be incomplete that did not include a tribute to the persuasive eloquence of Mabel Vernon of Delaware, who drew from the audience, then and there, no less than $10,000 in cash and checks and promises to pay...
...The book had belonged to the friend's grandfather who lived near Richmond, Virginia, where he kept a hotel...
...Toscan Bennett of Connecticut, a young and handsome woman who was a candidate in the last elections for the place of U. S. Senator...
...But the crowd was with her from the first...
...It would have been worth while, if for no other reason than that there has been so little opportunity in this country in recent years for free debate between people holding widely different views on political subjects...
...Some Other Speakers BETWEEN Miss Williams, Dr...
...She had to catch a train and her speech was hardly more than a greeting, but it wanned the hearts of her hearers more pleasantly probably towards the party she represented than a review of party principles would have done...
...It is in the minority now," he said, "but it...
...Miss Williams claimed the honor for the Democrats, but Dr...
...And you see what they got...
Vol. 13 • March 1921 • No. 3