“THE leaders of the suffrage movement cannot and will not deny it, nor have they ever repudiated it. The Socialists, carrying their banners, have taken part in all the big woman suffrage parades and they have been welcomed. At the recent convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association, in Nashville, Tenn., the Socialists of that city filed into the auditorium in which the Sunday session was held and proudly rested their banners against the walls. They remained as guests of these woman suffrage agitators throughout the meeting.
“Socialism is rampant in woman suffrage States, and the Socialist vote was responsible for establishing the “cause” in several of those States. In Nevada, after the recent election, woman suffragists thanked the Socialists for assistance, and the statement was proudly made that every Socialist vote had been cast for woman suffrage.
“We are not attacking such Socialism as stands for the brotherhood of man and the moral and financial assistance of the needy. That’s not the kind of Socialism that’s behind woman suffrage. It is Socialism such as the American Republic repudiates and is trying to hold in check. It is the Socialism that would destroy individual enterprise and take over all business under State or government supervision and make this nation an oligarchy. Then would the poor man, the man of ability and of ambition be at the mercy of the political party in power for a job. Initiative would be destroyed and the unfit, whose chief pretense to recognition would be ability to deliver the vote on election day, would fill the places in business and utility enterprises such as men to-day acquire through experience, fitness and competition.
“Do the business men and the workingmen realize the alliance between woman suffrage and Socialism? Tell them that the Socialist vote would be nearly
doubled through the extension of the ballot to women, and they will awake and arise with their might to stay the sinister influences that are trying to advance themselves on this silly propaganda.
— Josephine Jewell Dodge, president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 1915
Thanks for visiting!
