Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/746

708 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE The committee was courteous and listened with marked atten- tion, William Jennings Bryan among them, but took no action on the resolution. 1 The convention nominated Woodrow Wilson, who had an- swered a question from a chairman of the New York Woman Suffrage Party the preceding winter, while Governor of New Jersey : I can only say that my mind is in the midst of the debate which it involves. I do not feel that I am ready to utter my confident judgment as yet about it. I am honestly trying to work my way toward a just conclusion." President Taft had written in answer to a letter of inquiry from the secretary of the Men's Suffrage League of New York: "I am willing to wait until there shall be a substantial, not unanimous, but a substantial call from that sex before the suffrage is extended. As the result of the year's political work a summing up in December, 1912, showed a woman suffrage plank in the national platforms of the Progressive, Socialist and Prohibition parties; a plank in the platform of every party in New York State and in that of one or more parties in many States. The Progressive party with woman suffrage as one of its cardinal principles had polled 4,119,507 votes. Kansas, Oregon and Arizona by popular vote had been added to the number of the equal suffrage States. In 1914 these were increased by Montana and Nevada, making eleven where women voted on the same terms as men. In 1913 Illinois granted a large amount of suffrage including a vote for Presidential electors. In 1915 President Wilson and all his Cabi- net, except Secretary Lansing; Speaker Champ Clark and Mr. Bryan publicly endorsed suffrage for women. Constitutional amendments were defeated in four eastern States but they polled 1,234,470 favorable votes. By 1916, the year of the Presidential nominating conventions, there had been so vast an advance of public sentiment that the official board of the National American Woman Suffrage Asso- ciation was encouraged to believe that its effort of nearly fifty years to obtain woman suffrage planks in the national platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties would be successful. 1 One evening during the convention the Maryland suffragists, reinforced by others from surrounding cities, had a long and handsomely equipped parade.