Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/92

78 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE has ratified. It is curious how slow the public women as well as men have been to realize this. They talk of our being "almost" voters. They do not seem to understand that although Massachu- setts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, etc., have ratified the amendment, the women of these States will not vote until the 36th State ratifies. Who is responsible for the delay which may keep over 10,000,000 women from the vote for President and about 20,000,000 from the vote for members of Congress, State officials, etc.? Both political parties but the Republican in greater degree. ... It lies in the power of this party to speak the word that will fully enfranchise the women of this country and where there is power there is responsibility. "But," the Republicans say, "we have given you 29 States. Think of that! You ought to be grateful to us." "Exactly," we answer, "but you have withheld that one State which would make just the difference between our voting or not voting. And by the way you didn't 'give' us those 29 States we had to work pretty hard to get some of them!" An emancipator is not the man who takes the prisoner all the way to the door and lets him look out but the man who actually unlocks the door and lets him go free. Once in history the Republican party played the part of a genuine emancipator. Now it looks very much as if it was playing petty politics. ... At the time of the last State Republican convention the Hartford Courant obligingly explained that the suffrage resolution it passed was a pre- tense and really meant nothing a statement, it is only fair to say, repudiated by many honorable Republicans. Now it is Chairman Roraback, who, with happy unconsciousness that he is exhibiting his party in a "yellow" light, tells the public that the national Repub- lican platform should not be taken seriously. . . . "The leaders of the party," he says, "put in the suffrage plank to please women in the voting States but they meant nothing by it." Are the men who are to lead a great party as double-faced and untrustworthy as Mr. Roraback paints them ? Were they laughing in their sleeves as they wrote the solemn pledges in the rest of the national platform ? We wonder if Connecticut Republicans will let Mr. Roraback smirch the party honor unchallenged. The course for the State Suffrage Association is clear. We must play our part in this sector of the national suffrage struggle and we must let our opponents see that they can not keep American citizens out of their fundamental rights with impunity. A committee of Republican women circulated a pledge to give no money or work for the Republican party as long as women had no votes. Three influential Republican women travelled to Columbus, O., to put before the Republican National Executive Committee the opinions of Republican women who were ques- tioning the sincerity of the party in regard to woman suffrage. In August thirty Connecticut women, headed by Miss Luding-