Organizing to Win Votes for Women.
[Suffrage]. Organizing to Win by the Political District Plan. A Handbook for Working Suffragists. New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, n.d. [ca. 1910].
8vo.; wrappers, printed in black with a yellow “Votes for Women” sash across the cover; stapled.
First edition of this nuts and bolts guide for effective political action on the state and local level, devised as a handbook for political activism for New York City suffragists. Though we cannot document the press run, it was likely substantial: on the verso of the title page pricing information is printed, stating the cost of individual copies as well as by the dozen and by the hundred. The authors believed the Political District Plan could be “equally well adopted by any association under its existing name or under any new name.”
The pamphlet is divided up into two main sections. It opens, following introductory remarks, with a seven step Plan for a Woman Suffrage Party in Any State. The balance of the work is devoted to The Activities of the Woman Suffrage Party: political, legislative, propaganda, education for civic life, and reform. An appendix comprised of sample forms—appeals, resolutions, leaflets, and enrollment forms—and suggestions for conventions, the platform of the Woman Suffrage Party, and a form pledge are included in the rear. An advertisement of materials available from NAWSA is printed inside the lower cover.
The sections dealing with legislative and political work set forth tactics that any effective political organization must follow: select friendly legislators to introduce bills; get the right woman to serve as a liaison between the party and the legislature; most importantly, aggressively lobby members of the legislative committees that consider and report bills to the full House. This, as the authors sagely note, is the key battleground on which a bill lived—and passed—or died. Everything in these sections is as applicable to a Tammany Ward healer as to a woman reformer. The distinctive culture of the suffragist movement comes through in the section on propaganda, with its mixture of middle-class gentility and aggressive insistence on social change. Women are advised to stage plays “written and acted by members of the District Dramatic Committee,” as “theatrical benefits are a source of propaganda and revenue.” Above all, “The Party should make the most of all opportunities for unusual demonstrations. In a broad spirit of service for the cause and truth of democracy [sic], suffragists should remember that no time or place can detract from the dignity of the cause as long as the suffragist who represents it is dignified, gracious, tactful and earnest.”
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