Committee on Platform at the Republican National Convention at
Philadelphia, in 1900. They met with a polite but chilly reception
and were informed that they could have ten minutes to present
their case. This time was occupied by the president and the
vice-president-at-large in concise but forcible arguments on the duty
of the party to recognize their claim for enfranchisement. The
platform eventually contained the following plank:

We congratulate the women of America upon their splendid record
of public service in the Volunteer Aid Association, and as nurses
in camp and hospital during the recent campaigns of our armies in
the Eastern and Western Indies, and we appreciate their faithful
co-operation in all works of education and industry.

In other words, being asked to recognize women as political factors,
the committee responded by commending them as nurses!

This plank was written by Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, who as president of
the Woman's National Republican League and a campaign speaker, has
done far more for the party than any other woman, and originally it
ended with this clause: "We regard with satisfaction their unselfish
interest in public affairs in the four States where they have already
been enfranchised, and their growing interest in good government and
Republican principles." But even so small a recognition as this of
women in political life was ruthlessly struck out by the committee.

Mrs. Chapman Catt and Miss Mary G. Hay attended the Democratic
National Convention at Kansas City and were not allowed to address any
committee, but the platform contained the Declaration of Independence
as its preamble!

The Populist national platform adopted at Sioux City did not contain
even a reference to women or their rights and privileges.

The Prohibition convention followed its action of 1896 and put no
woman suffrage plank in its platform. A separate resolution was passed
expressing a favorable regard but carrying no official weight.

The only national political convention in 1900 which adopted a plank
declaring for the enfranchisement of women was that of the
Social-Democratic party at Indianapolis.

In not one of the four largest parties were the delegates in
convention given so much as an opportunity to discuss and vote on a
resolution to enfranchise women. All these heroic efforts, all these
noble appeals, had not the slightest effect because made by a class
utterly without in