The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement

Throughout the suffrage struggle, America's history, principles and traditions stood forth to indicate the inevitability of woman suffrage, to suggest that it would normally be the first country in the world to give the vote to women. Yet the years went by, decade followed decade, and twenty-sixother countries gave the vote to their women while America delayed. Why the delay? It is a question that was the despair of two generations of American women. It is a question that students of history and national psychology will ponder through generations to come. We think that we have the answer. It was, not an antagonistic public sentiment, nor yet an uneducated or indifferent public sentiment—it was the control of public sentiment, the deflecting and the thwarting of public sentiment, through the trading and the trickery, the buying and the selling of American politics. We think that we can prove it. Suffragists consider that they have a case against certain combines of interests that systematically fought suffrage with politics and effectively delayed suffrage for years. We think that we can make that case. We find it difficult to concede to the general opinion that, because of the tendency to overestimate the importance of events with which they are most familiar, those who have been a part of a movement are disqualified to write its history. We are sure that history would be worthless if it took no account of the observations made within a movement by those who have been a part of it. That is why we, who have had an opportunity to become acquainted with facts which throw light upon the political aspects of the woman suffrage question, feel impelled to pass our knowledge on to others.