om the
standpoint of expediency. The committee listened attentively and were
liberal with applause but the resolution never was heard from.

Undaunted by a failure which began in 1868 and had continued ever
since, the suffragists made their plans for 1908. The Republican
convention was again held in Chicago, June 16-20, and a committee of
eminent women presented the suffrage resolution--Miss Jane Addams,
Mrs. Henrotin, the Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane, Miss Harriet Grim,
Mrs. Blackwelder and Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch. They were heard
politely but not the slightest attention was paid to their request.
Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, tried
to secure the adoption of a plank pledging the Republican party to
support a Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment but also was ignored.

When the Democratic party met in national convention in Denver July
7-11, all the delegates and alternates received an appeal which read:
"You are respectfully requested by the National American Woman
Suffrage Association to place the following plank in your platform:
'Resolved, That we favor the extension of the elective franchise to
the women of the United States by the States upon the same
qualifications as it is accorded to men.' We ask this in order that
our Government may live up to the principles upon which it was founded
and in order that the women in the homes and the industries may have
equal power with men to influence conditions affecting these
respective spheres of action. In making this demand for justice our
association calls your attention to the fact that more than 5,000,000
women who are occupied in the industries of the United States are
helpless to legislate upon the hours, conditions and remuneration for
their labor. We call your attention to the fact that through the
commercialized trend of legislation the children of our nation are
being sacrificed to a veritable Juggernaut--cheap labor--while this
same trend is wasting our mineral land and water resources, imperiling
thereby the inheritance of future generations. We call your attention
to the moral conditions menacing the youth of our country. Justice and
expediency demand that women be granted equal power with men to mould
the conditions directly affecting the industries, the resources and
the homes of the nation. We therefore appeal to the Democratic
convention assembled to name national standard bearers and to
determine national policies, to ado