April 5, 1913: The issue of woman suffrage was debated for two lively hours at the City Club of New York today.
Harriot Stanton Blatch, president of the Women’s Political Union, was in favor and Mrs. John Martin, author of “Is Mankind Advancing?” in opposition.
Blatch made many arguments in favor of suffrage, one of which was that democracy needs the participation of all the people in order to succeed and that adding the female half of the population to the electorate will cure many of the ills the political system is currently experiencing:
“Democracy is a sort of mirror which tells us exactly where we have arrived. Bad government in this country means bad business and the advantage of a democracy is that we recognize that if the government is bad we have got to mend conditions through the people. We know at once that the…