In spite, or perhaps because of, the old Socialist Party’s overwhelming focus on electoral politics, many male Party activists remained ‘ambivalent’ on women’s suffrage. Debs intervenes.

‘Women and Their Fight for Franchise’ by Eugene V. Debs from American Socialist. Vol. 2 No. 2. July 24, 1915.

WE HAVE a great opportunity to broaden, deepen and vitalize our revolutionary propaganda if we will but take advantage of it. Equal suffrage is now an issue of more than a perfunctory nature. The women are fighting for their political rights and are determined to have them. It is true that our platform asserts these rights, but are we to be satisfied with a mere platform declaration and allow the women to fight their battles against the tremendous power arrayed against them alone?

There are not a few socialists who regard the matter of equal suffrage with indifference and who dismiss the whole question of woman’s political rights as a mere incident in the social revolution. I am decidedly at variance with these comrades, believing as I have always believed, and now more strongly than ever, that woman’s fight to have her political disability removed and to be given the rights of a human being and the standing of a citizen is a vital issue of itself and that it is the duty of every socialist to champion their cause and to help them win a victory that will not only mark a distinct advance toward democracy and freedom but will mean quite as much for men in its results as it will for. women themselves.

ANYONE WHO is not positively with the women in this struggle to enfranchise themselves and doing his share to conquer the opposition and win the day for political equality may as well be counted against them, and the fact that he subscribes to a platform that declares in favor of such equality and nominally gives his assent to that doctrine scarcely changes his status as an opponent of the suffrage movement.

This year and the next will witness a most extraordinary agitation of the woman question in the United States. We will either be in this agitation to our very decided advantage or we will be out of it to our equally decided disadvantage. As socialists we ought to be at the head and front of it. Our party was the first to declare for equal rights and it is an essential part of the socialist program and the socialist mission.

There are hundreds of women, now socialists, especially in the states where women now vote, that become socialists through the espousal of their cause and the championing of their rights by socialists and their attendance at socialist meetings due primarily to their interest in woman suffrage.

In seven states have the legislatures adopted resolutions whereby an amendment giving women the right to vote is to be submitted at the fall elections this year or next year. This amendment will be voted on this fall in the states of New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Next fall it will be voted on in the states of Iowa, South Dakota and West Virginia. Tennessee, Arkansas and some other states have taken the preliminary steps toward the submission of the question to a popular vote. In several other states the resolution to submit was defeated by a narrow margin and in these states the question is bound to come up again. On the whole the agitation is spreading and is becoming more and more determined and it is but a question of time before it will be crowned with complete victory in every state of the union.

FOR THE PRESENT and until the fall campaign is over the states of New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New Jersey should have our special attention. In these states the campaign is already in full swing and the Socialist party should be the recognized champion of the women in the splendid fight they are making for the ballot. Every local ought to organize a woman’s meeting and celebrate some day as woman’s day. Every state organization in these four states should back up these meetings and contribute to their success, while the national party should co-operate with the state and local organizations in making the most thorough campaign possible by the Socialist party in behalf of the women fighting for political equality.

Nothing the Socialist party could do at this time would more certainly vitalize it in every fibre and put it in fighting fettle, and nothing would more certainly produce a harvest of good and permanent results.

Let the women of these several states but understand that the Socialist party is whole-heartedly and enthusiastically with them in their fight and they will tax their energies to crowd every socialist hall and to make every socialist meeting a success. In this I speak from experience. I have recently addressed a number of extraordinarily large and successful mass meetings and in almost every instance the women, many of them non socialists but suffragists, had been the hardest workers, and each of the meetings that was either handled by the women or advertised as a woman’s meeting was a conspicuous success.

IT WOULD BE sheer betrayal of our party to let this great opportunity go by unimproved. The socialist propaganda can be made to throb with new life and progress as never before in these Eastern states if the socialists throw in their lot with the women and fight with all their energy to put through the suffrage amendment in November, and if this is not done it will simply mean that the Socialist party is unable to measure up to its greatest opportunity.

The American Socialist, edited by J. Louis Engdahl, was the official Party newspaper of the Socialist Party of America in the years before World War One. Published in Chicago starting in 1914, the Appeal continued the semi-internal Socialist Party Official Bulletin founded in 1904 which became Party Builder in1913. The American Socialist closely followed the SP’s electoral challenges, Engdahl was often an SP candidate in Chicago as he edited the paper, and took an early and prominent anti-war position. With a circulation of around 60,000 the paper was one of the leading anti-war voices in the run up to US entry into World War One. The paper was suppressed by Federal authorities, along with much of the anti-war left, in 1917.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/american-socialist/v2n02-jul-24-1915-TAS.pdf