"While it is true that ours is a government by parties, it is not the whole truth. The parties administer the government, but evolution is compelled by groups. I can recall no important change in our institutions which had ever been brought about by party initiative, and I can think of no policy more certainly destructive of normal progress than the dissolution of reform organizations.
No party adopts an idea until it believes it will gain more votes than it will lose by it. That is, not until the idea has already been made more popular by a group. The League of Women Voters aspires to be a part of the big majorities (major parties) which administer our government, and it also wishes to be one of the minorities which agitates and educates and shapes ideas today which the majority will adopt tomorrow."
Carrie Chapman Catt, Millicent Fawcett, and Other Board Members of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1913. Copyprint.
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress
