The National League

The fourth annual convention of the National League of Women Voters took place in Des Moines. On Monday, April 9, preliminary conferences were held. The following day Mrs. Maud Wood Park, president of the organization (mentioned by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt in her list of the twelve greatest American women) opened the convention, which lasted for four days. The keynote of the convention this year, according to Mrs. Park, was the thought which underlies the League of Women Voters : " The most powerful factors in the world today are clear ideas in the minds of energetic men and women of good will."

The League, originated by Mrs. Catt, dates back to 1919. It aims to be non-partisan in organization--its members are both Republican and Democratic in politics--and it is definitely opposed to separate political action by women. Its purpose is to arouse civic responsibility among women, and to remove unjust legal restrictions on the equality of women. It is opposed, however, to the National Woman's Party which advocates absolute or "blanket" equality for women, because such a measure would do away with special protective laws for women in industry.

The present convention was devoted principally to consideration of the issues that will come forward in the election of 1924--with special emphasis on international cooperation. Among the speakers on the program of the convention were Herbert Hoover, Justice Florence Allen of the Ohio Supreme Court, Mrs. Gifford Pinchot, wife of the Governor of Pennsylvania, Lord Robert Cecil. At the 1922 convention in Baltimore Lady Astor was a speaker.