History of Women in the United States: Volume 19/2 Women Suffrage [Reprint 2012 ed.] 9783110971057, 9783598416965

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HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES Historical Articles on Women's lives and Activities Edited by Nancy F, Cott Series ISBN 3-598-41454-4 1. Theory and Method in Women's History ISBN 3-598-41455-2 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41477-3 Part 2 2.

3.

4.

11.

Women's Bodies: Health and Childbirth ISBN 3-598-41465-X

12. Household Constitution and Family Relationships ISBN 3-598-41456-0

Education ISBN 3-598-41466-8

13.

Religion ISBN 3-598-41467-6

Domestic Relations and Law ISBN 3-598-41457-9

14.

Intercultural and Interracial Relations ISBN 3-598-41468-4

15.

Women and War ISBN 3-598-41469-2

16.

Women Together: Organizational Life ISBN 3-598-41470-6

17.

Social and Moral Reform ISBN 3-598-41471-4 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41695-4 Part 2

Domestic Ideology and Domestic Work ISBN 3-598-41458-7 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41475-7 Part 2

5. The Intersection of Work and Family Life ISBN 3-598-41459-5 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41476-5 Part 2 6.

Working on the Land ISBN 3-598-41460-9

7.

Industrial Wage Work ISBN 3-598-41461-7 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41693-8 Part 2

18.

Women and Politics ISBN 3-598-41472-2 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41697-0 Part 2

8.

Professional and White-Collar Employments ISBN 3-598-41462-5 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41694-6 Part 2

19.

Woman Suffrage ISBN 3-598-41473-0 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41696-2 Part 2

20. 9.

Prostitution ISBN 3-598-41463-3

Feminist Struggles for Sex Equality ISBN 3-598-41474-9

10. Sexuality and Sexual Behavior ISBN 3-598-41464-1

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES Historical Articles on Women's Lives and Activities

•

Woman Suffrage

PART 2

Edited with an Introduction by

Nancy F. Cott Yale University

K G · Saur Munich · New Providence · London · Paris · 1994

ruousners note The articles and chapters which comprise this collection originally appeared in a wide variety of publications and are reproduced here in facsimile from the highest quality offprints and photocopies available. The reader will notice some occasional marginal shading and text-curl common to photocopying from tightly bound volumes. Every attempt has been made to either correct or minimize this effect. Copyright information for articles reproduced in this collection appears at the end of this volume. Library of Congress Catalogmg-in-Publication Data History of women in the United States : historical articles on women's lives and activities / edited with an introduction by Nancy F. Cott. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Contents: 1. Theory and method in women's history — 2. Household constitution and family relationships — 3. Domestic relations and law — 4. Domestic ideology and domestic work — 5. The intersection of work and family life — 6. Working on the land -- 7. Industrial wage work - 8. Professional and white-collar employments 9. Prostitution - 10. Sexuality and sexual behavior - 11. Women's bodies ~ 12. Education ~ 13. Religion — 14. Intercultural and interracial relations — 15. Women and war — 16. Women together - 17. Social and moral reform --18. Women and politics -19. Woman suffrage — 20. Feminist struggles for sex equality. ISBN 3-598-41454-4 (set) 1. Women—United States—History. 2. Women—United States—Social conditions. I. Cott, Nancy F. HQ1410.H57 1992 305.4Ό973—dc20 92-16765 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP - Einheitsaufnahme History of Women in the United States: historical articles on women's lives and activities / ed. with an introd. by Nancy F. Cott. - Munich ; New Providence ; London ; Paris : Saur. ISBN 3-598-41454-4 NE: Cott, Nancy F. (Hrsg.) Vol. 19. woman suffrage - (1994) Pt. 2. - (1994) ISBN 3-598-41696-2

Printed on acid-free paper/Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier All Rights Strictly Reserved/Alle Rechte vorbehalten K.G. Saur Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munich 1994 A Reed Reference Publishing Company Printed in the United States of America Printed/Bound by Edwards Brothers Incorporated, Ann Arbor ISBN 3-598-41696-2 (vol. 19/part 2) ISBN 3-598-41454-4 (series)

Contents Series Preface Introduction

ix xi

Parti The Radicalism of the Woman Suffrage Movement: Notes toward the Reconstruction of Nineteenth-Century Feminism ELLEN DuBOIS

3

Separate Paths: Suffragists and the Women's Temperance Crusade JACK S. B L O C K E R , JR

12

The Case for Domestic Feminism: Woman Suffrage in Wyoming VIRGINIA SCHARFF

29

Woman Suffrage and the Massachusettes "Referendum" of 1895 J A M E S J. KENNEALLY

52

Woman's Place Is in the Constitution: The Struggle for Equal Rights in Utah in 1895 JEAN B I C K M O R E WHITE

69

A Half Century of Struggle: Gaining Woman Suffrage in Kansas WILDA M. SMITH

95

Working Women, Class Relations, and Suffrage Militance: Harriot Stanton Blatch and the New York Woman Suffrage Movement, 1894-1909 ELLEN C A R O L DuBOIS

147

Leadership and Tactics in the American Woman Suffrage Movement: A New Perspective from Massachusetts SHARON HARTMAN STROM

172

The Woman Suffrage Movement in Mississippi, 1890-1920 A. ELIZABETH TAYLOR

192

ν

CONTENTS

Kate Gordon and the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the South KENNETH R. JOHNSON

226

Kate Gordon and Louisiana Woman Suffrage Β. H. GILLEY

254

Tactical Problems of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the South AILEEN S. KRADITOR

272

The 1912 Suffrage Referendum: An Exercise in Political Action MARILYN GRANT

291

The Woman Suffrage Movement in Washington T. A. LARSON

318

The Montana Woman Suffrage Campaign, 1911-14 RONALD SCHAFFER

352

Part 2 The Problem of Conciousness in the Woman Suffrage Movement: A California Perspective RONALD SCHAFFER

367

Sue Shelton White and the Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, 1913-20 JAMES P. LOUIS

392

Woman Suffrage and the Urban Masses JOSEPH F. MAHONEY

413

The Urban Political Machine and Woman Suffrage: A Study in Political Adaptability JOHN D. BUENKER

437

vi

CONTENTS

The New York City Woman Suffrage Party, 1909-1919 RONALD SCHAFFER

453

Building a Winning Coalition: The Suffrage Fight in New York State DORIS DANIELS

472

Jewish Involvement in the New York City Woman Suffrage Movement ELINOR LERNER

495

Sexual Warfare in the Silent Cinema: Comedies and Melodramas of Woman Suffragism KAY SLOAN

515

Woman Suffrage in the Progressive Era: Patterns of Opposition and Support in Referenda Voting, 1910-1918 EILEEN L. McDONAGH and H. DOUGLAS PRICE

540

Fighting the Odds: Militant Suffragists in South Carolina SIDNEY R. BLAND

586

Delaware's Woman Suffrage Campaign CAROL E. HOFFECKER

598

Woman Suffrage in South Dakota: The Final Decade, 1911-1920 PATRICIA O'KEEFE EASTON

617

Women Anti-Suffragists in the 1915 Massachusetts Campaign LOUISE L. STEVENSON

638

Male Opponents and Supporters of Woman Suffrage: Iowa in 1916 THOMAS G. RYAN

652

vii

CONTENTS

Along the Suffrage Trail: From West to East for Freedom Now! AMELIA FRY

666

Copyright Information

685

Index

689

viii

Series Preface In the space of one generation, women's history has become the fastest-growing area of scholarship in U.S. history. Since the resurgence of feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s, insistent questions about the historical meanings of "woman's place" have sowed and reaped a garden of scholarship. Where scholarly works used to be bare of mention of women, academic enterprise has now produced a vigorous growth of books and articles, bringing to light diverse women of every region, race, class and age. This research is marked by a renovating intent that refuses to accept as "human" history a history of men. Interest is lively and debate is stimulating and sought after attendance at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women rivals the size of the annual convention of the American Historical Association. While books in women's history are daily increasing in numbers and strength, as in any fast-developing field the scholarly literature in the form of articles is most expansive and up-to-the-minute. All the history journals now publish articles on women's work, domestic settings, family relations, household matters, female politics and organizations and so forth, and new journals have sprung into being to concentrate on such topics. Women's historians publish in numerous regional and thematic history journals as well as in feminist outlets and in journals of other social science disciplines. This series brings together a collection of outstanding articles from the field, almost all written in the past twenty years and more than half published during the 1980s. It brings together, in volumes organized by topic, essays otherwise widely dispersed. These volumes reprint only articles that originally appeared in journals, not chapters of books; review articles are not included. Articles have been chosen for overall quality and for range. Each one was chosen for one or more of the following reasons: because it is the standard authority on its subject matter, represents an important statement on a topic by a recognized scholar; presages an important book to come; provides a first look at new evidence or new methods; or opens an untapped area or new controversy. Older articles have been reprinted if their data or interpretation have not been surpassed or if they marked an important stage in the historiography, even if since superseded. The historical coverage of the series extends from the Revolutionary era to the 1960s. The articles themselves are dated from the 1940s through 1988. Volumes are organized by topic rather than time period. Within each volume, the

ix

χ

SERIES PREFACE

articles are ordered chronologically (with respect to substance), so that the whole can be read as an historical overview. The only exception to this ordering principle is Volume One, on Theory and Method, in which the contents are arranged in order of publication. Within each volume there is an attempt to include articles on as diverse kinds of women as possible. None of the volume topics is regionally or racially defined; rather, all volumes are topically designed so as to afford views of women's work, family lives, and public activities which cut across races and regions. Any volume in the series stands on its own, supplying as full a treatment of a designated subject matter as the scholarly literature will provide. Several groupings of volumes also make sense; that is, volumes two through five all center around domestic and family matters; volumes five through nine consider other varieties of women's work; volumes nine through eleven concern uses and abuses of women's bodies; volumes twelve through fourteen look at major aspects of socialization; and volumes fifteen through twenty include organizational and political efforts of many sorts. As a whole, the series displays in all its range the vitality of the field of women's history. Aside from imbuing U.S. history with new vision, scholarship in this area has informed, and should continue to inform, current public debate on issues from parental leave to the nuclear freeze. By bringing historical articles together under topical headings, these volumes both represent accurately the shape of historical controversy (or consensus) on given issues and make historians' findings most conveniently available for current reference.

Introduction For many years the only mention women received in most history books had to do with their campaign at the national level to gain the vote—a campaign which fit in with traditional focus on "past politics" as the real stuff of history. Treatment of that almost century-long effort was usually perfunctory. The national woman suffrage campaign has not commanded so much of historians' interest lately as, for instance, women's work; but there has been an important harvest of articles on suffrage campaigns in the various states. Probably most of women's agitation for the ballot was carried on at the local and state level. This was always the approach of the American Woman Suffrage Association, from its founding in 1869 by Lucy Stone and other former activists in the antislavery movement. There was considerable warrant for this approach, since the U.S. Constitution gave to the states the power to regulate elections, and registration requirements varied from state to state. The National Woman Suffrage Association, however, founded the same year by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, took its inspiration and national approach from the example of the recently-passed Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which prevented racial bars to voting without removing the barrier of sex. Stanton and Anthony initially looked to the federal government to enfranchise women through legal or constitutional means, although the organization always forwarded state-level campaigns as well. When these two groups merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1890, the composite organization continued the state-by-state approach to gaining the ballot Historians generally date the beginning of the woman suffrage movement from 1848, when a meeting called by Elizabeth Cady Stanton first included that demand along with a host of others in a rousing woman's rights "Declaration of Sentiments." Over the next couple of decades, scorn and ridicule were probably the most effective weapons against the amassing of a large movement on behalf of the ballot. In the aftermath of the Civil War, both because of the example of constitutional enfranchisement of previously powerless black males, and because of the emergence to civic prominence of women in war service, the ballot for women no longer seemed so impossible. The movement gained strength, although nothing near the female constituency for temperance or more widely diffused social reform; it generated hostility among some women who believed that their sex had apolitical role to play differentfrommen's, and even greater hostility from male publicists and politicians. Even among the minority who advocated woman suffrage, deep divisions over philosophy and strategy existed, as indicated by the formation of xi

xii

INTRODUCTION

two rival suffrage organizations in 1869. In 1890, the year that the formation of the National American Woman Suffrage Association signalled the end of Civil-War era differences among suffragists, the new state of Wyoming entered the Union with woman suffrage a provision of its constitution. The same was true of Utah in 1896. The 1890s seemed to be looking up, as suffragists also succeeded in their campaigns in Colorado (1893) and Idaho (1896). But there the ledger stood on states with voting women until 1910. This was not for lack of trying. Between 1870 and 1910, suffragists mounted 480 campaigns in 33 states, each time trying to offer a woman suffrage referendum to the state's voters, but only 35 referenda were fielded as a result, and Colorado and Idaho were the two lone successes of the 55.' A victory in the state of Washington in 1910 marked the beginning of a new phase, however, and the successful referendum in populous California in 1911 touched off rising expectations nationwide. New vigor and interest in the ballot was expressed by women in the 1910s. Multiple, sometimes rival suffrage organizations sprung up at the grass roots in neighborhoods, colleges, trades, professions and clubs. The leadership of the National American Woman Suffrage Association had little to do with it: the energy was sproutingfrombelow. The suffrage movement of the 1910s was a genuine mass movement, encompassing the broadest spectrum of ideas and participants ever since 1848. Never before had such large numbers of women worked together to gain the ballot. Yet the 1910s movement showed two seemingly contradictory tendencies, for the goal-oriented unity among women came along with the loud emergence of diversity and conflicts in these women's supplementary aims. This was the only decade in which suffrage groups found ready recruits among working-class women and wage-earners, and at the same time among the rich, elite women who had formerly been indifferent or opposed. There had been black advocates of woman suffrage since the Civil War, but the 1910s was the only decade in which large numbers of black women avidly pursued suffrage, although they knew that white Southern suffragists were arguing that the vote for women would increase the white majority. And this was the decade in which young college women and aging matrons, political moderates and radical left-wingers might be found standing on the same platforms. The intensity of the 1910s campaigns was astounding, the amount of womanpower involved awesome. In the New Jersey campaign of 1915, for instance, suffragists distributed over one and one-half million pieces of literature, conducted almost three thousand meetings, and gave suffrage news out to two hundred newspapers. For the New York referendum the same year, suffrage workers canvassed almost four hundred thousand voters, {Hinted and distributed almost three million leaflets, and held nearly six thousand meetings.2 Neither the New Yoik or New Jersey referendum of 1915 succeeded. By that point, suffragists were reviewing the state-by-state route with new eyes. The possibility of enfranchising all the nation's women by means of a constitutional

INTRODUCTION

xiii

amendment seemed highly appealing and newly possible. Two young women, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, founded a new national suffrage organization, the Congressional Union—soon to be renamed the Woman's Party—in 1913, with the constitutional aim foremost. Its conflicts with the National American Suffrage Association over tactics and strategy multiplied the points of friction among American women in the 1910s, but the two organizations, apart and together, orchestrated the passage and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919 and 1920. This volume includes some older articles on state suffrage campaigns still valuable for the data they provide and adds more recent treatments, which look at suffragists more critically in terms of their social attitudes, class and racial biases, and political methods. The movement for woman suffrage was the greatest democratic movement in U.S. history, with regard to the numbers enfranchised, and the contents of this volume display in full range both the nobility and the limitations of its advocates. Notes 1

The best overviews of the suffrage campaigns are Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (N.Y., Atheneum, 1970), and Anne F. and Andrew Scott, One Half the People (Phila., Lippincott, 1975). 2 See Joseph Mahoney, "Woman Suffrage and the Urban Masses," N.J. HisL 87 (1969) and Doris Daniels, "Building a Winning Coalition: The Suffrage Fight in Ν. Y. State," NY History 60 (Jan. 1979), reprinted in this volume.

367

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

The Problem of Consciousness in the Woman Suffrage Movement: A California Perspective Ronald Schaffer

The author is professor sity, Northridge

of history in California

State

Univer-

Η ow τ ο MAKE WOMEN want to vote? This was a fundamental question confronting American suffragists. No matter how dedicated and energetic suffrage leaders might be, they could not convince male legislators and voters to grant women the ballot unless women signified that they wanted it. Without the commitment o f thousands o f followers it was impossible for the suffragists to organize effective campaigns. Yet, initially, suffrage leaders noted a distressing apathy among the women they claimed to represent. 1 T h i s essay describes how the leading suffragists in one state tried to make women sufficiently concerned with inequality that they would ask for the vote. It inquires into the suffragists' 'For evidence of the apathy problem, see Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930 (Chicago, 1970), 169-173; report of speech by Jeannette Rankin in Helena (Mont.) Independent (Aug. 30, 1912); Harriet B. Laidlaw, "Valid Enrollments," The Woman Voter, July, 1911; Sharon Hartman Strom, "Leadership and Tactics in the' American Woman Suffrage Movement: A New Perspective from Massachusetts," Journal of American History, LXII (1975), 296-315, esp. 300 and 305.

368

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

own motivation and explores the methods they developed to convert the mass of women: their organizational techniques; and the form and content of their propaganda. It considers the results of the California campaign; not just its political and its immediate social and economic results, but also the consequences of the way the campaign was run for the larger issue of women's emancipation. 2 T h e early history of woman suffrage in California is a story of slow building and initial defeat. Although the first state suffrage organization was founded in 1870, it took twentyfive years to induce the legislature to place a suffrage amendment before the electorate. When the voters turned it down in the election of 1896, suffragists analyzed the results to determine what had gone wrong. They concluded that several elements had beaten them: liquor interests and politicians connected with the liquor industry who assumed that women would vote for temperance; the very wealthy and the very poor in San Francisco and the Bay area; both the Roman Catholic Church and the anti-Catholic American Protective Association; hostile illiterate men who had been able to identify the suffrage amendment because it was last on the ballot; and a variety of other persons who were prejudiced against votes for women. They also noted their own weaknesses. They had not been able to spend enough money. Their organization was unfinished. In certain districts they had failed to overcome what one San Francisco precinct worker called "deadly apathy." 3 Over the 'For analysis of the American suffrage movement, see Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (New York, 1970); and William L. O'Neill, Everyone Was Brave: The Rise and Fall of Feminism in America (Chicago, 1969). Aileen Kraditor explores the content of suffrage propaganda in the United States in The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920. While the evidence from California generally corroborates what these authors say about national developments, it suggests that more attention should be paid to the diversities of outlook in the post-1900 suffrage movement and particularly to the survival of personal feminism. Although no one has examined the development of women's consciousness per se in state or national suffrage campaigns, a number of state and municipal studies deal with tactics, propaganda, and the relationships of leaders to rank and file. See Strom, "Leadership and Tactics in the American Woman Suffrage Movement"; Ronald Schaffer, " T h e New York City Woman Suffrage Party, 1909-1919," New York Hvstory, XL11I (1962), 269-287; and SchafTer, "The Montana Woman Suffrage Campaign, 1911-1914,·' Pacific Northwest (Quarterly, LV (1964), 9-15. "Susan B. Anthony and Ida H. Harper, eds., The History of Woman Suffrage (Rochester, 1902), IV, 478, 486, 492, 493; Selina Solomons, How We Won the Vote in California: A True Story of the Campaign of 1911 (San Francisco, n.d.), 3.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

next fifteen years these suffragists and their successors worked to neutralize or convert their opponents, remedy their weaknesses, and arouse the unconcerned. T h e women and men who led the state suffrage movement during the years of rebuilding were an uncommon group of citizens. Of thirty-seven for whom biographical information has been located, eight were writers or editors or both, two were union organizers, and one each was a physician, a minister, a banker, and a judge. Two were organizers of women's clubs and two others practiced law with limited formal training. There were seven teachers, two of them college professors, and one medium. By birth or marriage, some of the leaders were related to locally or nationally prominent persons. Katherine Reed Balentine, who edited The Yellow Ribbon, a newspaper for West Coast suffragists, was the daughter of "Czar" Thomas Reed, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ellen Clark Sargent had married a United States senator. William Keith, husband of Berkeley suffragist Mary Keith, was a richly patronized landscape painter.' 1 T h e following tables summarize biographical data for thirtyseven leaders of the California suffrage campaign, 1897-1911. These were officials of major suffrage organizations or prominent, unaffiliated suffrage writers or speakers. The number of persons for whom data were available in each category appears

Table I Male Female

SEX (37)

% 5 95

Table II AGE IN 1911 (31) 90 or above 80-89 70-79 60-69 50-59 40-49 30-39

% 3 7 10 16 29 29 7

O n William Keith, see Eugen Menhaus, The History and Ideals of American Art (Stanford, 1931), 118.

370

HISTORY O F W O M E N IN THE UNITED STATES

Table III PLACE OF BIRTH (29) California Midwest Middle Atlantic New England

% 17 41 28 14

%

Table IV EDUCATION (21) Female Seminary Conservatory Academy Some College (including normal school) Postgraduate or Professional

5 5 10 52 29

Table V RELIGION (17) Congregationalist Episcopalian Presbyterian Nondenominational Protestant Spiritualist Unitarian

12 18 18 6 12 35

Table VI MARITAL STATUS (30) Ever Married (before 1912) Single

80 20

%

%

in parenthesis. Percentages are rounded off to the nearest whole number. 5 Some of the leaders had truly extraordinary careers. Before becoming a founder of the Southern California Political Equality League, J o h n Hyde Braly had helped to introduce a public school system into California and served as vice-president of San Jose State Normal School. Then in mid-life he became a raisin grower and organized the first of several banks.6 Elizabeth Watson, president of the California Equal Suffrage Association from 1909 to 1911, had married a Pennsylvania oil man and moved west with him to a prune and apricot orchard at Cupertino. Watson, who had concluded at an early age that she T h e author will supply tabulated individual biographical data and sources to interested persons. •John Hyde Braly, Memory Pictures (Los Angeles, 1912). 131, 143, 165, 225.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

could communicate with the dead, became the pastor of the First Spiritualist Union of San Francisco and then of the San Francisco Golden Gate Religio-Philosophical Society.7 Clara Foltz, who had served as president of the first California suffrage association and presided, in 1911, over the Los Angeles Votes for Women Club, was a bank executive, and the second woman member of the California bar. In 1884 she had been a candidate for presidential elector on an equal rights ticket. She had worked for the Democratic State Central Committee in 1888 and headed the San Diego Nationalist Club. She founded an oil industry journal in 1905 and began a two-year term in 1910 on the State Board of Charities and Corrections where she was an early advocate of a public defender system. Meanwhile, she raised two sons and three daughters almost single-handedly, since her husband had died in 1877 after thirteen years of marriage. Charlotte Anita Whitney, president of the College Equal Suffrage League of Northern California, had gone from Wellesley College into settlement work and served as a juvenile probation officer before becoming a suffrage leader. After 1911 she joined the Socialist party, was sentenced in 1919 to one to eleven years for taking part in a convention of the Communist Labor Party of California, and after receiving a pardon in 1927 she went out among migrant farm workers as an organizer. At age sixty-nine she ended up on the national committee of the American Communist party. 8 Aside from their talents and special interests, these suffrage leaders differed in important respects from large segments of the population they hoped to win over. They were overwhelmingly native American and from Protestant families when a fifth of the state's inhabitants were foreign born and nearly sixty percent of Californians answering a census question about church affiliation identified themselves as Roman Catho*Ida H. Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage (New York, 1922), VI, 55; Reda Davis, California Women: A Guide to Their Politics, 1885-1911 (San Francisco, n.d.), 178-179. "Corinne L. Gilb, "Clara Shortridge Foltz," in Edward T. James, ed., Notable American Women, 1607-1950 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), I, 641-643; Davis, California Women, 150-152; Solomons, How We Won, 30; Al Richmond, Native Daughter: The Story of Anita Whitney (San Francisco, 1942), 23,31,37,63, 112-113, 143, 199.

372

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES lie. In a wine-growing state whose citizens included numerous avid drinkers, suffragists inclined toward temperance. 9 They were far more educated, as a group, than the average Californian and generally wealthier, with enough money to be able to spend time, not only on suffrage but on club work and other activities of the leisured and socially prominent. Even their chief organizer among laboring people in northern California was a daughter of the upper-middle class. Maud Younger, educated in private schools by wealthy parents, became a settlement worker in New York, went to work as a waitress, and wrote about her experiences for McClure's Magazine. T h e "millionaire waitress," as she was called, returned to California where she organized and became president of a San Francisco waitresses' local, founded the Wage Earners' Suffrage League, and served on the state central suffrage committee. 10 T o the hard, time-consuming, sometimes frustrating work of building a suffrage movement in California, these people were impelled by a variety of motivations. Some, particularly those born several years before the Civil War, were carriers of a tradition of humanitarianism and Christian perfectionism that had infused the mid-nineteenth century reform movements. Elizabeth Watson, president of the California Equal Suffrage Association in 1910 and 1911, confided to another worker that she could never feel at peace with herself except when she was doing her utmost for suffrage, a cause that meant "emancipation of one half of the human race, the greatest, most farreaching reform that the world has ever known." Like her emotional and intellectual ancestors among the pre-Civil War reformers, Watson saw the drive for voting equality not as an end in itself, but as an instrument for uplifting mankind. It is no coincidence that after the victory in California she fought for prohibition "with all the enthusiasm that burnt in my soul for woman suffrage," or that she and other suffragists were 'Gilman M. Ostrander, The Prohibition Movement m California, 1848-1933 (Berkeley, 1957), 63; Warren S. Thompson, Growth and Change m California's Population (Los Angeles, 1955), 4, 70; Elizabeth Lowe Watson, "To the Members of the California Equal Suffrage Association...," March 24, 1911; Watson to "my dear friend," Jan. 23, 1927, Mary Keith Papers (hereafter MK Papers), Bancroft Library; Alice L. Park, typescript autobiography, 75, Alice L. Park Papers (hereafter AP Papers), Huntington Library. "Eleanor Flexner, "Maud Younger," in James, Notable American Women, III, 699-700.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

deeply involved in other humane and moral campaigns like the peace movement and efforts to abolish prostitution." T h e r e was a second kind of reformer in the California suffrage leadership, younger than Watson and a generation further from the pre-Civil War crusades. Members of this group were more secular in their way of thinking, guided more by contemporary sociology and economics than by Christian doctrine. They were part of California's progressive movement and they viewed the suffrage movement as an instrument for reforming society. T o these social feminists, the chief purpose of suffrage was to enable women to alleviate problems arising from modernization. They depicted to their audience a preindustrial America where the entire family had worked together, the mother overseeing the conditions of her husband and children. With industrialization, people had left their farms and home workshops and crowded into the slums of factory towns. Families separated daily, the men going off to work in the early morning, returning at night past saloons, brothels, and other temptations that threatened to deprive them of health and wages. Even children had to work on the streets or in factories where, beyond their mother's protection, they risked injury and death at the machines. In the few hours when the family was together, the mother still could not protect it adequately against tainted food and unsanitary living conditions. She could not cope with rising living costs because her family no longer took what it needed from the land; she had to buy what it consumed at prices rigged by producers and distributors. Often, she was compelled to leave home for the workplace to support herself or her family. T h e causes of these problems lay in the larger society where vice and predatory economic interests controlled politics. T h e solutions, according to the social feminists, were political. T h e vote would enable women to clean u p and control government and to make government regulate forces that affected their "M[abel] C. D[eering], "Women Need Votes to Control the Conditions of Their Families,·' The Yellow Ribbon (Dec. 1906); Elizabeth L. Watson to Mrs. McBean, May 31, 1910, June 16, 1911; Watson to "Dear President and Member of the Political Equality League," Jan. 14, 1911; Watson to "My dear, dear friend," March 31, 1914, MK Papers.

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

families. As one organizer put it: "How can a woman who wants to do the right thing by her babies stay at home and keep quiet while they drink impure milk? If your water supply is bad, are you going to keep quiet or are you going to demand pure water? And have you demanded anything that comes under politics and got it if you didn't have some force behind you?"12 Implicit in this argument, which one finds repeated publicly and privately by American suffragists in one variation or another, is the assumption that women are more likely than men to act as reformers, a view consonant with the widespread pre-World War I middle class ideal of woman as uplifter and purifier. 1 3 Not all the California suffragists accepted this hypothesis. Katherine Balentine explicitly repudiated it, telling her fellow suffragists that reformers were rare in any class or place. " T h e general run of women" she declared, "are very ordinary beings, moved by selfish, sordid motives and full of stupid prejudices." Balentine felt it was wiser to argue for the ballot on the ground that all people had a right to elect those who governed them. 14 She returned to an argument based on a theory of natural rights and democratic principles that pioneer feminists had employed in the previous century. T h e r e was another link between the earlier feminists and the California suffragists. In 1848 the Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention stated that man had "endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy [woman's] confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life." 15 The quest for dignity and independence implied in that charge and the anger that underlay it motivated several leaders of the California suffrage campaign. These personal feminists, as we may call them, had a strong "Katherine P. Edson to Mrs. Byron Thomas, Jan. 23, 1914, Katherin P. Edson Papers, University of California, Los Angeles. O'Neill discusses social feminism at length in Everyone Was Brave, chap. 3. " O n the role of woman as purifier and uplifter, see David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven 1970), 50-54; and Alan P. Grimes, The Puritan Ethic and Woman Suffrage (New York, 1967), esp. chap. 3, "The Civilizers of Wyoming." "Katherin R. Balentine, editorials, The Yellow Ribbon, Nov. 1906, Dec. 1906. "Proceedings of the Woman's Rights Convention Held at Seneca Falls and Rochester, N.Y. (New York, 1870), 7.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

sense of their own worth. They felt that women were entitled to the same chances in life that men had and resented the ways in which a patriarchical society made women feel incompetent, submerged their identities, and undermined their self-esteem. Some thought it futile for women to play subservient roles. "A man demands and he receives," wrote Balentine to her fellow suffragists. "A woman begs and is put off by a tender word." Jenny Arnott, an officer of the state equal suffrage association, saw women as the victims of customs that weakened their minds and kept them subservient and reactionary. Elizabeth Watson shared this view. She told a friend that women were really ignorant and stupid but that this was the result of "long ages of subservience and man-made conditions." Mary Keith, a Berkeley suffrage leader, complained that women were not allowed to think they had a right to be independent or to believe they were valuable to society except as "physical beings." Yet they had just as much right as men to seek their own happiness and improvement and it was their duty to themselves and to others to be "self-centered." It was for these reasons that as long ago as the 1880s Keith had taken part in the dress reform movement, aimed at freeing women from fashions that inhibited them and handicapped their attempts to succeed in school and college. Now she was irying to free women to control their lives with political power. 18 Alice Park, suffrage publicist and officer of the California Equal Suffrage Association, was an outspoken proponent of personal feminism. She loathed the way some men used language to obliterate women's identity. Once, when a commencement speaker at Stanford University spoke about the "consent of the governed," when he really meant the consent of men, and of universal suffrage, when he really meant suffrage for men only, she asked: "Are not women people? . . . Isn't it about time that these men speakers were instructed that half the h u m a n race are women?" Later, when another speaker made the same error, she sent him a letter warning that women, wonderfully patient and humble in the past, would no longer "The Yellow Ribbon, Dec. 1906; Jennie Arnott, "The Initiative and Referendum," ibid., Feb. 1907; Elizabeth L. Watson to "My dear, dear litde friend," July 8, 1911; Mary Keith ms. on dress reform, 1887, MK Papers.

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES tolerate being ignored. 17 Park objected to the contention that women should not aspire too far. T o the question, "Where will women stop?", she replied that they should not stop at all if they were moving to the head of the procession in all walks of life. 18 It would be misleading to place the California suffrage leaders into such categories as social feminists or personal feminists or advocates of the natural rights theory, for the attitudes of particular suffragists were often complex. Mary Keith, for example, advocated social reform as well as personal liberation and believed in altruistic as well as self-centered reasons for giving women political power. Even Clara Foltz, who had fought her way into the so-called man's world and achieved so much there, maintained that women's chief concerns were home, husband, and children." One might say that some of the women in the leadership of the California suffrage campaign held conflicting attitudes; for they valued, on the one hand, assertiveness, equality, and freedom to go wherever one's talent led and, on the other, selflessness and sacrifice, acquiescence in or even willing acceptance of male domination of family and society. Nowhere does one find a clearer example of their ambivalence than in the ideas and feelings of Katherine Edson, a southern California lobbyist and organizer. A few months after the California suffrage campaign had ended, Edson summarized the results. "Best of all," she noted, "something has happened within woman herself—an increased self-respect—a feeling of honor for herself and for her sex. She is no longer treated as a dependent person, but allowed to do for herself, to "[Alice L. Park], "Are Women People," Palo Alto Tribune, Mary 24, 1907, in California Clippings, VI, Susan B. Anthony Papers (hereafter SBA Papers), Huntington Library; Alice L. Park to John Z. White, Feb. 9, 1910, AP Papers. On the back of a note from John White to Viola Kaufman concerning White's distinction between "people" and "voters," suffragist Kaufman wrote: "If we keep at them maybe we will get into their sub-consciousness!!" White to Kaufman, Feb. 19, 1910, AP Papers. "[Alice L. Park], "One More Editor," Palo AUo Tribune, May 24, 1907, in California Clippings, VI, SBA Papers. "Mary Keith, "What Women Can Do in the Fight against Municipal Corruption," Palo Alto Tribune, May 31,1907, ibid.; Gilb, "Foltz," in James, Notable American Women, I, 643.

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make her mistakes and to grow strong and experienced through making them, to think her own thoughts and to express these thoughts—right or wrong—in the policy of her State." Yet during the campaign, in a public speech, she had accepted the theory that men reason more logically than women and stated: "I think any woman would prefer to be queen of a man's fireside . . . to earning her living outside of the home." In 1916 she wrote Governor Hiram Johnson that a remark he had made, criticizing women political workers, had hurt her deeply because it made her feel "that we can never prove to you that we are worthy of citizenship." Perhaps these statements were part of a role she felt compelled to assume and did not represent her true feelings. In any case they show that she still considered men's approval terribly important. 10 As for the male suffragists, their attitudes were also varied and not always easy to categorize, though none appear to have been personal feminists. John Hyde Braly, a Christian idealist in the pre-Civil War tradition, proclaimed that "nothing since the coming of Christ promises so much good to future humanity as the intellectual, moral and political emancipation of women. T h e r e is no sex inequality in the kingdom of God, and there must be none in the kingdoms of men." Judge Waldo York felt women should vote not only because the franchise was a natural and democratic right, but also because women would vote for morality and decency. Moreover, when allowed to govern, women had shown as much competence as men and they had done so without diminishing their qualities as wives and mothers. Clifford Howard, who wrote articles for the Southern California Political Equality League, claimed that enfranchised woman would extend her "housekeeping instinct" to the municipality and her "instinct of motherhood" to all the children of the community and nation, assisting man in the battle against vice, corruption, disease, and poverty, yet re"Mrs. Charles F. Edson, "The Actual Operation of Woman's Suffrage in California" (1912), California Clippings, II, SBA Papers; speech by Edson quoted in the Santa Barbara Independent, Aug. 11, 1911; K. P. Edson to Hiram Johnson, Sept. 15, 1916, Edson Papers. For Edson's career, see Norris Hundley, Jr., "Katherine Philips Edson," in James, Notable American Women, I, 562-564.

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HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES maining always maternal. 21 Katherine Edson's husband, Charles Farwell Edson, composer and music teacher and a frequent performer at suffrage rallies, expressed his views in a p o e m he read to o n e of those gatherings: Cosma Here do I stand and frankly state my right, I want myself to blossom for my good. I want fair freedom, nothing grudged to me, But given me because it is my due. I want these hands to toil in usefulness; I want this brain to work out things that count; I want my body to bring forth his child; I want my life lived to its ultimate, Most nobly, frankly, freely to its end. I want to stand and face the world as man, But with my woman's smile within my eyes. You grant me this and such a life will come As will make heaven's fabled story cheap; Make hell pass as the dreams have passed before, For hell is ill meant, ill spent, love of life; And fairer than the sun on new spring day, Will burst the beauteous light of woman's soul; But fairer still will newborn man stand forth In that sweet freedom that he gives to her.22 T h r o u g h "Cosma" Edson sought to identify with Woman; but it was Woman sprung from his own Pygmalion-like imagination, designed to operate according to his rules within a sphere of his definition. Personal feminism, the proposition that women should control their own lives and determine their own lifestyles, troubled him. Commenting on this poem, he explained to Alice Park: "When you take a thing there is no freedom to it. We only get what we give. . . . You militant w o m e n cannot understand the love some of we men bear for all women, so let us give while we can, for soon we will not have "Braly, Memory Pictures, 249-250; "Address by ex-Judge Waldo M. York on 'Political Equality for Women'," Dec. 13, 1910, John R. Haynes Papers, University of California Los Angeles; Clifford Howard, "Why Man Needs Woman's Ballot," ibid. "Los Angeles Tribune, Sept. 10, 1911.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE that privilege." 23 Benevolent, idealistic male suffragists were clearly a problem for the personal feminists and vice versa. While Charles Edson and Alice Park and other suffrage leaders d i f f e r e d over the a m o u n t and kind of change that o u g h t to occur in the women's situation, they agreed that change was necessary. But when they looked at the mass of women they were trying to help and whose support they badly n e e d e d , they continued to note, year after year, indifference to their movement or only a stunted political and personal consciousness. "Why cannot women see their low estate in the scale of humanity!" Ellen Sargent wondered in 1906. "And to think they could change it if they would. How their condition argues against their mentality and self respect. Why do they not blush a n d arise in their might and in anger . . .?" Mary Keith was s a d d e n e d , she wrote in 1909, that women still had to be "led to s u f f r a g e so gently and gradually." Just three months before the election, Elizabeth Watson complained about persistent apathy. Rose Baruch, a southern California leader, called the apathy of women d u r i n g the campaign "appalling." 24 T o these leaders the minds of many California women were tabulae rasae on which they would have to inscribe an understanding of women's condition, of their potential, and of the ways in which voting could help them secure desirable objectives. T h e m e t h o d s for developing this consciousness were organization and propaganda. T h e California suffragists never developed a tightly centralized operation. T h e y worked t h r o u g h local suffrage clubs, t h r o u g h a California Equal S u f f r a g e Association which operated primarily in n o r t h e r n California, through the Political Equality League which was based in Los Angeles and dominated t h e southern California campaign, through specialized organizations for particular classes of people like workers or college graduates, and t h r o u g h two state central committees. "Edson to Park, May 18, 1910, AP Papers. "[Ellen Clark Sargent] to Alice Park, July 11, 1906; Mary Keith to Alice Park, Feb. 11, 1909, AP Papers; Elizabeth L. Watson to "My dear, dear litde friend," July 8, 1911, Μ. K. Papers; Rose M. Baruch, "Report of Meetings," Haynes Papers.

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES T h e first of these was set u p in 1906 to direct work with political parties and the legislature. After the 1911 legislature approved the suffrage amendment, a second central committee was established to coordinate suffrage group activities during the ratification campaign. 25 These organizations developed methods for proselytizing people of different classes. T o enlist middle-class women, who were becoming increasingly concerned about social issues, the California Equal Suffrage Association set u p committees on peace, child labor, education, and the white slave trade. And although some of the leaders were reluctant to identify suffrage with temperance, both the CESA and the southern California suffragists formed connections with the highly organized women of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Suffragists did a great deal of recruiting in women's clubs, forming the leadership of groups like the Friday Morning Club of Los Angeles. These organizations had recently broadened their interests from domestic and esthetic issues and had become deeply concerned with uplifting society through social reform. Suffragists told them that women could do almost nothing to reform society without the vote. Eventually, they brought the entire state club federation into their movement. 26 Meanwhile, they were reaching out to women of other backgrounds. T h e College Equal Suffrage League of Northern California opened its membership to women of all classes. Suffragists worked closely in several areas with the Socialist party. In northern California Maud Younger established her Wage " F o r description of the growth of state and local suffrage organizations, see Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, VI, 32-47; and "Suffragist Clubs Form Federation to Supervise Campaign," Los Angeles Herald, July 15, 1911. T h e amendment passed the state senate by a vote of 33 to 5 on January 26, 1911, and the assembly by a vote of 66 to 12 on February 2. Franklin Hichborn, Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1911 (San Francisco, 1911), xlv, xlix. "Letterhead of California Equal Suffrage Association, 1910, in file PK326, AP Papers; Alice Park, "The Relation of the Peace Movement to the Suffrage Movement," quoted in Palo Alto Daily Times, April 17, 1907, in Suffrage Leaflets, II, SBA Papers; Elizabeth Watson to "Dear President and Member of the Political Equality League," J a n . 14, 1911; Watson to "my very dear friend," Jan. 23, 1927, MK Papers; [Katherine R. Balentine], editorials, The Yellow Ribbon, Nov., 1906, Dec., 1906; California Equal Suffrage Association, "Votes for Women Endorsed by California Organizations," 1908, Suffrage Leaflets, I, SBA Papers; Alice Park, autobiography, 73, AP Papers. T h e CESA campaign plan appears in Elizabeth L. Watson, "To the Members of the California Equal Suffrage Association," March 24, 1911, MK Papers.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE Earner's Equal Suffrage League and a similar organization was formed in the southern part of the state. San Francisco leaders set up headquarters in the downtown shopping district for a Votes for Women Club, held evening meetings for business women, and invited salesgirls from nearby shops to a nickel lunch in a room decorated with English suffrage posters. Supported by dues, contributions from a men's auxiliary, a Christmas bazaar, and the sale of suffrage products like Equality Tea, the Votes for Women worked on projects that appealed to varying interests. It participated in the crusade against white slavery and protested to the newspapers that census workers classified housewives as persons with "no occupations." 27 During the final years of the campaign some of the California suffrage groups began to restructure themselves, forming groups modeled on regular party organizations and having district leaders and precinct workers arranged in hierarchical patterns. T h e idea was not new to the suffrage movement. Precinct organization had been tried in the 1896 campaign in San Francisco and Los Angeles; but what finally emerged was copied closely from the contemporary New York City Woman Suffrage Party, itself a structural replica of Tammany Hall.28 These finely detailed systems made it possible to manage the suffrage campaign more efficiently and reach large numbers of voters face to face. They also provided ways of developing the consciousness of suffrage workers. Precinct work tended to sharpen a participant's understanding of the movement because every member of a suffrage organization had to be prepared to answer questions, to explain to people encountered at street meetings and in doorways why women should vote, and to respond to the arguments of anti-suffragists. If you did not know the answers, you had to look them up or "Solomons, How We Won, 16-20, 25; Votes for Women Club, Annual Report and Announcement [n.p., 1911]; flier for Socialist Party Woman's Committee suffrage rally to be held Oct. 6, 1911; "Woman Suffrage Inevitable," The Coming Victory [Los Angeles, n.d.], I, no. 7, all in California Leaflets, I, SBA Papers. ""Annual Convention of California Equal Suffrage Association," The Yellow Ribbon, Nov. 1906; Mrs. Charles F. Edson, "Instructions to Precinct Chairmen" (1911), Suffrage Leaflets, II, SBA Papers; Elizabeth L. Watson to "Dear President and Member of the Political Equality League," Jan. 14, 1911, MK Papers. The New York City suffragists sent money, workers, and advice to California. Harper, History, VI, 46.

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discuss them with someone else in the organization. At the same time, precinct work intensified emotional commitment to the cause. Sometimes it took only a minor activity, perhaps an errand to the printer, to make a fairly passive woman identify strongly with a suffrage group.2® Occasionally a more wrenching incident was required. As the English suffragettes had begun to learn, organized action, particularly when it was novel and frightening, strengthened the commitment of suffrage workers and formed bonds among them. T h e California suffragists declined to employ the shocking tactics coming into use in England. Though some of them admired the English militants, others were quite timid and concerned with preserving what they called dignity. They felt most voters were already friendly or at least neutral and that it would be foolish to offend them with such extreme measures as blowing up mailboxes, chaining themselves to fences, going on hunger strikes, or engaging in angry demonstrations. A happy, humorous, unthreatening campaign was what they chose. Between 1896 and 1911 they staged only one substantial foot parade, though they did hold street meetings and rode around in automobiles, stopping to make speeches. Even modest activities, like speechmaking and precinct walking, had an effect on those who took part; it was like the bloodying of an army. "One's belief in suffrage is put to the extremest test," Katherine Edson told precinct workers, "when one approaches a strange door, pushes a strange button, and demands of a woman never seen before how her husband is going to vote." Louise Herrick Wall of the College Equal Suffrage League commented that street speaking was "unspeakably difficult, an anguish of misunderstanding beforehand, and an anguish of understanding while it lasts, and afterwards a strange humbling revelation of the simple sincerity of men." Risking something together for a cause they believed in, actually doing what a while before had seemed "Charlotte A. Whitney, "Foreword," in College Equal Suffrage League of Northern California [hereafter CESL], Winning Equal Suffrage in California (n.p., 1913), 13.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

frightening, they broke through a mental barrier and strengthened their courage, solidarity, and self-respect.30 It was particularly difficult to organize women in rural areas. Just reaching them took a great deal of time and effort, and since many of them were physically isolated from other women, solidarity was hard to develop. Katherine Edson, who traveled through rural areas of southern California, felt that country women hesitated to come out for suffrage because they were afraid that men would ridicule them or because they were so content with an existence uncomplicated by serious civic problems that they were slow to do anything—even joining a movement to give themselves the vote—that might change their way of life.31 Still, the suffragists devised ways of winning them over. Sometimes they would send a lone woman organizer into a small town. Standing in a public place, like in front of a popular saloon, the organizer would begin speaking to anyone who cared to listen. Her apparent fearlessness became contagious, and when she announced a suffrage meeting, other women were willing to come. Suffrage workers also went out from the city in groups by automobile to visit country villages. They would perform humorous entertainments—songs, skits, and dances with a suffrage message—and then return a few days later to help local people set up suffrage clubs. Gradually they made recruits, enabled women who attended the club meetings to feel less isolated, and even rekindled enthusiasm in some of the old women who had dropped out of the movement years before. 32 " H a r p e r , History of Woman Suffrage, VI, 38; Louise H. Wall, "Report of Committee on Design," CESL, Winning, 46; Louise H. Wall, "Report of the Blue Liner Campaigning Car," ibid., 68; Mary R. Coolidge, "Oakland Election Day Work," ibid., 106; Alice Park, "Suffragists and Suffragettes," Labor Clarion, Sept. 2, 1910, California Clippings, I, SBA Papers; Solomons, How We Won, 9; "Reports Encourage Workers in Cause," Los Angeles Tribune, July 27, 1911. For reports of the anxiety of suffrage campaigning in other states, see Flexner, Century. 253; Strom, "Leadership," 308, 309, 314. " I d a F. Mackville, "Country Campaigning," CESL, Winning, 58-59; [Beaumont, California] Gateway Gazette, April 20, 1911, Edson Papers; "Women's Timidity May Cost Ballot," Los Angeles Herald, April 10, 1911. "Interview of Jeannette Rankin, Dec. 6, 1955; Louise S. Fletcher, "Rural Campaigning," CESL, Winning, 60; Louise H. Wall, "Report of Blue Liner," ibid., 63-66.

383

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES Suffragists felt that the press was very helpful for reaching citizens in remote rural places as well as the literate inhabitants of urban areas. Almost every major newspaper in the state was either favorable or uncommitted, and most were happy to print releases supplied by s u f f r a g e press relations committees and letters to the editor written by groups of suffrage workers. In addition, suffragists distributed directly great amounts of literature, flooding the state with arguments for women's votes and replies to the antisuffragists. While some of this propaganda was addressed to men, the enormous quantity of prosuffrage information reaching women through all media inevitably affected their thinking. 33 Leaders of the suffrage organizations gave considerable thought to the psychology of propaganda. Charlotte Whitney concluded that people were not all convinced through reason and that woman suffrage had to be sold like "breakfast food." Although carefully reasoned statements were used at the beginning of the campaign, partly to enhance the respectability of the movement, suffragists in northern California began to make their arguments simpler and more repetitious like a commercial advertising campaign. They were also careful to screen out ideas that might upset certain ethnic and religious groups or alienate any large bloc of voters.3,1 Social feminist ideas appear frequently in suffrage propaganda: enfranchised women will humanize society, protect the home through social legislation, purify politics. They can be found in speeches and literature directed at middle-class native Californians and in materials distributed to recent immigrants from Mexico and Europe. In Roman Catholic neighborhoods, suffrage workers distributed a speech by Father Joseph M. Gleason, a young priest f r o m Palo Alto, who stated that women "Jeannette Rankin, "Why the Country Folk Did It," The Woman Voter, II (Dec. 1911), 13; Helen Moore to Mrs. A. McBean, Aug. 18, 1911; Elizabeth L. Watson to "My dear, dear friend," Sept. 3, 1911, MK Papers; Alice Park, autobiography, 25-26; Mary Ware Dennett to Alice Park, April 3, 1911, AP Papers; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, VI, 42,47. Elizabeth Watson reported that the California Equal Suffrage Association issued three million pages of literature. Ibid.., 38-39. T h e southern California Political Equality League issued an estimated 999,750 leaflets and 60,500 pamphlets. Report of Department of Literature, Political Equality League, Haynes Papers. Harper, History, VI, 39, 46 describes the financing of the campaign. "Wall, "Report of Committee on Design," CESL, Winning, 56; Kate Brousseau, "Report of the Literature Committee," ibid., 44-45; Charlotte A. Whitney, "Introduction," Md., 11.

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are the nobler sex whose highest functions are maternity and the protection of the home and who, if enfranchised, would use the ballot to fight evils bubbling to the surface of a turbulent society—anarchy, vice, dishonesty, corruption. 35 T h e literature that suffragists distributed in country areas combined social feminist ideas with an invocation of rural pride. A pamphlet addressed to the farmers and fruit growers of California put it this way: Cities contain nests of organized vice. While country districts are purer now than the cities, urban problems, unless checked, will eventually contaminate the countryside. Since women are especially concerned with guarding community welfare, saloon and brothel keepers are spending thousands to keep them from voting. If they are allowed to vote, they will use their ballots to clean up the cities and compel politicians to send decent men to the legislature and the entire state will live under a purer government. 36 Propaganda addressed to working people appealed, simultaneously, to altruism and self-interest. Suffragists argued that industrialization had driven women out of the home by eliminating jobs that could be done there. It had forced them to go to work in shops and factories under unhealthy conditions and for inadequate wages. These displaced women undercut labor standards. T h e ballot would give them power to improve their circumstances. A vote for suffrage would therefore be an aid to these unfortunate women and provide protection for male workers who would no longer have to be afraid of cheap female competition. 37 People of all classes had other less concrete but extremely serious fears that suffragists were compelled to confront. For decades, the apprehension that women's votes would change the family and alter the relationship of the sexes, making women mannish and undermining the status and masculinity ""Extracts from the speech of the Rev. Father Gleason at Central Theatre, San Francisco, May 23, 1911," with note by Alice Park, California Leaflets, I, SBA Papers; Constance Dean, "Report on San Francisco Public Meetings," CESL, Winning, 38. "Milicent Shinn, "To the Farmers and Fruit Growers of California" (1911), California Leaflets, I, SBA Papers; Mabel Dee ring, "Peace Work in the California Campaigns," CESL, Winning, 23. '^Statement by Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, California Suffrage Leaflets, I, SBA Papers; Maud Younger, "Why the Ballot Is Needed by Women," Labor Clarion, Sept. 1911, California Clippings, IV, SBA Papers.

385

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of men, had plagued the women's rights movement. Antisuffragists had harped on this issue for half a century, and California suffrage leaders were compelled to deny that they were about to "de-sex" their fellow citizens. Grace Simons of the Los Angeles Political Equality League told a rally in July 1911 that no woman expected to lose her "womanliness" as a consequence of voting, or to usurp "man's prerogative," or to take away his place. Katherine Edson assured the Los Angeles printers' board of trade: "Don't be afraid we will grow like men, which some of you fear. We admire you and love you, but it's because you are different from us, and we wouldn't be like you for the world." 38 Yet suffrage propaganda was not always so reassuring. Sometimes, when the audience seemed ready, suffragists tried to elicit discontent, to intensify women's perception of problems that only vaguely troubled them. In northern California country villages, members of the College Equal Suffrage League sang a song called "Reuben and Rachel" which contains the verse: Rachel, Rachel, I believe dear, Women's proper sphere's the home, From the cook stove and the wash-tub, She should never want to roam.

T h e invariable response to this verse from the village women was a jet of nervous, half-involuntary laughter. 39 Despite their efforts to assure Californians that they did not intend to revolutionize the family, suffragists sometimes sent word to housewives that something was desperately wrong with the home. They reprinted Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Locked Inside" in a book of California suffrage songs and verses: She beats upon her bolted door, With faint weak hands; Drearily walks the narrow floor Suddenly sits, blank walls before; Despairing stands. Life calls her, Duty, Pleasure, Gain — "Susan B. Anthony to Mrs. Mary Keith, [March?] 20, 1896, Anthony Family Papers, Huntington Library; "Burr Mcintosh Led from Art to Suffrage by Apt Diplomacy," Los Angeles Tnbune, July 16, 1911; "Suffrage Viewed from Two Points in Joint Debate," itaf.. July 21, 1911. "Wall, "Report of Blue Liner," CESL, Winning, 66.

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Her dreams respond; But the blank daylights wax and wane, Dull peace, sharp agony, slow pain — no hope beyond. Then comes a thought! She lifts her head, T h e world grows wide! A voice — as if clear words were said — "Your door, Ο long imprisoned Is locked inside."40

From time to time suffragists would explain to women that they ought to vote not just to uplift others, or to protect their families, or to help less fortunate women, or for higher working standards, but for purely egotistical reasons. Dr. Kate R. Lobingier, president of the Los Angeles Woman's City Club, told a rally of nearly a thousand women: "Many of you don't want to be a person. You want to keep above the law . . . . You can avoid many hard, disagreeable things by saying you are not a person." T o be as successful as a man, Lobingier claimed, a woman had to be four times smarter. She wanted suffrage because she did not want to be deadened by repression: "I believe in the ballot as a method of self-expression which, like the sun, reveals and stimulates.'"*1 Occasionally a suffrage organizer would deliver a barely veiled attack against the customs of a patriarchical society. Such was the play, "The Girl from Colorado," written by Selina Solomons, president of the San Francisco Votes for Women Club, and performed by and for college students. T h e leading characters of this neo-Shavian comedy were Aunty Suffridge, member of the Sixteenth Century Club (which took no interest in anything that had happened since that time); Ernest Armstrong, a young, handsome, well-dressed assistant professor from Boston; and two young women, Ivy Millstone and Constance Wright, who represented polar concepts of womenhood. Constance, the girl f r o m Colorado, a suffrage state, dressed plainly, was concerned not only with suffrage, but with dress reform and equal economic opportunity for women. Ivy wore "Oilman, Suffrage Songs and Verses (New York,· 1911). Copy of Gilman poem in suffrage literature, Μ Κ Papers. 41 Los Angeles Examiner, Aug. 2, 1911.

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES an e x a g g e r a t e d hobble skirt, a low-necked peek-a-boo blouse, a Marie Antoinette muslin "baby" hat, and high French-heeled shoes; used p o w d e r and rouge; and had h e r hair p u f f e d out b e h i n d a n d at the side. At various times, she giggled, fainted, acted coquettishly, tittered, and fluttered like a h e n ; she was, in Constance's words, "no worse than any average girl would be, b r o u g h t u p on Aunty S u f f r i d g e principles, without any occupation or p u r p o s e in life but to be womanly." In the e n d Constance m a d e suffragists out of Aunty S u f f r i d g e and Ivy, w h o b e g a n to dress in a "neat and becoming" fashion. T h e Sixt e e n t h C e n t u r y Club changed its n a m e to t h e Twentieth C e n t u r y Club, a n d Professor Armstrong, o f f e r e d a chair in municipal government at Berkeley, asked Constance to bec o m e his assistant. 42 A p p e a l s like this to discontent with women's customary roles were t h e exception. Analysis of s u f f r a g e p r o p a g a n d a materials in t h e Susan B. Anthony, Mark Keith, a n d J o h n R. Haynes P a p e r s a n d a count of the arguments r e p o r t e d by t h r e e m a j o r daily newspapers for the last six weeks of t h e campaign show that suffragists spoke only infrequently in public about t h e n e e d f o r self-development, or about economic sex discrimination, or about the channeling of women into the role of mindless, doll-like sex objects. T h e altruistic a r g u m e n t s pred o m i n a t e d , not the appeals to self-interest. (See T a b l e VII.) T h a t this should be so is not surprising considering t h e a u d i e n c e for s u f f r a g e propaganda. If, as the suffragists believed, voters were sympathetic if not enthusiastic, it m a d e sense to conduct an inoffensive campaign. S u f f r a g e leaders were not about to antagonize people by t h r e a t e n i n g them with cultural revolution; yet that is exactly what they would have d o n e if they had traveled among the Irish a n d Italians of t h e Bay area or the Mexican Americans of s o u t h e r n California a n d p r e a c h e d i n d e p e n d e n c e for women. It was o n e thing to tell s h o p girls in San Francisco that they n e e d e d the vote to pass effective labor laws or to show middle-class housewives how the "Constance answered, "I will consider it." Solomons, "The Girl from Colorado or the Conversion of Aunty Suffridge" (San Francisco [1911]), California Pamphlets, SBA Papers; advertisement for "Girl from Colorado," in endpapers, Solomons, How We Won.

389

W O M A N SUFFRAGE

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WOMAN SUFFRAGE

427

428

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

Nugent men on election day, result in any action. 22 At first glance, the ire of the suffragists might seem correctly directed against the urban residents. 23 Throughout the state, the amendment won 41.5 per cent of the vote, but in the big cities this dropped to 40. l per cent, as against 43.2 per cent in the rural-suburban areas. Thus the suffragists' excoriation of Nugent and other urban political leaders might appear justified by the figures. But in fact, their anger and frustration blinded the proponents of woman suffrage to some of the very significant elements in the voting patterns. For the statistics reveal substantial support for the suffrage proposal in many of the urban wards, and a surprising freedom from boss control on the part of the immigrant electorate, as the following tables indicate. TABLE

City Bayonne Camden Elizabeth Hoboken Jersey City Newark Passaic Paterson Trenton

Suffrage Vote

+4.5 41.1 42.1 33.1 40.2 33.4 47.1 42.7 38.2

JSofJf

28.3 '>8.7 31.2 21.5 29.0 32.5 26.6' 26.1 49.4

I24

Percentage of Voters JVho Were Ν of F Foreign-Born

34.9 20.6' 34.4 38.0 39.4 34.5 28.1 34.2 23.3

34.6 12.4 31.6 39.8 27.7 28.5 42.5 37.1 22.3

Negro

1.7 7.9 2.5 0.2 3.5 4.0 2.2 1.7 4.7

22. Paterson Evening News, October 15, 1915; Newark Evening JVews, October 19, 1915; New York Times, October 20, 1915. 23. For present purposes, the nine cities in New Jersey having a population above 50,000 have been viewed as the key urban elements: Bayonne, Camden, Elizabeth, Hoboken, Jersey City, Newark, Passaic, Paterson and Trenton. 24. Voting data are compiled from the Official Returns now in the State Library, Trenton. Data on voter background is taken from Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States (1910): Abstract of The Census with Supplement for New Jersey (Washington, 1913), 600-604. The lapse of five years between the census and the election almost certainly increased the number and percentage of foreignrelated voters. Figures do not add to 100 per cent because of losses in rounding. The column heading "N of N " signifies native-born voters of native parentage; "N o f F " indicates native-bom voters of foreign-born parentage.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

429

As these figures reveal, four o f the large π ties voted more strongly in favor of the suffrage amendment than did the state at large, and two of them — Bayonne and Passaic—exceeded even the average o f the ruralsuburban areas in their support o f the proposal. And the data make it evident that support of, or opposition to, woman suffrage did not hinge primarily upon immigrant background. I f the supposition that immigrantrelated voters overwhelmingly opposed woman suffrage were true, then the cities, one would expect, should show a positive correlation between percentage of native-born voters, and support of the amendment. II25

TABLE

Urban Ranking by Nativity of Voters Suffrage Vote

Native Voters

Bayonne

0

6

4

4

Camden

5

1

9

9

Elizabeth

4

4

5

6

Hoboken

9

9

2

1

Jersey City

6

5

7

5

Newark

8

3

6

7

Passaic

1

7

1

Paterson

3

3

Trenton

7

8 i>

3 2

8

8

City

Naturalized Voters

ImmigrantRelated Voters

If one assumes a close relationship between immigrant background and attitudes on woman suffrage, Hoboken, with the highest percentage o f immigrant-related voters, should have given the suffrage amendment the least support, as it did. But Passaic, which had the highest percentage o f naturalized voters and which ranked third in immigrant-related voters, gave the amendment the highest support o f any o f the large cities, 4 7 . 1 per c e n t — a figure substantially above the average even o f the ruralsuburban areas. T h e three cities with the lowest percentage o f i m m i g r a n t related voters, Camden, T r e n t o n , and Newark, ranked respectively fifth, 05. "Immigrant-related v o t e r s " is used to signify both those voters who were naturalized immigrants and those native-born voters one or both of whose parents were foreign-born.

430

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

seventh and eighth in their support of woman suffrage, while the three cities with the highest percentage of immigrant-related voters, Passaic, Hoboken, and Paterson, ranked respectively first, ninth and third in support of the amendment. As is evident, no positive correlation between immigrant background and attitudes on woman suffrage emerges from an analysis of the city-wide voting. The data, rather, lead to the conclusion that the recent immigrant, like the long-resident American, voted for or against this particular progressive measure on some basis other than ethnic background and length of residence in this country. T h e evidence also suggests that the immigrant-related vote went to the suffragists in more significant numbers than the women then realized. Similar conclusions develop from an examination of the ward results in the various cities. Of the 92 wards in the nine-city group, thirty-eight voted above the statewide average, and thirty-four supported the measure more strongly than did the rural-suburban areas on the average; in ten of the latteri wards, immigrant-related voters constituted two-thirds or more of the voting population, a clear indication that the immigrants were, in some places, supporting the measure more strongly than the native Americans, who presumably constituted the "decent men of the state" to whom Mrs. Feickert referred. The ward vote also throws light upon the effectiveness of boss control of the immigrant vote. The opposition of major political leaders such as Fielder, Nugent, Baird, Stokes and McCran—men who controlled the levers of party power—made the issue of woman suffrage in 1915 largely a party issue, but one upon which both parties agreed. Since only a handful of Democratic and Republican leaders endorsed the woman-suffrage movement, the weight of the political organizations was thrown against the women. This is clearly exemplified, for example, in Newark, where the poll challengers for the anti-suffrage forces were the ward leaders of both major political parties. 26 Thus, if voters in the immigrant wards generally followed the leadership of the political organizations on the suffrage issue, the difference between the pro- and anti-suffrage vote should be equal to or greater than the difference between the party votes. If, on the other hand, the difference between the voting percentages on the suffrage question is 26. Newark Evening News, October 19, October 20, 191$.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

431

less than the percentage differences between the party votes, the evidence suggests that the immigrant voters broke from party control on the amendment. TABLE I I I 2 7

Voting Percentages in Wards Two-Thirds or More Immigrant-Related Per Cent Pro-Suff.

Per Cent Anti-Suff.

71.5 73.1 85.3 78.3

45.2 49.3 36.1 33.5

54.7 50.6 63.8 66.4

74.7 67.9 78.9 68.5

25.2 32.0 21.0 31.4

88.9 80.3 82.6 66.8 74.9 83.4 67.4

40.6 41.7 44.9 49.5 35.5 32.5 44.0

59.3 58.2 55.0 50.4 64.4 67.4 55.9

82.6 68.2 64.1 56.7 51.1 63.1 60.2

17.3 31.7 35.8 43.2 48.8 36.8 39.7

76.2 70.9 87.9 78.0 74.2

32.5 40.7 24.4 29.0 39.0

67.4 59.2 75.5 70.9 60.9

74.2 56.5 80.2 78.1 67.0

25.7 43.4 19.7 21.8 32.9

Jersey City 1 75.3 77.8 2

31.2 28.9

68.7 71.0

84.4 85.1

15.5 14.8

Ward

Per Cent Immigrant

Per Cent Democratic

Per Cent Republican

Bayonne 1 2 4 5 Elizabeth 1 2 3 4 *5 *7 8 Hoboken 1 *2 3 4 5

27. Because the ward organization of Camden changed radically between the census of 1910 and the elections of 1915, it is not possible to study the ward returns there on the same basis of comparison as in the other eight cities. This table and the subsequent analyses will therefore be based upon a study of the remaining eight cities. It should be noted, however, that the suffragists eked out a narrow victory in one Camden ward, 542-533, and that in the remaining twelve wards they lost, in most by substantial margins. Since Camden has the lowest percentage of immigrant-related voters of the nine cities studied, it seems unlikely that the results there could in any way vitiate the following analysis. An asterisk next to the ward number in this and the following table indicates that the percentage difference between the party and the suffrage-amendment votes would substantiate the generally accepted hypothesis of boss-control.

432

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

Ward.

Per Cent Immigrant

Per Cent Pro-Suff.

Per Cent Anti-Suff.

68.7 69.6 75.5 80.7

24.1 49.2 42.5 37.2 43.2

75.8 50.7 57.4 62.7 56.7

69.5 64.7 77.5 70.0 63.4

30.4 35.2 22.4 29.9 36.5

72.7 77.5 69.5 71.0 85.9 75.0 84.8 68.7 68.8

42.9 27.8 36.3 23.5 19.0 31.1 28.5 28.4 36.6

57.0 72.1 63.6 76.4 80.9 68.8 71.4 71.5 63.3

43.8 56.2 54.8 52.4 53.3 42.9 42.3 53.4 28.5

56.1 43.7 45.1 47.5 46.6 57.0 57.6 46.5 71.4

90.0 77.8

33.6 43.2

66.3 56.7

58.3 61.4

41.6 38.5

71.1 69.9 81.5 79.8 78.9 78.2 76.9 77.7

43.7 52.1 38.5 29.3 34.7 33.0 40.8 40.6

56.2 47.8 81.4 70.6 65.2 66.9 59.1 59.3

20.8 29.9 35.7 29.6 63.6 65.7 51.1 50.0

79.1 70.0 64.2 70.3 36.3 34.2 48.8 50.0

Jersey City (continued) *5 75.6 7 10 11 12

Per Cent Democratic

Per Cent Republican

Newark *3

*5 *6 *10

•13 *13 * 14 *15 16

Passaic *1 4

Paterson 1 2 3

*6 7 «8 *9 »10

O f t h e 4 2 w a r d s in t h e e i g h t - c i t y g r o u p in w h i c h t h e i m m i g r a n t - r e l a t e d v o t e r s c o m p r i s e d t w o - t h i r d s o r m o r e of t h e v o t i n g population, the com-

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

433

bined efforts of both parties produced a greater disparity in the voting percentages in only seventeen wards. Of these, eight were in the city of Newark. While the latter figure certainly testifies to the effectiveness of the work which Nugent and his fellow politicians did in the state's largest city, the overall figures suggest that the immigrant-related voter, like the long-resident American, proved less than fully amenable to machine control. The data certainly challenge the assumption that the immigrants voted like sheep at the bidding of the political bosses. They seem, on the contrary, to have shown about as much independence of the political organizations on the suffrage issue as did the native Americans, as the following tables indicate.

"Home Scene in New Jersey Today" by J. H. Cassel, in Atlantic City Review, October 20,

1915.

434

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

TABLE

IV

Voting Percentages of the T e n Least Immigrant-Related W a r d s ProWard

Anti-

Suffrage

Suffrage

Democratic

Republican

10

49.3

50.6

31.2

68.7

11

48.8

51.1

24.1

76.8

Elizabeth

Trenton 1

46.0

52.9

44.2

55.7

2

38.6

61.3

36.4

63.5

*S

38.4

61.5

47.7

52.5

*7

39.6

60.3

41.3

58.6

*10

38.5

61.4

45.2

54.7

12

49.1

50.8

39.5

60.4

*13

44.5

55.4

40.4

59.5

14

47.4

52.5

31.0

68.9

Voting Percentages of the T e n Most Immigrant-Related W a r d s Bayonne 4

36.1

63.8

78.9

21.0

Elizabeth 1

40.6

59.3

82.6

17.3

3

44.9

55.0

64.1

35.8

*7

32.5

67.4

63.1

36.8

24.4

75.5

80.2

19.7

43.2

56.7

63.4

36.5

»12

19.0

80.9

53.2

46.6

* 14 Passait

28.5

71.4

42.3

57.6

33.6

66.3

58.3

41.6

Hoboken 3 Jersey City 12 Newark

*\ Paterson 3

38.5

61.4

35.7

64.2

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

Ε, a. Ife'

"τι

i^s 5 & »c ίο proximately as free of boss-control as did the native voter. The evidence, then, calls in question several generalizations about American politics in the Progressive era, and challenges the assumption that the immigrants provided a bloc of votes which the political boss could always call upon to prevent the passage of reform measures. As one swallow does not a summer make, so one election does not provide a sufficient basis upon which to erect any general theory of immigrant voting behavior. But, unless New Jersey in 1915 was altogether atypical, the elections of that year in the state strongly suggest that the immigrantrelated voters did, at least on occasion, support reform measures to the same extent as did the native voters, that they were about as bosscontrolled as native citizens, but not more so, and that our standard generalizations are in need of overhaul.

28. The suffrage amendment carried ten wards in the eight-city group. Immigrant-related voters constituted between 40 and 50 per cent of the voters in two of these, between 50 and 60 per cent in four, between 6 0 and 70 per cent in three, and 70.5 per cent of the electorate in the remaining ward.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

437

The Urban Political Machine and Woman Suffrage: A Study in Political Adaptability John D. Buenker

#

hile she was yet a neophyte social worker, the indefatigable Frances Perkins once had occasion to be ushered into the dignified presence of Charles Francis Murphy, the canny boss of New York's Tammany Hall Democratic machine, in order to ask his assistance for some factory legislation. During the course of the conversation, Murphy reminded Miss Perkins that she had been instrumental in the passage of a Mil which limited the hours of women workers to fifty-four per week, a measure which he had originally opposed. "It is my observation," he mused, "that that bill made us many votes. I will tell the boys to give all the help they can to this new bill." As she turned to go, pleased with her coup, Murphy startled Miss Perkins by asking if she were one of "those woman suffragists." Somewhat hesitantly the social worker admitted that she was. "Well, I am not," Murphy retorted, "but if anybody ever gives them the vote, I hope that you will remember that you would make a good Democrat." 1 This incident, besides affording a rare glimpse of Tammany's least flamboyant sachem in action, provides a capsule summary of the pragmatic attitude which urban political machines took toward reform in general, and woman suffrage in particular. It has long been held by most scholars of the Progressive Era that machines like Tammany maintained a consistently reactionary attitude toward political reform during the period, but the course of the woman suffrage contest in the Northeastern industrial states strongly suggests otherwise. In actuality, the machine proved itself a highly dynamic instrument, ready and willing to support changes in the governmental structure when the exigencies of practical politics so dictated, even if this meant a complete about

W

* T h e author is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin — Parkside. 1 Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York, 1946), 24-6.

438

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

face from a previous stand. There is no doubt that the urban political machines and their largely new stock, wage earning constituencies were among the staunchest opponents of female voting in the first fifteen years of the twentieth century, but it is also an indisputable fact that these elements ultimately came to play a leading role in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. 2 The reasons for the machines' early intransigence on the subject of woman suffrage were both apparent and real. From the beginning the concept of the machine implied authoritarian control, and the smaller and more docile the electorate the better. This mastery was becoming difficult enough to maintain in the face of increased immigration and growing birth rates without enfranchising a whole new segment of the population. Then, too, women were suspected of being more idealistic than men were about politics. The male new stock wage earners whose votes provided the leverage which kept the politicos in power realized full well that politics was about power and patronage, votes and jobs. They were mostly immune from the reformer's cries of honesty, efficiency, and economy in government, for they understood that these meant an end to the very necessary favors which the machine was able to dispense from its often ill-gotten gains. Women, however, did not confront life daily in the market place and might be more susceptible to these high-sounding appeals, thus opening the door to a myriad of reforms which the politicians had been able to stave off. 8 Chief among these potential horrors which the enfranchise* T h e best and most balanced account of the urban political machine is that of Richard Hofstadter in The Age of Reform (New York, 1955). Hofstadter also presents another theme central to this paper, namely the close connection between the urban machine and its largely new stock, wage earning constituents. His findings largely concur in that respect with those of such eminent political scientists as Elmer Cornwell and Harold Zink that, in Comwell's words, " t h e boss and his urban machine, the products of many factors, were virtually unthinkable without their immigrant clienteles." See Comwell's "Bosses, Machines, and Ethnic Groups" in the Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science, CCCLIII (May 1964), 27 and Zink's City Bosses in the United States (Durham, N.C., 1930), 4-5. A careful study of the backgrounds of the legislators concerned in the struggle over ratification was basic to the preparation of this paper and the results document the existence in most industrial states of what Hofstadter has dubbed "the boss-immigrant-machine complex," as the state by state analysis will show. In investigating the attitude of this "complex" toward a major progressive reform, I am following the line of thought fint developed by J. Joseph Huthmacher and I take this opportunity to acknowledge my indebtedness. * For the reasons behind machine opposition to women's suffrage see Andrew Sinclair, The Better Half (New YoTk, 1965), 247-9, Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle (Cambridge, 1959), 298-9, and Alan P. Grimes, The Puritan Ethic and Woman Suffrage (Princeton, 1967).

WOMAN SUFFRAGE ment of women might unleash was prohibition, for the urban machine and its male, new stock constituents had come by 1910 to form the last line of defense against its enactment. The attitude which their female counterparts might assume on the question however, was far from certain. Excessive drinking, as Oscar Handlin has effectively demonstrated, was a serious problem in many recent immigrant families, with breadwinners seeking escape from the harsh realities of urban, industrial life. It seemed highly probable that prohibition might have a broad appeal to their long-suffering wives who were tired of seeing a portion of their meagre income go to support the corner saloon. At any rate the opposition of the "liquor interests" to woman suffrage was widely assumed and most recent scholars of the female rights movement have generally confirmed the validity of this interpretation. 4 T h e machine's fear of emancipated women was strongly reinforced by the cultural mores of their constituents. The attitude of the new stock male toward women's rights was generally highly conservative. Wojnen were to keep house, bear children, and offer unquestioned obedience to their husbands. T h e notion of women working, going to school, and voting was particularly repulsive to the American of recent immigrant origin, because it was so alien to the traditions of the old country. T h e foreign language newspapers, which reflected the political opinions of the ethnic minorities, were consistent in their denunciations of the entire women's rights movement. Moreover, many of the arguments of the proponents of female suffrage had an unmistakably nativist, middle class bias which often urged votes for women as means of checking the "foreign menace" and which evidenced little interest in the kinds of social and economic reforms desired by the new stock worker of both sexes. Until the last few years of the suffrage struggle, there were very few new stock women in the ranks of the ardent feminists. 5 This cultural repugnance on the part of the new stock American was especially strong among those who professed the Roman Catholic faith, a majority among ethnic minorities. T h e Church itself had no official position on the question, but it was clear that the bulk of the influential clergy were solidly opposed. Fearful that emancipated women might endanger the family unit and embrace such spurious notions as birth control, Church spokesmen •Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted (New York, 1951), 159-60: Flexner, Century of Struggle, 273-4, 295; Chicago Daily News, June 12, 1913, 2. •Sinclair, The Better Half, 241-44, 331; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 229-275; Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement (New York, 1965), 124-38, 258-9.

440

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES added their highly persuasive voices to those of the politicians in denouncing female voting. Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, the most prestigious bishop in the United States, for example, lent his name to the efforts of the National Anti-Suffrage Association and sent a sympathetic message to its convention. T h e overwhelming defeat of a referendum on the issue in Massachusetts in 1915 resulted in large measure from the fact that "strongly worded statements by leading clerics were issued in opposition to the proposed bill." So much was the Church's opposition taken for granted in New York that one of the few clerics who favored the reform, the Reverend Joseph McMahon, found it necessary to remind the Catholic Library Association that the condemnations of his fellow clerics represented only their individual political opinions and that the Church had no theological stand, one way or the other. β Thus motivated, the machines, their representatives, and their constituents demonstrated their antipathy to woman suffrage during much of the Progressive period. Referendum votes in the populous, industrial states regularly produced huge majorities against the scheme in the large cities where the new stock voter predominated. T h e 1915 referendum in Pennsylvania, for example, saw the measure victorious almost everywhere but in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, where its losses were so great as to block success in the state as a whole. T h e same pattern emerged in 1915 in New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. A heavily negative vote in polyglot Chicago had stymied a similar effort in Illinois at an earlier date, while the industrial cities of Ohio were primarily responsible for the three successive setbacks which the measure suffered there. T By the same token, attempts to establish statewide woman suffrage by statute generally met with determined opposition from urban, new stock lawmakers. Al Smith, when he was Speaker of the House in the New York Assembly, was instrumental in defeating such a venture. T h e limited suffrage law passed by Illinois in 1913 was endorsed by Governor Edward F. Dunne, a Chicago Democrat of Irish Catholic ancestry, and supported by his most faithful followers in the legislature, but was reportedly opposed by Chicago's Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr., who had formerly been Dunne's political mentor. At any rate, the fight against passage was led by Harrison men and the bulk of the negative votes • Flexner, Century of Struggle, 274-6, 299; New York Times, January 16, 1915, 6. * Flexner, Century of Struggle, 270-4·, New York Times, Chicago Daily News, June 5, 1913, 10.

November 3, 1915, 1;

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

were cast by Chicago Democrats of new stock derivation. 8 This lack of enthusiasm on the part of the big city politicians and voters doubtless contributed in some measure to the fence straddling which the national Democratic Party did on the subject of woman suffrage. President Wilson was subjected to intense pressure from the suffragettes during both campaigns but took refuge in the position that it was a question for the states to decide, a stance echoed by the party platform in 1916.9 It seems likely, though, that this posture was adopted equally out of deference to the Southern wing of the Democratic Party which feared the enfranchisement of women as it did any federal interference with voting requirements — as an opening wedge for the reassertion of Negro suffrage. In any event, Southern antagonism toward woman suffrage outlasted that of the urban Democrats, as many of that region's congressmen voted against the proposal of the Nineteenth Amendment and several states of the old Confederacy either refused ratification or granted it grudgingly. By that point, most Northern Democrats had abandoned their colleagues and embraced the right of women to vote. 10 Prior to the election of 1916, then, there was an ample amount of evidence to substantiate the charge that the urban political machine opposed woman suffrage. Between then and the proposal of the Nineteenth Amendment by Congress, however, an abrupt and startling reversal occurred which converted most of the representatives from urban, new stock constituencies into solid, if not necessarily ardent, supporters of ratification. In most states this meant the addition of large numbers of Democratic votes, leaving only the business-oriented wing of the Republican party in resistance to the measure, out of fear that women voters might press for other economic and social changes.11 In Pennsylvania, however, where the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh machines were Republican, even the antipathy of Senator Boies Penrose could not prevent wholesale movement to the cause of woman suffrage on the part of his erstwhile minions. Because the about-face was so sudden and complete, there were naturally some urban, new stock law8 Oscar H a n d l i n , Al Smith and His America (Boston, 1958), 52; Edward F. Dunne, History of Illinois (Chicago, 1933), II, 336-7; Illinois, House Journal, 191), 1413; Illinois, Senate Journal, 1913, 1202. • Flexner, Century of Struggle, 276; Sinclair, The Better Half, 328. " S i n c l a i r , The Better Half, 335; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 298-9. U.S., Congress, Congressional Record, 66th Congress, 1st Session, v. 58, pt. 1, passim. See also Dewey W . G r a n t h a m , "Southern Congressional Leaders and the New Freedom," Journal of Southern History, XIII (November 1947), 456-9. 11 An examination of the same sources as those in note # 1 0 substantiates conservative Republican opposition in Congress, particularly in the Senate. Their position in the various states will be considered throughout this paper.

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HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES makers who were unable to go along with it and who continued to vote their own prejudices or those of their constituents to the bitter end. I n the main, however, the representatives of the polyglot cities lent substantial support to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and, in some cases, were even the chief moving force behind its success. This changeover was especially evident in New York. T h e opposition of Murphy and Smith has already been noted, and the private activities of T a m m a n y leaders contributed mightily to the decisive defeat of the 1915 referendum in New York City, inasmuch as the Democrats virtually swept all the elective offices. 1 2 By the time of the 1917 referendum, however, the Democratic organization had shifted to a position of true neutrality and the measure carried the metropolitan area by an even more overwhelming margin than it had lost by two years earlier. 1 3 W h e n the legislature met to consider ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, Smith, by now the governor, urged New York to ratify the measure as an example to the rest of the nation, and his supporters in the General Assembly boasted publicly that the Democratic Party had been "a consistent friend of woman suffrage," and rejoiced that "it was in a Democratic year that suffrage was granted to the women." 14 O n the final vote on ratification, the city's Democratic delegation in both the house and senate were nearly unanimous in their support, including such famous Tammany sachems as Jimmy Walker and Ed Flynn, the boss of the Bronx. 1 5 T h e same pattern, with a slight variation, occurred in Illinois. As previously mentioned, the bulk of the votes cast against the 1913 statute were those of Chicago Democrats, mostly the followers of Mayor Harrison and Chicago boss Roger C. Sullivan, despite the fact that Governor Dunne's personal intervention at the state convention had secured his party's endorsement of the measure. 1 8 Woman suffrage had lost Cook County heavily in an advisory vote, and so nine of the city's ten Democrats in the senate and twentyu F l e x n e r , Century of Struggle, 270-4; New York Times, November 3, 1915, 1; Maude Wood Park, " T h e W i n n i n g Plan," in National American W o m a n Suffrage Association (ed.), Victory: How J feinen Won It, A Centennial Symposium, 1840-1940 (New York, 1940), 108. u Flexner, Century of Struggle, 290; Sinclair, The Better Half, 331; Nezu York Times, November 6, 1917, 12; Park, " W i n n i n g Plan," 120. " N e w York, Assembly Journal, 1919, III, Appendix II, 3; New York Times, June 12, 1919, 1-9. 15 New York, Senate Journal, 1919, III, 15; New York, Red Book, 1919, 111-124, 135-177; Assembly Journal, 1919, III, 7-8. M Illinois, Senate Journal, 191), 1202; Illinois State Register (Springfield). May 8, 1913, 1; Illinois, Blue Book, 191), 240-301; Illinois, House Journal, 1913, 1413; Illinois State Register, J u n e 4, 1913, 1; Blue Book, 1913, 240-301.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE two of the twenty-six in the lower house voted nay. 17 Governor Dunne later wrote that even after passage he was "importuned in many directions to use my veto power," and one can only assume that most of the pressure was brought to bear by his fellow Chicago Democrats, since they were the only sizeable bloc which had voted against the bill. 18 During the next few years the Chicago Democrats learned the value of the female vote as the ladies exercised their newly found franchise in favor of Charles Evans Hughes, who had come out for a federal constitutional amendment, and against Woodrow Wilson who had taken refuge in state's rights. T h e 1918 advisory vote on prohibition has also demonstrated that female voters were not all rabid drys. 19 When the Nineteenth Amendment came before the General Assembly, therefore, only three of the city's Democratic senators and five of her representatives failed to vote for ratification. 20 Gradual acceptance of woman suffrage was also evident in the Cleveland Democratic organization, another combine based largely on new stock votes which had five times elected Tom Johnson mayor and dominated the Lake City's delegation at the state house. 21 One of the staunchest advocates of female voting in Ohio was James Reynolds, an English-born machinist and labor leader from Cleveland, but the opposition of many of his colleagues and constituents was clearly expressed both in referenda and in the General Assembly. 22 As late as 1917 five Cleveland representatives out of thirteen and two senaters out of five voted against Reynold's bill to allow woman suffrage in presidential elections, and even in 1919 one senator and six representatives refused to agree to a petition requesting the state's Congressional delegation to support the proposed amendment to the federal constitution. When die amendment was finally considered by the legislature, however, only one of the city's Democrats voted in the negative while three others abstained. 23 " Chicago Journal, June 12, 1913, 2; Chicago Daily News, June 5, 1913, 10; Dunne, History, II, 335-7; Walter Townsend, Illinois Democracy (Springfield, 1935), I, 291. » Dunne, History, II, 337. »Illinois State Journal (Springfield), May 23, 1915, 1; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 276-7; Harold Gosnell, Machine Politics: Chicago Style (Chicago, 1937), 148. " House Journal, 1919, 1020; Senate Journal, 1919, 1260; Blue Book, 1919, 172-273. 21 Hoyt L. Warren, Progressivism in Ohio, 1897 1917 (Columbus, 1964), 69-70; Wellington G. Fordyce, "Nationality Groups in Cleveland Politics," The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Qjuarterly, XLVI (1937), 125; Charles Glaab and Theodore Brown, History of Urban America (New York, 1967), 213-15. E New York Times, November 6, 1917, 12. " O h i o , General Assembly, Senate Journal, 1917, 169; 1919, 105, 808; House

444

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES Early ambivalence and eventual acceptance of woman suffrage also characterized the attitudes of urban, new stock voters in Connecticut. Here the ethnic minorities in the larger cities such as New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport, Danbury, and Norwalk worked to capture control of the Democratic Party in order to break the strangle hold over the state exercized by the rural-based, largely Yankee Protestant Republican organization developed by J. Henry Roraback. T h e latter machine ensured its control by maintaining an archaic apportionment system in the lower house of the legislature, 24 so desire to increase the size of the electorate led to early advocacy of female voting by some urban, new stock Democrats, but the feeling was far from unanimous. Measures to allow woman suffrage in local elections in both 1913 and 1917 split their ranks almost literally down the middle. 2 5 By 1919, though, nine of the eleven Democrats in the senate voted for ratification, and the oqjier two were able to do no more than abstain. Every single urban Democrat in the lower house voted in the affirmative, while ten Republicans opposed and another twenty-two abstained. 2 6 T h e Boston Irish and their recent immigrant allies also eventually made their peace with woman suffrage. 2 7 In 1913 their votes were overwhelmingly cast against both a proposed amendment to the state constitution and a bill to submit the question of female voting to an advisory vote. When such a vote was held two years later, the measure faced the active opposition of the Catholic Church and lost heavily in Suffolk and Middlesex Counties, the heart of metropolitan Boston, as well as in the smaller industrial towns with predominantly new stock, working class populations. 2 8 Since such prominent Republicans as Henry Cabot Lodge and Calvin Coolidge also opposed woman suffrage, the referendum received only 35.5% of the vote cast in the state. By Journal, 1917, 133-4: 1919, 174, 1141-2: James K. Mercer, Ohio Legislative 1919-1920 (Columbus, 1920), 248-447.

History,

"Joseph I. Lieberman, The Pouter Broker (Boston, 1966), 18-47; John D. Buenker, "Progressivism in Connecticut: T h e Thrust of Urban New Stock Democrats," The Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin, X X X V (October 1970), 97-109. " Connecticut, General AssemWy, Senate Journal, 191}, 920-1; 1917, 1204-6. "Senate Journal, 1920, 15; House Journal, 1920, 16; Connecticut, Secretary of State, State Register and Manual, 1919, 77-89. " T h e relationship between the Irish-Americans and other immigrant groups is discussed in Richard Abrams, Conservatism in a Progressive Era (Cambridge, 1964), 49-52, 132-3, 286-8; J . Joseph Huthmacher, Massachusetts People and Politics, 1919-193} (New York, 1969), 1-70 and Donald B. Coles, Immigrant City (Chapel Hill. 1963), 88-92, 168-170. " Flexner, Century of Struggle, 272-4, 288-9; Massachusetts, General Court, House Journal, 191), 873-5, 1343-49.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 1919, however, it was apparent that the Boston Irish and their allies had adjusted much more rapidly than their Yankee Republican antagonists. Lodge voted against the amendment in Congress, Governor Coolidge submitted it to the legislature without comment, and nearly all the fifty-two votes cast against ratification were those of Yankee Republicans, except for three diehard Boston Democrats in the lower house. 29 So rapidly did the Boston Irish make the necessary changeover that by the 1920 campaign even James Michael Curley had taken to electioneering with his wife and proclaiming that female voters were "the conscience of America." 30 In Rhode Island, the contest over ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment was complicated by the closely related issue of property qualification for voting which still obtained in local elections. As in Connecticut, the Republicans maintained tight control over state politics through a highly effective rural based, Yankee coalition devised by the almost legendary General Charles R. Brayton, who reportedly ran the state's affairs from his station in a committee room of the state capitol. Legislative malapportionment, especially in the senate, and property qualifications in local elections were two of the organization's most effective weapons in resisting the drive for political power by the state's minorities, who by 1910 dominated the Democratic Party. 31 Brayton astutely saw that woman suffrage would reverberate to his opponent's advantage because women would vote like their husbands and augment the already growing number of the urban Democrats. Other Republicans, however, grasped the logic in the argument of the president of the Rhode Island Women's Suffrage Association, Mrs. Elizabeth Upham Yates, that the adoption of the reform, coupled with the retention of property qualifications, would limit suffrage to "American women" and counteract the effects of the "foreign vote." 32 Hence the Nineteenth Amendment passed both houses of the "Massachusetts, House Journal, 1919, 1264-6; Senate Journal, 1919, 964-5; Massachusetts, Secretary of State, Manual of the General Court, 1919, 492-510. " R a l p h G. Martin, The Bosses (New York, 1964), 231. " Lincoln Steffens, Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York, 1931), 464-7; Elmer Cornwell, Jr., "Bosses, Machines and Ethnic Groups," The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science (May 1964), 27-34; Elmer Comwell, Jr., "Party Absorption of Ethnic Groups: T h e Case of Providence, Rhode Island," Social Forces, XXXVIII (March I960), 205-210; Murray S. Stedman, Jr. and Susan YV. Stedman, " T h e Rise of the Democratic Party in Rhode Island," New England Quarterly, XXIV (September 1951), 329-341; Duane Lockard, New England State Politics (Princeton, 1954), 174-198. I have analyzed the role played by urban Democrats in Rhode Island in " T h e Emergence of Urban Liberalism in Rhode Island, 1909-1919," to appear in Rhode Island History early in 1971. •Providence Journal, March 3, 1910, 14.

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HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

General Assembly with bipartisan support, with spokesmen for the Providence County Democrats prominent in its behalf. However, when Democrats William Flynn of Providence and Luigi de Pasquale of Pawtucket announced their intention of introducing legislation to abolish property qualifications for women in the hope that this step would lead to "full male suffrage" as well, the Republicans skillfully maneuvered to adjourn. When the same two Democrats sought to amend the enabling legislation for woman suffrage to the same end three months later, the Republicans were forced to kill the amendment outright, 29-57, with "party lines being strictly observed." Even so, the Democrats voted for the legislation in the realization that the enfranchisement of even some of the large numbers of potential new stock women voters would materially aid their cause. 33 The abruptness of the urban Democratic switch in policy concerning female voting was so perplexing to some machine politicians in New Jersey that it actually resulted in a split between the two largest party organizations in the state — those of Hudson and Essex Counties. T h e former, controlled first by "Little Bob" Davis and later by Frank Hague, was based upon the largely new stock vote around Jersey City and had been a bulwark of reform during the administration of Governor Woodrow Wilson; the latter had been bequeathed by Wilson's former sponsor and later bitter opponent, "Big J i m " Smith, to his nephew, James R. Nugent, and culled most of its electoral support from similar elements in the Newark area. 34 During a 1915 referendum on woman suffrage both counties had returned sizeable margins against it, but the vote on the Nineteenth Amendment four years later found the two powerful Democratic organizations at odds. All thirteen of the Hudson County delegates voted in the affirmative while all thirteen of the Essex County Democrats declared in the negative. 85 Thus it was evident by 1919 that virtually all the nation's major Democratic urban political machines had come to accept female suffrage, regardless of their earlier views, and the same holds true for the few powerful Republican organizations which were based upon urban, new stock constituencies. T h e highly •Providence Journal, January 7, 1920, 1; April 21, 1920, 2; Rhode Island, General Assembly, Rhode Island Manual, 1919, 394-419. " Arthur Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House (Princeton, 1947), 135-7, 140-5; John Morton Blum, Joe Tumulty and the Wilson Era (Boston, 1951), 1-20. "Flexner, Century of Struggle, 270-4, 292; New Jersey, General Assembly, Assembly Minutes, 1920, 110. T h e Senate passed the measure 18-2 (Senate Journal, 1920, 236), but there were few representatives of the "boss-immigrant machine complex" in the upper house because the apportionment system limited each county to one seat. See also New Jersey, General Assembly, Legislative Manual, 1920, 268-325.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

successful Cincinnati machine which Boss George Cox had built largely upon the city's German-American electors was an exception. I n the vote on ratification in the Ohio senate, Cincinnati's three delegates cast the only negative votes, while in the lower house one was recorded in favor, one against, and the other seven demonstrated their displeasure by abstaining. 38 T h e i r Republican counterparts in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, however, showed much the same ability to adjust to the inevitability of woman suffrage as the urban Democrats. T h e entire seven man Republican senatorial contingent from San Francisco cast their ballots for ratification as did eight of the eleven representatives of the Bay City in the lower house, the other three abstaining. 37 T h e situation in Pennsylvania was complicated by the factionalism generally found in a one-party state, but the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh representatives generally supported ratification, despite the overwhelming defeat given woman suffrage in the two cities during a referendum vote just four years earlier. T h e measure failed in Pittsburgh by over 20,000 votes and in Philadelphia by over 55,000, i ratio of nearly six to one which caused the New York Times to conclude that the "city vote did it, especially in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh." Since United States Senator Boies Penrose, the acknowledged boss of Pennsylvania, voted against the amendment in Congress and William S. Vare, brother of Philadelphia boss Edwin "Duke" Vare, voted for it, the big city lawmakers were caught between two conflicting pressures but about two-thirds of them eventually voted for ratification. Three of Pittsburgh's four senators supported the measure while thirteen of her representatives favored it, ten opposed and one abstained. Five of Philadelphia's eight delegates in the upper house and thirty of her forty in the lower house concurred. a 9 T h e reasons for the eventual conversion of the urban political machine and its largely new stock constituency to the cause of woman suffrage are not difficult to understand. T o a certain extent they were merely acquiescing in the inevitable. T h e movement » O h i o , Senate Journal, 1919, 808; House Journal, 1919, 1141-2; Mercer, Ohio Legislative History, 1919-920, 248-447. 51 California, General Assembly, Senale Journal, 1919, 67; House Journal, 1919, 160. w New York Times, November 3, 1915, 1. T h e Philadelphia faction of G.O.P., headed by the Vare brothers and the Pittsburgh one developed by Christopher Lyman Magee and U. S. Senator William S. Flinn were generally more forwardlooking than the regular Penrose organization. See Zink, City Bosses, 175-230. " P e n n s y l v a n i a , General Assembly, Senate Journal, 1919, 2863; House Journal, 1919, 4029-30; Congressional Record, v. 56, pt. I, 810-11; Pennsylvania, General Assembly, Snull's Legislative Handbook and Manual of the State of Pennsylvania, 1919, 1242-63.

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for women's rights had been building momentum for nearly a century, and it had become almost irresistible by the Progressive Era. Politicians were subjected to a constant barrage of propaganda by the various women's organizations which were so well organized that they even catalogued the strengths and weaknesses of each state legislator, prepared instructions for lobbying, and circulated directions for drafting petitions and letters to the editor. So thorough were their efforts in the 1917 referendum in New York that they boasted of having personally contacted every single registered voter. 40 With such public pressure one can only wonder at the amount and intensity of private persuasion exercised upon husbands, fathers, brothers, and boy friends. Under such steady bombardment, nearly twenty states adopted woman suffrage in some form by 1919, including such industrial bastions as Illinois, New York, and California. Woodrow Wilson had been subjected to such constant harassment in the 1916 campaign that he was forced to abandon his insistence upon states' rights and endorse the constitutional amendment, a switch made easier by the fact that he carried ten of the twelve woman suffrage states in the election. 41 By 1918 all indications pointed to the triumph of the movement in the reasonably near future and the machine politician, whose welfare depended upon his ability to perceive such trends, could hardly fail to have been impressed. Coupled with this situation was a subtle change in the nature of the suffrage movement itself. Led by Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Sophinisba Breckenridge and other social workers who lived in daily contact with the immigrant working class, many of the suffragettes modified their nativist, middle class biases and sought to open their ranks to representatives of the more recent arrivals. Whereas they had previously sought the vote almost as a status symbol, they now began to see it as a weapon to effect significant social and economic reforms. Hence they altered their arguments and strategy, inserted advertisements in the foreign language newspapers, and involved themselves in working class causes. For their part, new stock women, especially in the burgeoning trade unions, responded to these appeals and began to see enfranchisement as another means for their general advancement. Although the suffrage movement remained basically middle class and native, it began to seem a good deal less hostile to the aspira* National American Woman Suffrage Association, Victory, 115-171; Sinclair, Better Half, 316-339; Kraditor, Ideas of Woman Suffrage, 219-49. 41 Sinclair, Better Half, 329; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 276-325.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

tions of urban, industrial, immigrant America than it previously 1 had.« Moreover the actual operation of woman suffrage in the major Industrial states demonstrated that many of the fears of the machine politicians were unfounded. The presence of female voters in New York in 1918, for example, did not prevent the Tammany Democrats from gaining control of the legislature and electing Al Smith governor. Women in Illinois voted slightly more heavily for Hughes than for Wilson in 1916, but the Republican was committed to votes for females and the significant fact was the support which Wilson received despite his failure to embrace woman suffrage. Otherwise distaff voters seemed to divide along the same ethnic and class lines as male electors, and vote the same general combinations of principles and prejudices. The opposition of Chicago Democrats was seriously undermined by the fact that women voters favored their party in the 1918 election, just as they had in ten other woman suffrage states two years earlier. The fear that urban, new stock women there would declare for prohibition over the objections of their husbands was proven fallacious when a referendum vote on the liquor question showed them to be only slightly more enamored of the idea than their men folk. 48 In general, new stock voters and their political leaders had been reluctant to enfranchise their females for fear that they would tend to vote more in line with a middle class system of values and embellish the cause of the good government reformers, a supposition which the actual operation of woman suffrage clearly discredited. 44 It was evident, in fact, that many members of the old stock middle class, like Rhode Island's General Brayton, also detected the general harmony of interest present among new stock voters, whether male or female, for the most diehard opposition to women's suffrage came precisely from such old line elements. Such organizations as the National Association Opposed to Women's Suffrage drew most of their membership from "ladies of means and social position," and continued their recalcitrance even during the ratification debates. Some of the strongest statements against the 1913 law in Illinois came from representatives of the old stock - Kraditor, Ideas of Woman Suffrage, 138-62; Sinclair, Better Half, 245-7; 300-315, 321-2; National American Woman Suffrage Association, Victory, 110-15. " Flexner, Century of Struggle, 277; Sinclair, Better Half, 333-7; Gosnell, Machine Politics, 148. " Most authorities today seem to concur that women tend to vote more along class and other lines and that there is no such thing as a female vote. See Kraditor, Ideas of Woman Suffrage, 263-5 and Edwin S. Corwin and Jack W. Peltason, Understanding the Constitution (New York, 1964), 164.

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middle class who resented the attempt to enfranchise women on the grounds that it would pave the way for a "socialist regime" and that "slum women will predominate." Aside from the Southern Democrats, the bitter end opposition in Congress came mostly from such conservative old stock Republicans as Henry Cabot Lodge, William Dillingham, Frank Brandegee, and Boies Penrose, who strove both in Washington and in their native states to protect their constituents against the incursions of urban minority groups. Andrew Sinclair has found that the "hard core" of the opposition to the Nineteenth Amendment in the Northeast lay in "its fear of immigrant female voters," a judgment which the votes in the various state legislatures clearly document. This was certainly the case in Rhode Island where the predominantly old stock Republicans were willing to accept female suffrage, but only if the property qualification was retained, a rather transparent attempt to blunt the impact of the urban, new stock vote. As Barbara Solomon has so aptly phrased it, "those who thought 'Patrick' was bad enough did not want to add 'Bridget' to their problems." 45 All in all, the machine politicians correctly calculated by 1918 that the introduction of large segments of female voters would only slightly alter thq basic economic and ethnic divisions within their states, and might actually reverberate to the advantage of the urban areas whose population was increasing much more rapidly than that of rural and small town America. Consequently they threw in their lot with the supporters of woman suffrage and helped swing the tide in favor of ratification. In a larger sense, though, the adjustment made by the urban new stock politician and voter to the reality of woman suffrage was part of a broader process of accommodation which the machine underwent in the Progressive period. The bleak picture of the "boss-immigrant-machine complex" as a uniformly reactionary group is substantially true for most of the nineteenth century, but it ignores the very real evolution which took place in the first two decades of the twentieth century. T h e emergence of new leadership, the press of a fantastic population explosion in the major cities, and the growing sophistication of the electorate made it mandatory for the urban politician to modify his methods of operation. Hence, as many students of the period have already observed, the representatives of the urban, new stock population came to support social and economic reforms which might better the lot of their constituents, as the situations in New York, Illinois, " Flexner, Century of Struggle, 275, 296; Sinclair, Better Half, 335; Illinois State Register, April 15, 1969, Cornwell, "Bosses, Machines and Ethnic Groups," 29; Providence Journal, March 3, 1910, 15; Barbara Solomon, Ancestors and Immigrants (Cambridge, 1956), 54.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE and Massachusetts clearly witness. 46 So too did the machine leadership gradually come to the realization that many of the political innovations which they had formerly feared might actually work to their advantage. T h e direct popular election of Senators, for example, received the overwhelming support of the representatives of the urban political machines because it enhanced the chances for the selection of urban, new stock lawmakers, given the fact of rural, old stock dominance of most state legislatures. 4T T h e same situation produced substantial machine backing for such "good government" schemes as initiative and referendum in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Illinois. 48 T h e machines gradually adjusted to such obvious blows at "bossism" as the direct primary, at least in New York and Illinois. 49 Even such a "bete noire" as civil service, which supposedly sapped the vital life's blood of patronage, could be accepted, if properly administered. 50 Taken in this context, the eventual embracing of women's suffrage by the urban political machine was clearly not an aberration, but part of a general pattern of adjustment which eventually transformed the big city organizations into one of the bulwarks of support for die New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society. T h e path from the reaction of Boss Tweed's day to liberalism of recent years was a long and gradual one, and much of the journey was covered during the Progressive Era. In the long run, then, the urban political machine proved itself ä more dynamic institution than its critics have alleged and its leaders showed themselves much more perspicacious judges of the actual effects of electoral innovation than most of their detractors. Perhaps, after all, the most astute analysis of the impact of woman suffrage was the one given by that archetypical politico, "See, for example, John D. Buenker, "Urban Immigrant Lawmakers and Progressive Reform in Illinois," in Donald F. Tingley (ed.), Essays in Illinois History (Carbondale, 1968), 52-75; J . Joseph Huthmacher, "Charles Evans Hughes and Charles Francis Murphy: T h e Metamorphosis of Progressivism," New York History (January 1965), 25-40; Huthmacher, Massachusetts People, 10-71; Blum, Joe Tumulty, 1-20 and Michael Rogin, "Progressivism and the California Electorate," Journal of American History, LV (September 1968), 297, 314; Nancy Joan Weiss, Charles Francis Murphy, 1858-1924: Respectability and Responsibility in Tammany Politics (Northampton, Mass., 1968); and J . Joseph Huthmacher, Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism (New York, 1969). " J o h n D. Buenker, " T h e Urban Political Machine and the Direct Election of Senators," Journal of American History, LVI (September 1969), 305-323. " J o h n D. Buenker, "Edward F. Dunne: T h e Urban New Stock Democrat as Progressive," Mid-America, L (January 1968), 19; Huthmacher, "Urban Liberalism and the Age of Reform," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLIX (September 1962), 231-41; Ohio, Senate Journal, 191 J, 864; House Journal, 1915, 959. * Handlin, Al Smith, 45-52; Buenker, "Urban Immigrant Lawmakers," 67. " Buenker, "Urban Immigrant Lawmaker," 66; Handlin, Al Smith, 45.

452

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES "Bathhouse John" Coughlin, crony of "Hinky Dink" Mike Kenna and boss of Chicago's notorious first ward. Just after the passage of the 1913 Illinois suffrage law, a Chicago newspaper published a series of comments on its significance, and most of the good government reformers, including the very able political scientist Charles Merriam, were lavish in their predictions of the dawn of a new era of cleaner and more socially responsible politics. And then came Bathhouse John. "It won't," he said, "make very much difference at all." 61

n

Chicago Journal,

June 12, 1913, 2.

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T H E NEW YORK C I T Y WOMAN S U F F R A G E P A R T Y , 1909-1919 R O N A L D

S C H A F F E R

ATE in October, 1909, a Convention of Disfranchised Women met in Carnegie Hall and founded the New York City Woman Suffrage Party. During the next decade this party played an increasingly large role in local, state, and national politics. It provided thousands of women with their first political experience; it adopted a plan of organization that influenced later suffrage campaigns; and it contributed directly to the passage of a woman suffrage amendment in New York State and indirectly to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the federal constitution. In the course of its activities the Party had to deal with certain problems that had long confronted New York City politicians: how to organize and finance a machine for political action; how to recruit workers; and how to win votes from ethnic and religious minorities. This account of the Party's attempts to solve those problems shows the way it contributed to the New York Suffrage victory of 1917. In 1909 that victory appeared extremely remote. Though the American suffrage movement was more than sixty years old, women had achieved political equality in only four states, the last of them in 1896. A federal suffrage amendment had few supporters in Congress, partly because few Congressmen had women constituents. In New York the earliest possible success was years away since a constitutional amendment to extend the franchise to women would have to pass two consecutive legislatures and then win the approval of a majority of voters.1 How were suffragists with almost no political power to influence the politicians in Albany? • M r . Schaffer wrote for his P h . D . dissertation at P r i n c e t o n University a b i o g r a p h y of Congresswoman J e a n n e t t e R a n k i n . H e is now an instructor in A m e r i c a n a n d m i l i t a r y history at I n d i a n a University.

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How were they to convince the men of New York to share political control? T h e r e were several conceivable approaches ranging from moral suasion to violence. But whatever they did, it was best, they realized, to proceed in an organized way. No one was more aware of the value of organization in politics than Carrie Chapman Catt, former head of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Mrs. Catt knew that the regular parties owed much of their success to a scheme of organization which permitted both centralized direction and close contact with the people. She proposed to the women of the Interurban Woman Suffrage Council, a federation of New York City suffrage clubs, that they develop their own kind of political machine—a woman suffrage version of Tammany Hall. On October 29, 1909, at the Carnegie Hall meeting, held under the auspices of the Interurban Council, 804 delegates from local suffrage groups approved her plan. Four months later, the Party, with Mrs. Catt as chairman, set u p headquarters in the Metropolitan Tower and published the first issue of its journal, the Woman Voter.2 T h e New York City Woman Suffrage Party was, like Tammany Hall, a hierarchical organization. At the bottom, party members, enrolled in assembly district units, chose district leaders and sent delegates to borough and city conventions. These conventions elected the borough and city officers. At the top, a board composed of the chairman of each borough, the city chairman, and other city officials made the rules and directed most party activities. T o supervise at the precinct level, the assembly district leaders appointed election district captains. 3 Like all political organizations, the Party had to find ways of raising money. Sources of income that were open to Tammany, however, were closed to the Party which enjoyed no patronage and could not, like a regular machine, levy tribute from businessmen. Instead, the Party required every assembly district leader to collect $10.00 a year and send it to the borough treasurers, who were to relay half to the city organ-

WOMAN SUFFRAGE ization. It gathered individual contributions, sponsored suffrage benefits, and organized fund-raising stunts. Thus, during "self-denial week" in August, 1914, Party members ate ten-cent sandwiches instead of fifty-cent lunches, went without veils, cleaned their own gloves, deprived themselves of soda, candy, and flowers, or walked to save carfare, and gave the proceeds to the suffrage campaign. On Sacrifice Day. August 7, 1914, sixty women attended a luncheon at Party headquarters and dropped valued possessions into a "melting pot"—bracelets, watches, even wedding rings.4 With money thus derived the suffragists carried on an extensive publicity campaign. They organized mass meetings, distributed suffrage literature, and marched in long and tiring parades. T o spread their message and to measure public reactions to their work, they canvassed from door to door in every part of the city. They went out on the streets with petitions, persuaded men to sign them, and carried the petitions to Albany. 5 Women were not always eager to take part in this work, some of which seemed degrading and undignified. But the Woman Voter of September, 1910, insisted that even the more sensational activities were necessary. " T h e public is not a reasoning public," it declared. "It is blind, deaf and ignorant. It goes its own way and cares nothing for reforms. It demands to be shocked before it will listen. Any and all things which will arrest its attention and compel thought have their place in our propaganda." At times the suffragists were shocked themselves. T h e Woman Voter described how two canvassers entered a man's room at his request and found him sitting, wrapped in towels, on a bed. They sought his views of the suffrage issue and he mumbled something unintelligible. When they repeated the question he called out, "Oh for God's sake go away." On another occasion three suffragists were speaking on a street corner in "Hell's Kitchen" when, as the Woman Voter put it, a band of "roughs" assailed them with garbage, tin cans and water and "chased them up the street in terror of their

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lives." On May 4, 1912, a mob broke into a parade of city suffrage workers. One division had to put shoulders together and force its way through the crowd. In another part of the parade a group of men mistreated a Negro girl until the division marshal beat them off with a flagpole. T h e spectacle, one suffragist charged, seemed amusing to the police. 6 What was it that the Party offered its followers in return for the risks, the expenses, and the loss of dignity that campaigning entailed? T h e Woman Voter offered its answer in September, 1911. " T h e r e are no spoils," it claimed. " T h e r e is no reward for those who work save the joy of establishing justice and of being identified with a new movement in politics—a political party which is the expression of a moral cause." Hard-bitten observers of politics may regard this explanation as inadequate and suggest that women joined the suffrage campaign in the hope of future spoils, out of boredom, or to satisfy some other psychological or material need. Doubtless these were reasons in particular cases. But there was one goal of the woman suffrage movement which Americans, at the time, often equated with morality and justice: the goal of social reform. By the beginning of the twentieth century, great business organizations and their political allies had come to exercise a powerful influence in the governments of the United States. This disturbed progressive Americans who, while friendly to capitalism as such, did not wish to see an elite group r u n n i n g the country largely for its own benefit. Progressives sought to distribute political power more widely with measures like the initiative, the recall, the referendum, and the direct primary. They assumed that governments chosen more democratically would be less responsive to the wishes of a few very rich men and more willing to distribute fairly the benefits of industrialization. Leading members of the W o m a a Suffrage Party shared this assumption. T o them the ballot was more than a political right. It was an instrument to cope with the evils of

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

industrial society, a lever to raise the wages of women in factories, a weapon with which the housewife might defend herself against predatory trusts. " T h e modern housewife needs the ballot," explained suffragist Helen G. Ecob in the Woman Voter of September, 1911, "because she is the steward of family resources." T h e housekeeper seeing that supply and demand did not control prices "must join men in the demand for government regulation of corporations which arbitrarily regulate the price of any commodity." According to Mary Beard, an editor of the Woman Voter, government regulation of the economy was inevitable, and it was equally inevitable that women, armed with the ballot, would help determine the nature of that regulation. " W e hold, in accordance with modern sociologists," wrote Mrs. Beard in an editorial in the Woman Voter of September, 1911, "that with the advance of mankind there will be an ever-increasing amount of conscious and intelligent direction in the making of institutions and the control of the economic forces of civilization. W o m e n cannot remain outside of this general awakening even if they would, and we believe that they are bound to have . . . a voice in choosing the public authorities who are to be charged with the conscious direction of human affairs." W h e n the women in the home "come to see how the forces of the outside world are breaking in upon them at every point; when the women in the workshops and factories come to learn how real protective legislation is to be secured through politics," then, Mrs. Beard declared, "the cause of woman suffrage is won." At its 1910 convention the Party listed particular evils it expected women voters to alleviate: inadequate inspection of milk, high prices, overcrowded classrooms, crime, prostitution, and child labor. It urged that women be paid as much as men for equal work. It proposed that in Children's Court, Domestic Relations Court, and Women's Night Court, women should preside as associate justices. 7 With a program like this, it seems reasonable to believe that the Party might have attracted those who needed help

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most—poor immigrants who inhabited the slums of New York. But a survey of assembly districts published in January, 1911, showed that the twenty-five districts most opposed to suffrage were filled with tenement houses, sweatshops, and immigrants. Why had suffragists failed in the very districts where Tammany was so successful? T h e r e were several answers. Certain immigrants were opposed by tradition to letting women take part in politics. Also, there was a language problem for Party organizers in the early months of the campaign. 8 While the regular parties performed vital services for immigrant voters, giving them coal in winter, interceding for them with the police, breaking the tedium of slum life with clambakes and excursions, the Woman Suffrage Party did not believe in such favors for the poor. Instead, the suffragists talked about "clean" government, though to an immigrant, clean government might mean starvation for his children. T h e suffragists wanted to do away with prostitution and child labor, but prostitution and child labor were means of support for many wretched people. Finally, a great cultural barrier separated most recent immigrants from a party, most of whose leaders came from the city's social elite. 9 While the regular party boss, himself often an immigrant or the son of an immigrant, understood the people in his district, many of the suffragists felt little in common with the filthy, malodorous, and to them, peculiar inhabitants of the lower East side. T h e Party reacted to the immigrants in conflicting ways. On the one hand it scorned and attacked them. It published a statement by E. A. Ross that millions of immigrants "bred in the coarse peasant philosophy of sex" might keep from the women of the East Coast, the recognition that men had already won "in the more American parts of the country." On the other hand, the Party appealed to the immigrants for their votes though it was humiliating to do so. "No man in any land has ever been driven to beg men under other flags to give him the right of self government" the Woman Voter complained in an open letter to the New York State legisla-

WOMAN SUFFRAGE ture; "yet this is the tragic fate of American women. . . ." 10 From the very beginning, the Party enlisted settlement workers used to dealing with slum dwellers. It began to print what it described as "polyglot literature." "We must reach our friends of all nations in their own language wherever possible," the Woman Voter exhorted. "It is our aim to make the Woman Suffrage Party the most democratic organization in the whole suffrage movement." There were rallies for minority groups like the one in July, 1912, on Mott and Pell streets where Party workers distributed literature in English, Italian, and Yiddish, and one woman, Mrs. Jean White, dressed in a Chinese costume, made a speech about the suffrage movement. Another speaker, the Woman Voter declared, held "the whole motley polyglot throng" spellbound, and a third "spoke kindly of the Chinamen who are leading good industrious lives in Chinatown." 11 One of these demonstrations of suffragist pluralism backfired. In March, 1914, the Party's 29th assembly district organization held a "cosmopolitan fete" with booths to represent the nations. There was a Chinese tea garden, a German villa, and an Italian booth that included a so-called Neopolitan mouse and a monkey, like those that organ grinders use. T o the editor of La Follia di New York, this last display was an example of "impertinent stupidity." He reminded the women of the Party that "whilst their ancestors.were still wandering, half naked, through the forests and plains," Italian women were teaching philosophy, medicine, classic literature and astronomy from the chairs of Bologna and Padua. A Party spokesman replied that the newspapers had distorted the facts and that the exhibit had been truly representative of Italy.12 II While the Party was seeking a modus vivendi with the immigrants, it had to deal with a related problem, a false but nevertheless widespread rumor that the Roman Catholic

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HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES Church was opposed, as a body, to woman suffrage. 13 If a great many Catholics believed that their Church was antisuffrage, regardless of whether it was or not, the Party could expect trouble in heavily Catholic districts and disaster in those places where a majority of the inhabitants were both immigrants and Roman Catholics. A representative of Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore insisted that the Church was officially neutral on the suffrage question; but for those who failed to heed this statement, there were facts that seemed to make the rumor plausible. T h e Cardinal himself attacked the suffragists for trying to "drag woman from her domestic duties," and leading Catholic journals were, for the most part, firmly anti-suffrage. America, for example, asked its readers if the addition of "an unwilling or incapable body of voters" would be "an act in keeping with the American genius for government." It criticised the idea that "the world's redemption is to be wrought by votes for women. . . . T h e Kingdom of God is within you; so is reform." The Sentinel of the Blessed Sacrament was equally dubious of the possibilities for reform through woman suffrage. Its answer to the "woman problem" was "Incarnate in Mary. If only the women of our age look to the mother of Emmanuel as a model in all their actions, then the true dignity, honor, and rights of women will be preserved. . . . " 14 America and the Catholic Mind both published a series of six articles by Martha Moore Avery which connected suffrage agitation to an "ungodly" sex rebellion "set aflame at the time of the so-called Protestant Reformation. . . ." T h e Catholic World, generally more favorable to the suffragists, presented an article in which Helen Haines noted approvingly that women's votes were connected with the regulation of working conditions, health, and morals. But it also printed another in which Joseph V. McKee charged that the suffragists were radicals who allowed Socialists to march in their parades. Woman suffrage, McKee argued, was a threat to the home. Wives who agreed with their husbands on political

WOMAN SUFFRAGE issues did not need to vote; if they disagreed, the ballot would become an "opening wedge" for the destruction of the faminly. Suffrage would change the normal relation between the sexes as women became pawns in the political game. It would never improve society because "the casting of a ballot will never change men's hearts." T h e real solution lay in preventing evil, not in suppressing it and woman's greatest work consisted "not in policing public morals but, by her influence in the home, in lessening the needs of prohibitions." 15 Statements like McKee's put the Party in an awkward position. It could not reply to them directly, for to do so would be to reinforce the belief that Catholics and suffragists were opposed to each other. Instead, it answered Catholic anti-suffragists by printing testimonials from Catholic clergymen, by joining forces with the St. Catherine's Welfare Society, a pro-suffrage Catholic woman's group, and by distributing literature like the broadside, " T h e Roman Catholic Church Not Opposed to Woman Suffrage." 16 III There were two other elements which caused the Party serious concern—organized anti-suffragists and those businessmen, particularly brewers, distillers and saloonkeepers, who regarded woman suffrage as a threat to their interests. T h e suffragists had compelling reasons to fear the second group. Liquor men, though usually secretive about their political activities, were known to be attacking suffrage elsewhere, and they had both money and important political connections. 17 Furthermore, it was especially dangerous for suffragists to criticize them in New York City. If the Party complained too loudly about the liquor people, great numbers of "wets," many of them Catholics and immigrants who had other reasons to distrust the suffragists, might come to believe that a vote for suffrage was a vote for prohibition. Therefore, though Party leaders occasionally did berate the liquor in-

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terests, they also sought to convince "wet" voters that suffrage was in no way connected with prohibition. 18 It was a much simpler matter to attack the anti-suffrage societies. T h e only people whom such criticism would antagonize were already hostile to woman suffrage. Still the anti's were a threat. Organized in state and national associations, they were supported by some of the wealthiest and most influential persons in America. In New York the two leading ai.ti-sutfrage groups were the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage and the Man Suffrage Association Opposed to Political Suffrage for Women. The executive board of the latter included the general counsel of the United States Steel Corporation, a railroad magnate who had been Cleveland's Secretary of the Treasury from 1887 to 1889, a corporation lawyer who had served as Attorney General under Taft, and J. P. Morgan's son-in-law.19 T h e organized anti-suffragists testified before legislative committees, issued propaganda leaflets, and engaged their opponents in public debates. "Woman's Place is in the home," was their basic theme. T h e anti's, like the Catholic writers, denied that suffrage would bring about reform. They insisted that it would lower women into the morass of politics, burden them with new responsibilities, destroy their special privileges, and violate a "natural law" that women are to be the "constructive element in the community and men their protectors." Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, head of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, charged that immodesty in dress, looseness in conversation, and "impropriety" in dancing were connected with woman suffrage. "Misdirected government is a bad thing . . . ," she asserted, but "misdirected sex. is a national tragedy, which, if not checked, will degenerate the race." 20 One of Mrs. Dodge's most telling arguments was her claim that only a small minority of women wanted the ballot. Apathy was indeed a serious problem in the suffrage movement; but the Party's mounting enrollment figures indicate that it was finding ways of solving it. By the beginning of

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

1915, enrollments reached 151,688. Ten months later they were 212.223.21 These figures were more than a reply to the anti-suffrage societies. They were measures of actual and potential suffragist power. Even without the vote, thousands of wellorganized Party members could alter the fortunes of New York City's representatives; and if women should someday win the ballot through state or federal action, the Party could become a powerful instrument for revenge against anti-suffrage politicians. The growing influence of the Party and the other New York State suffrage organizations was reflected in the progress of their amendment through the state legislature. At first it seemed to make no progress at all. In 1910, a measure calling for a referendum on woman suffrage died in the Senate and Assembly Judiciary committees. In 1911, the resolution lost again in both houses. Suffrage leaders then warned that they would fight any candidate for the Assembly who did not appear to favor their legislation, and in the next session, while the amendment was before the Senate Judiciary Committee, they used their influence on the constituents of Committee members J. D. McClelland and L. M. Black, Jr. McClelland agreed to report the amendment out. Black refused, but found himself in a 7-2 minority. When the amendment reached the Senate floor, however, it lost by seven votes and the Assembly defeated it by an eight vote margin. 22 At their 1912 conventions, the Republican and Democratic state organizations recommended that voters be allowed to decide whether or not they wanted woman suffrage. This was a discreet way of supporting the referendum required to pass a suffrage amendment. The following January, Senate Democratic leader, Robert F. Wagner, who had voted against the amendment earlier, announced that he was "just as much opposed to suffrage as he ever had been," but he introduced the Wagner-Goldberg woman suffrage bill. His party, he explained, had made a pledge which he had to uphold. On January 23, 1913, the Senate passed the amendment 40-2.

H I S T O R Y O F W O M E N IN T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S

Four days later the Assembly concurred, 128-5. Elon R. Brown, the Republican Senatorial leader commented, "I'm not willing to live the rest of my life in antagonism to women. I'd rather have suffrage than war." Two years later a second legislature passed the suffrage bill unanimously and the New York referendum campaign of 1915 began.23 IV Throughout the nation, as the suffragists moved nearer to their goal, they tended to become more highly organized. Suffrage groups began to appear, patterned, like the New York City Woman Suffrage Party, on the regular machines. In New York State for example, the Party, the College Equal Suffrage League, the Equal Franchise Society, the Men's League for Woman Suffrage, and the New York State Suffrage Association had agreed in November 1913 to participate, under Mrs. Catt's leadership, in an Empire State Campaign Committee. This federation of suffrage groups had divided New York into twelve state districts with assembly district and election district subdivisions. T h e Party was responsible, in 1915, for state district number one, comprising New York City.24 T h a t summer the Party presented a model woman suffrage campaign—one of those great spectacles that countless Americans were to see before the final suffrage victory. It held 5 , 2 2 5 outdoor meetings, sponsored 13 concerts, and organized 28 parades and torchlight processions. Its members spoke in theaters, went on suffrage hikes and solicited votes from bankers, firemen, lawyers, railroad workers, streetcar operators, longshoremen and barbers by honoring each group with at least one "suffrage day." They organized a telephone campaign, held rites before great bonfires, and ran a boat from Coney Island to Brighton Beach with a ten-foot sign: VOTE FOR W O M E N SUFFRAGE NOVEMBER 2ND. According to Party figures, they canvassed 3 9 6 , 6 9 8 men and 6 0 , 5 3 5 women in New York City.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE The Party worked hard for immigrant votes. It held block parties on the Lower East Side for Irishmen, Italians, Syrians, and Poles.25 In June, it sent Margaret Hinchey with another suffragist into the excavations where Italians, Greeks, and Irishmen were working on a subway. T h e New York Times of June 30, 1915, printed an eye-witness report: "Brothers," asked Miss Hinchey, "are ye going to give us the vote in. November?" "Sure we are," was the reply. "Send the big gurrl over here . . . Maggie Hinchey's all right." When the Italians saw the two women (who now displayed an Italian flag), they shouted, "We'll vote for you. You'll get our vote." Farther downtown, Greek workers responded enthusiastically when the suffragists appeared, carrying the Greek national emblem. On October 23rd an estimated 25,362 suffragists dressed in yellow, blue, and white paraded u p Fifth Avenue. T h e procession, including 57 bands, 74 women on horseback, and 145 automobiles with 6 riders each, began in Washington Square at 3:00 p.m. and ended at 59th street by moonlight. T h e following week there was a grand rally for suffrage in Madison Square with searchlights, balloons, fireworks, and a symphony orchestra. A day later, the suffragists started a twenty-six hour speaking marathon in Columbus Circle which ended their campaign. Then, more than 3,000 women throughout the state watched at the polls while the men made their decisions.28 Mary Garrett Hay, who three years earlier had become the City chairman of the Party, was hopeful, though not enthusiastic. She believed that the suffragists would win, but not by much. Harriot Stanton Blatch (daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton) leader of an independent suffrage organization, the Womans' Political Union, was more pessimistic. She expected certain immigrant voters to defeat the amendment. Upstate, Democratic and Republican leaders had predicted, as early as September, that the suffragists would fail. T h e vote proved how right the politicians had been. Only 553,348 men cast

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their ballots for suffrage while 748,332 voted against it. I n New York City the pro-suffrage vote was 43i/ 2 percent of the total. It was only 42i/£ percent in the state as a whole. 27 Why had the amendment lost? T h e suffragists had several answers. T h e Woman Voter blamed liquor dealers, "cheap" politicians, and "arrogant young men flushed with the divine right of sex." One suffragist pointed out that the amend ment had appeared on the ballot with other constitutional changes, all of which the voters had rejected. Some people blamed the immigrants as a group, though the available evidence casts doubt on this hypothesis. A New York Times survey of the foreign language press a few days before the election revealed that only the Italian papers seemed strongly anti-suffrage; and a comparison of the election returns with the state census figures for 1915 suggests that immigrant voters as a group were no more anti-amendment than the voting population as a whole. 28 One reason for the magnitude, at least, of the defeat, was a breakdown of Party organization during the campaign. By the end of March, 1915, the Queens division had begun to split into competing factions over local political issues. On October 29th a suffrage leader had indicated that the organization as a whole was failing to perform efficiently. "System," she told a reporter, "We had one when we started, but the bubbling enthusiasm of the last few days has gotten beyond it. W e are going to win and reorganize afterwards " 29 A more basic explanation of the failure of 19.15 is that the referendum had simply taken place too soon. A primary job of the New York suffragists was to manufacture public opinion. By election day, 1915, they had not manufactured enough. During the next year and a half the suffragists repeated the steps that had led to the first referendum. T h e y enrolled more members, filled u p more petitions, and again sent lobbyists to Albany. O n March 12, 1917, the legislature granted them a second opportunity to submit their amendment to

WOMAN SUFFRAGE the voters.30 Conditions were more favorable to the suffragists now in two important ways: they had had additional time for agitation, and, on April 6, 1917, the United States had declared war on Germany. T h e war presented the suffrage movement with a threat and an opportunity. T h e threat arose because there were pacifists among the suffrage workers, and a leading suffragist, Jeannette Rankin of Montana, had voted against the war resolution. Enemies of the movement pointed to these facts as evidence that woman were incapable of handling wartime political responsibilities. In New York, however, the pacifists left the state suffrage organization. 31 Those who remained answered their critics with patriotic demonstrations which enabled them, simultaneously, to publicize their cause and demand the vote as a reward for wartime service. T h e New York City W o m a n Suffrage Party knitted for the Red Cross and raised $12,000 for the Y.M.C.A. Instead of street meetings it held Liberty Bond rallies and sold $1,018,665 worth of bonds before election day. Interrupting their suffrage canvass, Party members helped take a statewide military census. On October 27, 1917, thousands of women marched in a suffrage parade, some of them holding ballot boxes which depicted Party enrollments, some representing farmerettes, Red Cross nurses, women doctors and other women workers contributing to the war effort. 32 On November 6, 1917 the suffragists obtained their reward. Though they lost upstate by 1,570 ballots, they carried New York City by 103,863. T h i s vote had far-reaching consequences. Not only did it multiply the influence of women in New York State politics, b u t by adding the entire Congressional delegation from New York to the Senators and Representatives who already depended on women's votes, it accelerated the drive for a federal suffrage amendment. Mrs. Catt described the campaign in New York State as the decisive battle of the American woman suffrage movement. 3 3 And it was the Party's district that provided the winning margin.

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A few weeks later Mary Garrett Hay reflected on the causes of victory. "We won first because of a continuous campaign in New York City begun eight years ago . . . . Second we won because of organization along district political lines . . . .It was not the five borough leaders but the 2080 precinct captains who carried the city." 34 The leaders of the New York City Woman Suffrage Party decided to keep this organization intact. They continued to use it in the federal suffrage campaign, threatening retribution against politicians who failed to back the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. As part of a nationwide Americanization campaign, New York City suffragists held classes in English and Civics, and under the direction of election district leaders, went into factories and homes to teach immigrants how to be good citizens. T o the newly enfranchised women they presented information about politcial procedures and, in a non-partisan way, about the qualifications of candidates for office. Finally, in May, 1919, one month before Congress approved the federal suffrage amendment, the Party became the New York branch of the League of Woman Voters.35 V At one time or another during its nearly ten year lifespan, the New York City Woman Suffrage Party displayed most of the characteristics which typify the progressive era. This is only natural since organizations which recruit widely and which seek to influence the masses tend to assimilate characteristics of their surroundings and to share those characteristics with other popular movements of the time. The optimism that one finds in the Suffrage Party, the belief that political change can bring about social improvement, the faith that man can bring society under his conscious control, and the equating of morality with material reform—these were characteristic ideas of American reformers in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

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The ambivalent feelings of Party workers about the immigrant, their belief that enlightened groups must lead the "deaf, blind and ignorant public," and at the same time, their desire to be as democratic as possible, all fit into what one historian has called the progressive profile.36 T h e Party concerned itself with the role of organization in politics. So did progressives generally, some trying to circumvent existing machines by giving the people direct control of government, others forming counter-organizations to fight the corrupt machines. 37 The Woman Suffrage Party, combining both these methods, built a machine to achieve popular control. Some reformers, including the prohibitionists, those who believed in government planning, and the woman suffragists, found in the war an excuse to put their schemes into effect. When the war ended, however, and the progressive mood disappeared, it became clear that measures on which progressives had placed their hopes had failed to reform the United States. This was especially true of the measures for direct democracy. It was true of woman suffrage, for women's votes did not make the twenties another progressive era.38 Nevertheless, the suffragists worked lasting changes in American life, deeper ones than most reformers of their time were able to achieve. By bringing women out of their homes and into a mass movement, by educating them in political methods, and by giving them a chance to exercise political power, the Woman Suffrage Party and similar organizations forwarded a revolution which has transformed the status of women in modern Western society. 1 Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 237-238, 248; E. Lazansky, ed., Manual for the Use of the Legislature of the State of New York 1912 (Albany, 1912), 185. 2 Ida Husted Harper, ed.. The History of Woman Suffrage (New York, 1922) (hereafter H.W.S.), VI, 460; New York World, Oct. 30, 1909; Woman Voter, I (Feb. 1910), 3-6. Mrs. Catt used a similar type of organization in the Idaho campaign of 1896. Flexner, Century of Struggle, 222.

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3 New York City Woman Suffrage Party (hereafter W. S. P.): Minutes in Columbia University Special Collections, Jan. 15, 1910, Sept. 13, 1910, Sept. 20, 1910. 4W.S.P. Minutes, Oct. 14, 1910, Dec. 29, 1913; New York Times, Oct. 19, 1914, Apr. 13, 1915, May 9, 1915, III; New York Sun, Sept. 4, 1914; Woman Voter, V (Aug. 1914), 19. SH.WS., VI, 461-462. 6 Edith Lawson, "A Canvassing Night's Entertainment," ibid., VI (July 1915), 20; H[arriet] B. L[aidlaw], "Hell's Kitchen," ibid., III (Aug. 1912), 28; New York Times, May 11, 1912. 7 Woman Voter, I (Nov. 1910), 6. 8 Carrie Chapman Catt, "Our Outlook," ibid., II (Jan. 1911), 2-3. 9 Compare the list of city and borough officers in ibid., I (Feb. 1910), 6-7 with Social Register, New York, 1911, XXV (Nov. 1910). 10 E. A. Ross, "American and Immigrant Blood," Woman Voter, V (Jan. 1914), 11; ibid., I (Mar. 1910), 3. 11 W.S.P. Minutes, Mar. 4, 1910; Woman Voter, I (Sept. 1910), 8; H[arriet] B. L[aidlaw], "Chinatown," ibid., III (Aug. 1912), 28. 12 Ibid., V. (May 1914), 26; New York Times, Mar. 27, 1914; La Follia di New York, Mar. 29, 1914, Apr. 12, 1914. 13 New York Times, Nov. 19, 1917. Κ Ibid., July 1, 1915, J u n e 28, 1915; America, XIII (July 31, 1915), 400, and XIV {Nov. 13, 1915), 110-111; J. W. Printen, "Woman," Sentinel of the Blessed Sacrament, XX (Jan. 1917), 6-8. 15 Martha Moore Avery, "Genesis of Woman Suffrage," America, XIV (Oct. 16, 1915), 6; Catholic World, XCIV (Jan. 1912), 575; Helen Haines, "Catholic Womanhood and the Suffrage," ibid., CII (Oct. 1915), 55-67; Joseph V. McKee, "Shall Women Vote?" ibid., 45-54. ιβ "New York Clergymen for Woman Suffrage," Woman Voter, VI (Sept. 1915), 9-18; New York Times, Nov. 19, 1917; " T h e Catholic Church Not Opposed to Woman Suffrage" in Harriet B. Laidlaw MSS., New-York Historical Society. 17 New York Times, Nov. 1, 1915. See Butte (Mont.) National Forum, Nov. 25, 1913, Jan. 25, 1914 for evidence of opposition to suffrage by dealers in alcoholic beverages. Mrs. Catt also charged that the "real enemy is the 'Vice Trust'. . . ." "Make Victory Certain," Woman Voter, VI (Oct. 1915), 8. 18 New York Tribune, Nov. 5, 1915; Pamphlet signed by Katherine S. Dreier in Harriet B. Laidlaw MSS., N.-Y.H.S. 19 H.WS., VI, 680 lists the members of the executive board of the Man Suffrage Association for 1913. 20 Quotations from Helena (Mont.) Independent, Oct. 10, 1914 and New York Times, May 12, 1913. 21 H.WS., VI, 461. 22 Woman Voter, I (April 1910), 2; ibid., I (May 1910), 2; ibid., II (Sept. 1911), 9; H.W.S., VI, 457-458; W.S.P. Minutes, Feb. 5, 12, 13, 1912; New York Sun, Mar. 20, 1912. 23 " T h e State Conventions," Woman Voter, III (Nov. 1912), 7-8; ibid., IV (Feb. 1913), 7; New York Times, Jan. 24, 1913, Jan. 28. 1913, Feb. 4, 1915, Feb. 5, 1915. 24 Ibid., Apr. 29, 1917, VI, Nov. 22, 1913; Woman Voter, V (Nov. 1914), 18. &H.WS., VI, 461-463; Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie R. Shuler. Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement (New York, 1926), ch. XVIII.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 26 New York Times, Oct. 24, 1915, Oct. 30, 1915, Oct. 31, 1915; Adaline W. Sterling, " T h e Final Drive," Woman Voter, VI (Dec. 1915), 19-21; New York Everting Telegram, Nov. 2, 1915. 27 New York Times, Oct. 30, 1915, Sept. 16, 1915; New York City Board of Elections, Annual Report 1915 (n.p., n.d.), 106-109; Francis M. Hugo, ed., Manual for the Use of the Legislature of the State of New York 1917 (Albany, 1917), 219. 28 "Half a Million Votes Won," Woman Voter, VI (Dec. 1915), 7; San Francisco Call, Nov. 25, 1915. Some Assembly districts with relatively high proportions of alien-born inhabitants cast higher percentages of pro-suffrage votes than districts where the proportions of alien-born were relatively low. New York City Board of Elections, op. cit. and State of New York, Report of the Secretary of State of Enumeration of the Inhabitants 1915 (Albany, 1916). 29 New York Times, Mar. 27, 1915, Oct. 30, 1915. 30 T h e votes were as follows: 1916 Assembly Mar. 14 109-30 Senate Apr. 11 33-10 1917

Assembly Feb. 20 127-10 Senate Mar. 12 39-7 Woman Voter, VIII (Apr. 1917), 12; Legislative Report of New York State Woman Suffrage Party by Harriet B. Laidlaw. Harriet B. Laidlaw MSS in Woman's Archives, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass. 31 New York Times, Feb. 9, 1917. 32W.S.P. Minutes, Apr. 12, 1917, July 2, 1917, Oct. 29, 1917; Catt and Shuler, loc. cit.; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 289. 33 Francis M. Hugo, ed., Manual for the Use of the Legislature of the State of New York 1918 (Albany, 1918), 219; New York City Board of Elections Annual Report 1917 (n.p., n.d.), 57. 34 H.W.S., V, 519. 3SW.S.P. Minutes, Nov. 12, 1917, July 1, 1918, May 5, 1919; Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse, "Woman Suffrage in New York," Nation, CVI (June 1, 1918), 647-648. 36 c /. George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900-1912 (New York, 1958), ch. V. 3 ' See Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FD.R. (New York, 1960), ch. VI. 38 Eric Goldman in Rendezvous With Destiny (New York, 1953), 291-293, uses the case of woman suffrage to illustrate the short-comings of direct democracy.

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Building a Winning Coalition: The Suffrage Fight in New York State By DORIS DANIELS

Ethnic groups influenced the vote on women's suffrage in New York. Certain suffragists were aware of this and attempted in various ways to sway opinion in ethnic neighborhoods. Dr. Daniels is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Political Science, Nassau Community College, and a member of the Institute for Research in History.

A

the male citizens of New York State voted for women's suffrage in 1917. While there have been many explanations for this feminist victory— the brilliance of the campaign directed by Carrie Chapman Catt, the end of Tammany Hall's opposition and the support of President Wilson of suffrage as a war measure—there is one factor sometimes overlooked, and that is the nature of the coalition which made the victory possible. For the first time, large numbers of urban, immigrant workers voted on the side of native-born, middle class feminists. Settlement workers provided the link between these two groups by explaining the goals of the feminists to the ghetto dwellers and at the same time alleviating the suffragists' distaste for the foreigners. Chief among these social workers was Lillian D. Wald, founder of the Henry Street Settlement and the Visiting Nurse Service, and a study of her activities reveals the methods used to build the winning coalition for suffrage. The most radical proposal introduced at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 was the vote for women. The early movement was essentially the struggle of a small group of white, Protestant, well-educated, middle class women who, relieved of much work in their homes by the products of industrialization, sought full participation in political life. Despite FTER YEARS OF CONTROVERSY,

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HARP

T h e

C o n d e s c e n d i

113

Ν

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massive efforts, the drive for enfranchisement had made little progress outside of the west by the end of the century. The leadership of the women's movement was old and the organization was narrowly based and fragmented. Experiences in New York State, birthplace of the suffrage proposal, were especially frustrating. Annually, after 1854, voting measures were presented to the legislature and annually, each was ignored or rejected.1 The effort was necessary, however, for the significance of adding New York to the list of suffrage states was apparent to all. It could be the "keystone of the suffrage arch," and if it could be won, "all the states would come tumbling down like a pack of cards."2 At the turn of the century, feminists renewed their efforts. The formation of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890 gave new impetus to the suffrage drive. It was further strengthened by cooperation with groups like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Grange, and the Federation of Women's Clubs. Fresh leadership, new organizations which attracted a broader base of support, and increased emphasis upon a federal amendment made the enfranchisement of women a realizable goal by 1910.3 1. Ida Husted Harper ed.. History of Woman Suffrage (New York, 1969), VI, 453. Amendments to the New York State Constitution must be passed by two consecutive legislatures. The measure is then placed on the ballot in the next general election. 2. Life and Labor, January, 1918, p. S; Harriot Stanton Blatch and Alma Lutz, Challenging Years: The Memoirs of Harriot Stanton Blatch (New York, 1940), p. 210. 3. The bibliography of the suffrage movement is extensive. In addition to History of Woman Suffrage whose first four volumes were edited by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, primary sources include "Significance of the Woman Suffrage Movement," Supplement to the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (May, 1910); Ethelbert D. Warfield, "The Moral Influence of Women in American Society," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, XXXIV (July, 1909). 106-114; Lyman Abbott, "Why Women Do Not Wish the Suffrage," Atlantic Monthly XCII (September, 1903), 289-2%; Rheta C. Dorr, What Eight Million Women Want (Boston, 1910). The best of the secondary works is Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United Stales (New York, 1972). Others include Alan P. Grimes. The Puritan Ethic and Woman Suffrage (New York. 1967); Bill Severn, Free But Not Equal: How Women Won the Right to Vote (New York, 1967); Olivia Coolidge, Women's Rights, the Suffrage Movement in America, 1848-1920 (New York, 1967); William L. O'Neill, Everyone Was Brave: A History of Feminism in America (Chicago, 1969); William L. O'Neill, The Woman Movement: Feminism in the United States and England (Chicago, 1971); Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920 (New York, 1965).

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In New York, Harriot Stanton Blatch, a recent arrival from England where she had witnessed a more militant women's movement, formed the Equality League of Self Supporting Women in 1906.4 The organization was unique in that it attempted to bring to the suffrage movement the strength and numbers of the working women. Within a few years, the League enlisted 19,000 women including Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Lavina Dock of the Heniy Street Settlement, Florence Kelley of the National Consumers' League, and leaders of the infant trade union movement like Rose Schneiderman.5 At about the same time, Carrie Chapman Catt, former president of the NAWSA, came to New York to take charge of the Empire State campaign. Recognizing the need for strong leadership and coordinated planning, she consolidated various organizations into the Woman Suffrage Party which led a united effort for the New York State suffrage amendment through two referenda campaigns—the first unsuccessful, in 1915, and the second in 1917.6 Catt called a Woman's City Convention in October, 1909 to devise tactics to pressure the legislature to pass an amendment to the state constitution. Organization of the meeting was arranged by Assembly Districts, with an A.D. leader for each area, This attempt to emulate the political parties, it was hoped, would "prove the basis for future work" to carry suffrage to New York State. Among the women at the convention were Lillian Wald, who was chosen an honorary vice chairman, Lavinia Dock, Helen McDowell, Yssabella Waters and Beula Weldon of the Henry Street Settlement 7 4. Both Blatch and Alice Paul of the Woman's Party imported many tactics used by the British suffragettes. The first of the suffrage parades took place at Blatch's suggestion in 1910. See Woman's Journal, August 13, 1910, p. 132. 5. Flexner, Century of Struggle, pp. 251-252; Harper, ed.. History of Woman Suffrage, VI, 486; Coolidge, Woman's Rights, p. 100. 6. Catt is recognized by most to be the organising genius of the suffrage movement. She was helped in her work by a bequest of about $1,000,000 from Mrs. Frank Leslie. In addition to the New York campaigns, Catt resumed the presidency of the NAWSA in 1915. See Flexner, Century of Struggle, pp. 272-274; Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the SufTrage Movement (Seattle, 1970); Maud Park, Front Door Lobby (Boston, 1960). 7. "Minutes of the New York City Woman Suffrage Party," October 29, 1909, Carnegie Hall, New York, Butler Library Columbia University, NYC WSP MSS; "Minutes of the New York City Woman SufTrage Party," January 15, 1910, Butler

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The women paraded, lobbied, canvassed and cajoled the legislature until "the sentiment in favor of letting the voters pass on the question . . . became too strong to be resisted." The men in Albany voted for the suffrage amendment for the required second time and the issue was submitted to the voters in a referendum in November, 1915.' Catt and her co-workers on the Empire State campaign committee then drew up detailed plans to convert the electorate. The state was divided into twelve districts, with further sub-divisions developed along the lines of Tammany Hall's structure. The goal was to canvass every area in order to reach and influence each voter. The campaign was impressive and included parades, outdoor rallies, conceits, street dances and theater days. In Greater New York alone, 396,698 voters were canvassed; 2,883,264 leaflets were printed and distributed; 5,984 meetings were held and 80 newspapers were provided with suffrage news on a regular basis. While the suffragists worked intensively in New York City to reach "friends of all nations," they doubted that the ethnic and religious minorities who lived in the slums would support their cause. They would have preferred to convince the familiar middle class Protestants and most suffragists hoped that New York's upstate counties would win great enough majorities to overcome the city vote.10 In truth, the immigrant and the feminist were separated by a wide cultural barrier. Suffragists often espoused views which violated the traditions and religious teachings of the newcomers, especially those who had arrived in vast numbers from Austria-Hungary, Library Columbia University, NYC WSP MSS; Catt and Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics, pp. 280-299; Ronald Schaffer, "The New York City Woman Suffrage Party, 1909-1919," New York History, XLIII (July, 1962), 269-287. Earlier, Catt had asked Wald to run for the New York Legislature as the candidate of all the women in the city. Wald refused, but did work for the convention. See Catt to Wald, September 11, 29, 1909; Wald to Catt, September 13, 1909, New York Public Library, Wald MSS. 8. Catt and Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics, pp. 280-287; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, VI, 451-459; Woman Voter, February, 1912, pp. 4-5. 9. Woman Voter, November, 1914, pp. 12-13; Catt, T h e Constitutional Convention," Woman Voter, May, 1914, pp. 7-8; Catt and Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics, pp. 287-292; Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, VI, 453-463; Schaffer, "NYC Woman Suffrage Party," pp. 270-271, 280-281; Catt, "Plan of the campaign of 1915," NYPL, Catt MSS. 10. Harper ed.. History of Woman Suffrage, VI, 448; Schaffer, "NYC Woman Suffrage Party," pp. 269-274, 275.

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Hester Street, a Jewish neighborhood,

in the 1890s. Leslie's W e e k l y , December

1,1898.

Italy and Russia. Traditionally also, "American suffragists had held aloof from the working class leaders, especially those from the emerging trade union movement." With only a few exceptions, they had little understanding of the industrial poor. Moreover, in previous referenda throughout the nation, women had witnessed foreign-born males casting ballots against suffrage. Defeats occurred, as in the first California vote, it was believed, because of the "ignorant, the vicious and the foreign born," the city slum dweller, the Catholic, Jewish, Italian and German vote.11 The Woman Voter published part of a study of the social effects of immigration. The article, by Professor Edward 11. Coolidge, Woman's Rights, p. 100; Grimes, Puritan Ethic and Woman Suffrage, pp. 72-117; Page Smith, Daughters of the Promised Land: Women in American History (Boston, 1970), pp. 170-171; Catt and Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics, pp. 161-162.

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Ross, detailed the state of subjection of Slavic and Italian women, claiming that "Eastern European peasants are brutal in the assertion of marital rights." The woman suffrage movement in the United States, said Ross, would meet opposition from "millions of immigrants bred in the coarse peasant philosophy of sex." It would take a struggle to maintain "in the future the Christian conception of womanhood...." 12 Most suffragists protested that these foreign men, with no training, education or understanding of the workings of democracy, had the vote and could deny it to women who deserved it. u In 1869, Elizabeth Cady Stanton sent a letter to be read at a hearing of the House Committee on the Judiciary. Allow me, honorable gentlemen to paint you a picture. . . . The central object is a ballot box guarded by three inspectors of foreign birth. On the right is a multitude of coarse, ignorant beings, designated in our Constitution as male citizens—many of them fresh from the steerage of incoming steamers. . . . Policemen are respectfully guiding them all to the ballot box. . . . Each in turn depositing his vote, for what purpose he neither knows nor cares. . . . "

Some years later, Anna Howard Shaw elaborated on this antiforeign theme. No other country has subjected its women to the humiliating position to which the women of this nation have been subjected by men. . . . In Germany, German women are governed by German men; in France, French women are governed by French men; and in Great Britain, British women are governed by British men; but in this country, American women are governed by every kind of man under the light of the sun.15

Locally, Carrie Chapman Catt wrote The New York Times questioning the aptitude of foreign men to vote with no test of any kind. Was the ability to cast a ballot "innate in the male and foreign to the nature of the female?'"6 Clearly, someone was needed to stand as a bridge between

12. Edward Alsworth Ross, "American and Immigrant Blood," Woman January, 1914, pp. 11-12.

Voter,

13. Smith, Daughters of the Promised Land, pp. 170-171. 14. Stanton as quoted in Kraditor, Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, p. 129. 15. Shaw as quoted in Ibid., p. 126. 16. Can to the editor of The New York Times, November 23, 1914, NY PL, Catt MSS.

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the newcomers and the native born who wanted to enfranchise women. From the start, the feminists enlisted the help of the settlement workers for they understood city neighborhoods. Settlement women had deep influence in their areas, and in terms of Americanization and political education were second only to the public schools. They were, states William O'Neill, "models for adventurous young female altruists, and evidence that the social concerns of free women would not disrupt the existing order They were liberated women who interested themselves in womanly concerns," and it was hoped that they would serve as bridges of understanding between the disparate groups in the city.17 The lower East Side of Manhattan had many settlement houses. While not denying the importance and influence of the University Settlement, Madison House, the College Settlement and many others, the Henry Street Settlement was unique. It gained early recognition for taking part in moral issues and advocating woman's suffrage, and some of its members were actively associated with the movement. The visiting nurses who operated out of the Henry Street Settlement were, almost without exception, feminists. They were "interested in anything that had to do with the elevation of women, and with giving them the tools with which to work. . . ." Founded by Lillian D. Wald, the settlement strongly reflected her beliefs, her ideals, her personality, and her dynamic leadership. Wald's influence was greater than most because she spent a lifetime on the East Side at a time when the average settlement worker stayed for only three years. She was a political power in the neighborhood, the city and the nation, TTiough she considered her work and interests to be entirely non-sectarian, she was a Jew in an area that was predominantly Jewish, and this, too, increased her ability to influence public opinion.18 17. Mary Simkhovitch, founder of Greenwich House, claimed that "the priests, politicians and settlement workers know more about the city neighborhoods than any other contemporary," in Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: the Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890-1914 (New York. 1967), p. 170; Moses Rischin, The Promised City: New York's Jews, 1870-1914 (Cambridge, 1967), p. 206; O'Neill, Everyone Was Brave, pp. 94-95. 18. Josephine Goldmark, Impatient Crusader (Urbana, 1953), pp. 66-67; Robert Archey Woods and Albert J. Kennedy eds.. Handbook of Settlements (New York, 1970), p. 207; Isabel Stewart, "Memoir," Butler Library, Columbia University, Oral History Collection; Davis, Spearheads for Reform, pp. 33, 242; Rischin,

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Lillian Wald. Courtesy of Henry Street Settlement.

While originally the Henry Street Settlement was influential only on the East Side, the Visiting Nurse Service soon reached out into all sections of the city. In 1910, fortyseven nurses made fifty thousand calls. Seven years later, by the time of the second suffrage referendum, there were one hundred nurses making almost a quarter of a million home visits. They provided medical care which took into consideration the dignity and independence of the patient and "shared a special kind of intimacy with the whole neighborhood." The feminist cause could not have found better ambassadors than the Henry Street nurses who daily demonstrated to the immiPromised City, pp. 79, 205; Yssabella G. Waters to Wald, September 9, 1902, Butler Library, Columbia University, Wald MSS attests to the character of the neighborhood.

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grant voters the virtues of the "new woman.'" 9 R. L. Duffus, Lillian Wald's biographer, stated that she "could no more keep out of the suffrage movement than a fish could keep out of water." Her experience as a nurse, social worker, reformer and labor advocate proved to her the need for women's full participation in political life. "When I went to New York," she wrote, "and was stirred to participate in community work . . . I believed that politics concerned itself with matters outside their [women's] realm and experi19. Robert L. DufTus, Lillian Wald: Neighbor and Crusader (New York, 1938), pp. 134, 162; Woods and Kennedy eds., Handbook of Settlements, p. 206; Goldmark, Impatient Crusader, p. 67; Harry Rosolenko, The Time Thai Was Then: The Lower East Side, 1900-1914, An Intimate Chronicle (New York, 1971), p. 216, tells of the si* yearly visits made to his home by a Henry Street nurse to deliver a new baby, care for the mother and infant, clean the apartment and "to impart wisdom."

The House on Henry Street. Courtesy of Visiting Nurse Service of New York.

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ences. . . . I soon learned that in public affairs . . . women had experience and conviction." She became "hot on the suffrage question" and threw herself and the resources of the Settlement into the fight for female enfranchisement.20 Wald played an insignificant role in the formal women's groups. She frequently was a "letterhead" officer of an organization, but she functioned best outside the groups' structure. She held the title of Honorary Vice-Chairman of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party through 1917, and was a member of the executive committee, but she usually asked a member of the Henry Street household to represent her at meetings.21 Wald served the cause of suffrage in both referenda campaigns in the manner in which, she believed, she had her greatest strength. She pressured politicians, published articles and gave speeches. "What you say," a woman told Wald, "has so much weight with a certain class of people who are not influenced by other suffragists. . . . " a The publicity Wald gave to the women's fight had value, in one respect, because so many used her as a model of what women could do if they had the power. In an article in The Woman Voter, Dr. Adolphus Knopf disputed the arguments of the "Antis" by pointing to "the qualities of mind and heart" he encountered in the women he met in social reform like Lillian Wald. She was, he believed, the best argument to be found for suffrage. Ironically, even the antisuffragists used Wald as an example, for she showed what women managed to do without the vote.23 Wald was never a militant suffragist. She used "no weapons" other than "reason" in her appeals,24 for she be20. DufTus, Lillian Wald, p. 111. Duffus in his notes quotes Wald as saying. "It was an awakening to me to realize that when I was working in the interests of those babies . . ., I was really in politics." NYPL, Wald MSS. Wald, Speech, "Mothering a Community," to the New York State Woman's Suffrage Association, Rochester, New York, October 15, 1914, and Wald to Helen Hall, May 19, 1936, NYPL, Wald MSS. 21. Anne Watkins to Wald, January 22, June 11, July 7, 1917; Wald to Mary G. Hay, September 6, 1917, NYPL, Wald MSS. 22. Wald to Judge Goldfogle, April 4. 1913. January 2, 1914; Florence Woolston to Wald, November 6, 1913; Gertrude Brown to Wald, February ?, 1913; Ethel M. Adamson to Wald, January 27. 1915, NYPL, Wald MSS. 23. S. Adolphus Knopf, M.D., "Why I Believe in Woman Suffrage." Woman Voter, November, 1911, pp. 1-8; Mrs. Barclay Hazard, Speech, "How Women Can Best Serve the State," to the New York Federation of Women's Clubs, October 30, 1907, NYPL, Wald MSS.

W O M A N SUFFRAGE

lieved that "normal people . . . tire of being told that violence is logic and hysterics reason." An article in the Henry Street Settlement Journal reflected her view that the cause had "too many good arguments to resort to policies which disgust 28 the sane individual and repel the sympathies For Wald, the use of violence was unnecessary for the extension of suffrage was inevitable—the whole force of evolution was behind it. She believed in democracy and as a democrat saw that women represented the last large group legally excluded from citizenship. In a country that is committed to that principle of government, there should be no intellectual question as to w h o has the right to be represented and who has not. Everybody has the right."

Furthermore, it was absurd to deny the vote to such as Jane Addams and "the multitude of women who were carrying the world's burdens on their shoulders and yet were thought to be incapable of casting a ballot wisely."2' Josephine Goldmark, in a broadcast address, called her friend Lillian Wald the great interpreter of one social class to another, of the n e w c o m e r and the alien to the native-born, of people of different racial backgrounds to one another, of the under-privileged to the over-privileged, of age to youth and youth to age. 28

It was in this role of interpreter that Wald performed her greatest service in the fight for women's suffrage. Her interest in the working woman began shortly after she moved to the East Side. At that time, Wald claimed that she had never heard of and knew nothing of unionism. s She 24. Wald, Speech, "Women in the Campaign," reported in the Evening Post, November 3, 1913, NYPL, Wald MSS. Despite her distaste for militancy, Wald supported the activities cf the Pankhursts in England and retained her close ties to Lavinia Dock who was jailed in Washington D.C. after picketing the White House. 25. Journal of the Henry Street Settlement, December, 1909. p. 8. 26. Wald, Speech?, no title, n.d.; Wald, "Why You Should Vote for Woman Suffrage," New York World, October 26, 1915, NYPL, Wald MSS. 27. Wald as quoted in DufTus, Lillian Wald, p. 113. 28. Josephine Goldmark, Broadcast Address, WMCA, April ?, NYPL, Wald MSS. 29. Lillian D. Wald, The House on Henry Street (New York, 1915), pp. 201-203. Wald's association with the labor movement lasted throughout her life. She was involved primarily with the garment industry and the immigrant Jews who at-

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

soon became an earnest advocate of the workers' right to organize and, if necessary, to strike. In 1903, she participated in the founding of the Women's Trade Union League, an organization of labor women and their middle class allies who provided financial and moral support, whose value, she said, extended far beyond the immediate purposes of working women. It had vital importance to the feminist cause for it enabled working and non-working women to meet to share interests and experiences. The WTUL cut through class lines and, for a brief time at least, forged a viable coalitiQn for women's rights, especially suffrage.*0 Like many women in the WTUL, Wald believed that the vote was essential to the working girl. Unions were the best means of protecting the worker, but most were not strong enough to bargain for substantial changes in conditions of labor. Until the time when trade unions had power, protective legislation was the soundest means of correcting abuses. Women could use the ballot to gain help through law.'1 Wald worked to explain the need for suffrage to the immigrant workers so that they would support the referendum and to explain the immigrants to the American-bom citizens so that they would not fear the vote of the newcomers. To each group, she used arguments designed to minimize fears and for both groups, she conveyed ideas which would appeal to male voters. Everett P. Wheeler was executive chairman of the Mantempted to organize it, but took a part in all the major strikes of the period including the one in Lawrence, Mass. 30. Wald to Eleanor Roosevelt, June 8, 1929, NYPL, Wald MSS. Irwin Yellowitz, Labor and the Progressive Movement in New York State, 1897-1916 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1965), pp. 63-66; Gladys Boone, The Women's Trade Union Leagues in Great Britain and the United States of America (New York, 1942), pp. 15-18; Florence Kelley, "Industrial Democracy: Women in Trade Unions," The Outlook (December 15, 1906), pp. 926-931; Nancy Schrom Dye, "Creating a Feminist Alliance: Sisterhood and Class Conflict in the New York Trade Union League, 1903-1914," Feminist Studies, II (1975), 24-38. 31. Lillian D. Wald, "Organization Among the Working Women," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, XXVII (May, 1906), 638-645; Kelley, "Industrial Democracy," 926-931; Life and Labor Bulletin, December 1925, p. 3; Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (New York, 1910), pp. 201-213; Clarke A. Chambers, Seedtime of Reform: American Social Service and Social Action, 1918-1933 (Minneapolis, 1963), pp. 61-81; Frances Perkins in Life and Labor, April, 1919, p. 77; Wald, "Why You Should Vote for Woman SufTrage," NYPL, Wald MSS; Florence Kelley, Some Ethical Gains Through Legislation (New York, 1905), pp. 172-208.

W O M A N SUFFRAGE

Suffrage Association Opposed to Political Suffrage for Women and a leader of the "Antis." While he used all of the traditional arguments to gain converts, he stressed the disruption of the family because of suffrage and a resulting sexual revolution. Wald, who knew Wheeler, responded to a letter he wrote to the Times: I do believe that the home and the mother are the sources of society. One of the reasons why I am a suffragist is because I want to dignify them in every way, and have the influences and traditions of the home brought into government. . .

Wald disregarded a warning from Catt not to "promise what women will do with the vote,"M and, like many other suffrage advocates, claimed that females in politics would contribute an interest in humanitarian reform. Both sexes, Wald reassured her audiences, would work together to the interests of better government. She made reference to those nations with political equality to show that women almost always develop "those inclinations which are traditional" and vote to support home and children. Women in politics, both immigrant and native-born would work to preserve that which is valuable and important to them.34 Since most Americans viewed all recent aliens as a lessthan-desirable mass, Wald sought to show the virtues of her neighbors on the East Side. In her book, The House on Henry Street, and a series of speeches before the first referendum in 1915, she described the immigrants: They were ardent patriots who made contributions to the country which offered them escape from oppression. Moreover, the East Siders were intelligent independent voters. Wald suggested that the fear of the immigrant vote "is confined to the people who do not know them or who have had the most limited experience with them. . . ." Statistics indicated that her 32. See Everett Wheeler, Notes for Debate Against Mrs. Blatch, 1916; Wheeler to John S. Roberts, February 25, 1916; Wheeler to editor of the Churchman, April 17, 1917, NYPL, Wheeler MSS; Wheeler to Wald, February 19,1914,NYPL,WaldMSS. The quotation is from Wald to Wheeler, February 17, 1914, NYPL, Wald MSS. 33. Catt to the Speakers in the New York Campaign, October 9, 1915, NYPL, Catt MSS. 34. Wald, Speech "New Aspects of Old Social Responsibilities," Vassar College, October 12, 1915; Wald, Speech "What Business Are Women About?" New York State Nurses' Association, October 20, 1915; Wald, "Why You Should Vote for Woman Suffrage," NYPL, Wald MSS.

486

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

neighbors showed great discrimination in their voting habits. The Jewish vote in Manhattan and the Bronx (the areas of greatest concentration) was an "overwhelming vote for AntiTammany candidates and the selection of individuals, irrespective of party. . . ." The East Sider could "hardly be called an ignorant immigrant voter." Wald drew attention to the low illiteracy rate of the children of the foreign-born as an illustration of the value placed upon education by the immigrants. Also, since the Naturalization Act of 1906 required people to speak English and sign their petitions, "all persons naturalized since 1906 are required to have a higher degree of literacy than is enjoyed by some of our native citizens."35 35. Wald. House on Henry Street,

pp. 266-268; Wald. Speech "The Foreign

A Henry Street visiting nurse taking a shortcut over the rooftops, 1908. Courtesy of Visu ing Nurse Service of New York.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

Foreign women, in particular, were praised. Since it was believed that they were overburdened and unfit for the vote, Wald took pains to answer the critics.36 She testified "to their earnest concern and their effort for the things that make life happier and safer for children and men and women." Immigrant women had direct knowledge of the effect of laws upon family life. They knew from bitter experience about labor conditions. "And these women care. It would be extraordinary if they did not care."37 The vote was important to these women. Proof of this concern could be seen in the Henry Street neighborhood. "Almost any night, if you come to the East Side, you would see women, working class women and mothers as well, standing on soap boxes, giving earnest expression to their convictions upon the value of the extension of the franchise to them." One in particular, a "motherly looking woman . . . makes her appeal... to a respectful group of laboring men." This "mother in Israel" who works in a factory six days a week "intelligently and interestingly . . . develops her plea, and her appeal to men's reason brings sober nods of approval." Russian men and women, Wald added, had "sacrificed much to get to this land of political equality" and were anxious to take part in American movements. "I doubt that a single man or woman could be found among them opposed to granting the franchise to women."38 Wald worked to influence the Jewish vote in behalf of suffrage. In a letter to the Jewish Daily Mail, she appealed to the males to recognize the value of their wives and daughters who worked hard and shared "the duties of life." Vole," to the Equal Suffrage League of New York City, Hotel Astor, December 5. 1913; Wald, Speech "Concerning the Ignorant Vote," Columbia University, October 29, 1915; Wald, Speech "Immigrant Women in New York," to Brooklyn Consumers' League, January II, 1911; Wald, Speech "Mothering a Community," to the New York Woman's Suffrage Association, Rochester, New York, October 15, 1914, NYPL, Wald MSS. Wald made other suffrage speeches and frequently used the same talk to different audiences. She also wrote a number of articles on the subject and serialized The House on Henry Street in the Atlontic Monthly in 1915. 36. Elizabeth McCracken, "Woman Suffrage in thfc Tenements," Atlantic Monthly, XCVI (December, 1905), 750-759 is a good example* of testimony that immigrant women were uneducated for the duties of the ballot and knew it. They did not want to vote. 37. Wald, Speech "Mothering a Community," NYPL, Wald MSS. 38. Ibid. Wald, House on Henry Street, pp. 267-268; Wald, Speech "Concerning the Ignorant Vote," NYPL, Wald MSS.

487

488

HISTORY OF W O M E N IN T H E U N I T E D STATES

Women who voted would remain good wives and mothers. In fact, "it might be easily proved that women are better mothers . . . and wives in the country where they have shared in the responsibilities of the franchise." Wald concluded: We no longer ask men . . . to vote for w o m e n because of their rights; we ask men to vote for w o m e n because it is just and because women, having had education and training and having shared in the advantage of a partial democracy, should be called on to perform their full duties. 39

The work done for suffrage by the settlement women is best measured by the reports "From the Assembly Districts" in The Woman Voter. Though the political lines changed through the years, the residents of the Henry Street Settlement were largely responsible for voters in the second through the eighth Assembly Districts. The women, especially Lavinia Dock who was the most ardent suffragist, visited Jewish trade unions, organized street gatherings, held suffrage forums at the Settlement and served up propaganda geared to the immigrant They also invited neighborhood heroes like unionist Joseph Barondess and socialist Meyer London to speak at rallies. Results of these efforts showed as early as March, 1911 when Dock reported that the foreign-born on the East Side were interested in enfranchising women. All of the Yiddish newspapers devoted space to the question especially the influential Vorwärts. Dock concluded that "the suffrage sentiment of this extreme down-town section is very strong," a fact that was borne out in informal polls taken in Jewish and Italian neighborhoods in the second A.D. in 1913 and the third A.D. in 1915.40 In the months before the 1915 vote, many began to question 39. Wald to the Jewish Daily Mail, October 16, 1917; Wald, Speech to the Educational Alliance, New York City, March 21, 1915, NYPL, Wald MSS. 40. Woman Voter, February, 1910, p. 7; March, 1911, p. 3; July, 1911, p. 12; April, 1912, p. 27; November, 1912, p. 30; December, 1912, p. 30; January, 1913, p. 33; March, 1913, p. 33; July, 1913, p. 28; September, 1913, p. 20; June, 1914, p. 25; July, 1914, p. 24; April, 1915, p. 20; June, 1915, p. 22; August, 1915, p. 21. The Journal of the Settlement is also a good source of activities: see April, 1912, pp. 11, 13-15; June, 1912, p. 12; April, 1914, p. 8. Edith Borg to Wald, n.d., NYPL, Wald MSS; The New York Times, October 29, 1915, p. 5. Dock, "Suffrage on the East Side," Woman Voter, March, 1911, p. 3. In 1913, Dock reported that the Italian editors were also sympathetic; Woman Voter, February, 1913, p. 33. Woman Voter for May, 1915, pp. 14-16, reported that the Italians and Irish were the most difficult to convert to suffrage.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE conventional thinking about the sources of suffrage strength. Carrie Chapman Catt expressed disappointment over the upstate sentiment. The New York Times reported that "the women suffragists . . . have not found the rural districts fertile soil for their propaganda as did the suffragists in other states," and many campaigning women were met by indifference and even hostility. There were early predictions that the upstate counties would produce unfavorable majorities. In contrast, Wald noted in The House on Henry Street, published in 1915, that in her section of New York City sentiment in favor of the extension of democracy to women was freely expressed.41 Election day brought defeat to the suffragists in all but five counties of New York State, with a vote of748,332 against to 553,348 in favor of the amendment.42 Harriot Stanton Blatch's immediate interpretation of the results was to blame the immigrant vote. She said: No women in the world are so humiliated in asking for the vote as the American woman. The English, the French, the German women all appeal to the men of their own nationality. The American woman appeals to men of twenty-six nationalities, not including the Indian.

Blatch had asked for a polling place on the East Side and was assigned as a poll watcher on Eldridge Street, where she "saw young men who had been in this country but a short time" voting on the suffrage question. She did not dispute their right to citizenship but I call it tyranny and license for them to have power to pass upon me and upon the native born women of America, and a disgrace that the men of our country will force us to submit to it. Never again will I do it. We have been hypocrites too long.' 3

Whatever the validity of these sentiments in the past, they were open to challenge in New York where the city vote for suffrage was less adverse than that of the state as a whole. In a 41. Catt to Upstate Leaders. April 1, 1915, NY PL, Catt MSS. The New York Times, October 28, 1915, p. 5. Ibid., October 30, 1915, p. 4. Wald, House on Henry Street, p. 266. 42. Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, VI, 474; The New York Times, November 4, 1915, p. 2. 43. Blatch in The New York Times, November 4, 1915, p. 3.

490

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

widely published letter to the editor of the Times, Wald wrote that perhaps Mrs. Blatch was so busy with the campaign that she did not have the time to notice the East Side vote. "Analysis . . . from the first to the twelfth Assembly Districts, shows a comparatively favorable acceptance of the extension of democracy" and with only one exception, "no other part of the city did as well."44 Abram Lipsky wrote another response to Mrs. Blatch in The American Hebrew. He compared the results in six Assembly Districts in which the native-born voter constituted forty percent or more of the total vote with six districts in which there were ten percent or fewer native voters. The results indicate that there was little variance between the performances of the native-born and immigrant voters. (See Table 1.) Using figures based on the 1910 census, Lipsky broke down the vote on ethnic lines. (See Table 2.) Lipsky, in other tables, showed that other nationalities did not endorse suffrage as did those of the East Side and other areas of Jewish concentration. He concluded that: The sum of the matter . . . is that the strongest support of woman suffrage came from the native born Americans and from the foreigners, chiefly Russian and Austrian who inhabit the districts east of the Bowery and certain districts in Harlem and the Bronx, and that the strongest opposition came from the foreigners of German, Italian and Irish birth. Mrs. Blatch, therefore, was only half right in her choice of a foreign district in which to watch. She went to a district that had next to the lowest percentage of pure Americans, but it happened to be one that furnished nearly the strongest support of her cause. . .

It is interesting that Wald and the other Settlement women had predicted these trends in their constituency early in the 1915 campaign. The fight for the 1917 referendum began immediately after the defeat. Catt, in a letter to all chairmen of the Woman's Suffrage Party, declared that "a cause with a half million 44. Wald to the editor of The New York Times, November 4, 1915, NY PL, Wald MSS. 45. Abram Lipsky, "The Foreign Vote on Suffrage," The American Hebrew (November 26, 1915), NY PL, Wald MSS. Lipsky's statistics were culled from the United States Census Bureau-Department of Commerce and Labor, Thirteenth Census, Abstract with Supplement for New York, 1910 which divides Assembly Districts into ethnic groups.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

TABLE 1 SUFFRAGE VOTE BY NATIVE-BORN VOTERS Borough

Assembly District

Percentage of nativebom voters

Percentage of vote for suffrage

Manhattan Brooklyn Manhattan Manhattan Queens Manhattan

27 17 15 25 4 19

51.5 45.6 45.3 44.1 41.3 40.0

44.3 44.6 42.3 47.7 44.6 48.3

Manhattan Manhattan Manhattan Manhattan Manhattan Manhattan

30 6 8 10 4 26

2.4 2.4 2.5 5.9 7.0 7.1

36.5 50.8 49.3 44.3 47.5 50.5

TABLE 2 SUFFRAGE VOTE BY ETHNIC COMPOSITION IN MANHATTAN Assembly District 4 6 8 10 26

Ethnic Composition 51% Russian, 7% native b o m 39% Russian, 39% Austrian, 2.4% native bom 65% Russian, 2.5% native bom 34% Russian, 19% Austrian, 5.9% native bom 57% Russian, 7.1% native bom

Percentage of Vote for Suffrage 47.5 50.8 49.3 44.3 50.5

votes . . . will never be treated with contempt again, and she called a meeting to present her "winning plan" for New York State. The second referendum differed from the first. In 1915, the woman suffrage issue competed for attention on the ballot with a referendum on a new state constitution, and many women believed that this was done by design in order to confuse the issues and defeat the suffrage measure. In 1917, the enfranchisement issue would be on the ballot alone. By that year, also, the suffrage movement had gained enough status so that it was "no longer a supplicant at the

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

Visiting nurse in a tenement. From Lillian Wald, The House on Henry Street (1915).

doors of party conventions" and both political parties were committed, at least in theory, to extending the vote to women. President Wilson, who resisted the demands of the suffragists in his first term, became an advocate of the federal amendment. Even Tammany Hall shifted "to a position of true neutrality" on the issue.4* Most important, by the spring of the year, the World War intervened, representing both a threat and an opportunity 46. Catt to All Chairmen, November 4, 1915, NYPL, Catt MSS. Catt to All Chairmen, November 5, 1915, NYPL, Catt MSS; Catt and Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics, pp. 294-299; Vera Whitehouse, Speech at Cooper Union Meeting, March 16, 1916, Woman's Archives, Schlesinger Library, RadclifTe College, Harriet Laidlow MSS. "New Status of Suffrage," Nation, CIII (July 13, 1916), 28-29. Ida H. Harper in interview in the Chicago Daily News, December 13, 1915, Woman's Archives, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Harper MSS; Arthur S. Link, Wilson, The New Freedom (Princeton, 1956), pp. 257-259. Until 1917, Wilson maintained that suffrage was a state, not a national issue. John D. Buenker, "The Urban Political Machine and Woman Suffrage: A Study in Political Adaptability," Historian, XXXIII (February, 1971), 264-279.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

for the women. Would the voters condemn the movement because of Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin's vote against the war, Jane Addams' presidency of the Woman's Peace Party and Lillian Wald's leadership of the American Union Against Militarism? Or would the citizens of the state respond to the many women involved in war work and patriotic causes? Wald's pacifism did create a serious policy difference with the Woman's Suffrage Party, but whatever may have been the reaction to Wald's stand elsewhere, it was probably applauded on the East Side where the workers, many of whom were socialists, tended to be anti-militarist and pacifist.47 It has been claimed that "no such campaign was ever conducted in the United States for any cause as that in New York."48 Wald and her co-workers in the Settlement duplicated their massive efforts of 1915—rallies, canvassing, distributing literature, petitioning. They worked through clubs and through various Jewish groups such as the Workingmen's Circle.49 Throughout the referendum campaign, the spector of an adverse immigrant vote continued to haunt the suffragists.50 Many hoped that the upstate vote would improve enough to provide a winning margin. To the dismay of many, voters outside of New York City again voted against the amendment. The Times headlined the story, "Suffrage Fight Won in the Cities." It was the urban population which provided the victory. The Manhattan vote was 129,412 in favor and 89,124 against the extension of the franchise.61 A study of the Manhattan Assembly Districts which constituted the constituency of the Henry Street Settlement shows 47. Woman Citizen, September 14, 1918, p. 308; Stanley Lemons, The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920's (Urbana, 1973), pp. 4-8. Wald to V. Whitehouse, February 26, 1917, March 6, 1917; Whitehouse to Wald, February 28, 1917, NYPL, Wald MSS. Melvyn Dubofsky, "Organized Labor in New York City and the First World War, 1914-1918," New York History, XLII (October, 1961), 380400. 48. "Report of the Eighth Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance," June 6-12, 1920, pp. 212-213, NYPL, Catt MSS. 49. Edith Borg, "Report of the Clinton Hall Headquarters of the Woman Suffrage Party, Until June, 1917," NYPL, Wald MSS. 50. A week after the 1917 referendum, suffragists were still expressing concern about the vote of the foreign bom population in other states. See Woman Citizen, November 17, 1917, pp. 469-471. 51. The New York Times, November 8, 1917, p. 1. Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, VI, 465-467; Woman Citizen, November 10, 1917, pp. 449-451.

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

that the favorable votes were in excess of the sixty-nine percent average of the whole borough.52 A.D.

Affirmative Votes

Negative Votes

2 3 4 5 8 10

4,482 5,669 4,348 5,301 5,003 5,899

2,603 5,032 1,583 4,993 2,454 3,991

There are many reasons for the suffrage victory in New York in 1917. It has been said that the enfranchisement of women was an idea whose time had come, that even the political bosses recognized that they had to change their policy. How then, can the defeat of suffrage in Ohio in the same year be explained? The war was undoubtedly a factor, but the United States had been involved for only six months and it is unlikely that the vote was given as a reward for national services. In New York City, at least, the victory was the result of a coalition formed of traditional suffragists, industrial workers, Eastern European immigrants and settlement workers who influenced public opinion in favor of woman suffrage. The workers at the Henry Street Settlement and leaders like Lillian Wald contributed to the creation of the climate that made possible "the greatest single victory that the suffrage cause . . . [had] yet won."" 52. The New York Times, November 8, 1917, p. 3. 53. Woman Citizen, November 10. 1917, p. 451.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

Jewish Involvement in the New York City Woman Suffrage Movement Elinor Lerner The American woman suffrage movement is usually characterized as predominantly white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon, and upper- and middle-class in composition and support. Although this may be true as far as the formal organizations are concerned, the issue of woman suffrage was supported, often actively, by large segments of immigrants and the working class. This has been noted by some writers, but few detailed accounts of this support have appeared.1 This study will describe the crucial role played by the Jewish community in the suffrage victory in New York State. New York occupied a strategic position in the struggle for woman's suffrage. Most early suffrage victories had taken place in western, rural states, and suffragists were convinced that farmers and native Americans were their main support rather than the urban, working classes. New York was the first eastern, industrial state to give women the vote prior to the Constitutional amendment of 1920, and a victory in New York was considered crucial for convincing Congress to act on the federal amendment. Suffragists also believed that New York City presented almost insurmountable problems. In 1910 approximately 37% of its population was Roman Catholic and 31 % Jewish. Thirteen percent were either first or second generation Irish and a similar number first or second generation Italian. By 1920 at least 78% of Manhattan was either foreign-born or had foreign-born parents. New York conducted two referenda on suffrage in 1915 and 1917. In the earlier vote the issue was defeated by a narrow margin in both New York City and the state. In 1917, however, the amendment passed both in the city and the state as a whole, although losing in the state outside of New York City. It was the city, with its large Catholic, Jewish, immigrant, and working-class population which carried the state for woman suffrage. 2 Joseph Huthmacher has suggested that the role of the urban middle class in accounting for the liberal reforms of the Progressive Era has been overstressed. He believes that the working class and 1 See, for example, Sharon Strom, "Leadership and Tactics in the American Woman Suffrage Movement: A New Perspective from Massachusetts," The Journal of American History, 64 (September, 1975), 296-315. 2 All election result figures are computed from "The Canvass of Votes Cast in the City of New York" published in the City Record by the New York Board of Elections.

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HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES immigrant - the urban lower class - "provided an active, numerically strong, and politically necessary force for reform - and that this class was perhaps as important in determining the course of American liberalism as the urban middle class, about which so much has been written." 3 This paper will attempt to show that at least as far as the New York suffrage movement and the Manhattan Jewish community are concerned, Huthmacher's analysis is essentially correct. In November, 1915, 88,886 men (43%) in Manhattan voted affirmatively on the suffrage amendment. Only two years later, 122,389 (59%) cast their ballots in favor of woman suffrage. It is of interest to know which elements of the population supported the amendment. Manhattan was subdivided into approximately 800 election districts, varying in size from one block to ten in less populated areas. By looking at the election districts that were least favorable and those that were most favorable one can determine the degree and location of pro-suffrage and anti-suffrage sentiment among Manhattan's male voters. In both elections the largest, strongest and most consistent support came from the Jewish community, from Jews of all economic levels living both in Harlem and on the Lower East Side. The strongest and most consistent opposition came from working- and middle-class Irish. Italians were not unified on suffrage: most voted against the amendment, but the largest concentration of Italians in Greenwich Village was consistently pro-suffrage. 4 The Jewish support for suffrage is extraordinary in several respects. Jewish election districts constituted the bulk of the top pro-suffrage districts in both elections and no identifiable Jewish districts were among those consistently anti-suffrage. Of the highest fifty pro-suffrage election districts in 1915 and 1917, at least 64% and 74% respectively were Jewish areas. What is perhaps even more impressive is the fact that of the top 100 pro-suffrage election districts in 1917, at least 78 were Jewish neighborhoods. The votes in these districts extended from 56% to 72% pro-suffrage in 1915, increasing to 76% to 93% in 1917. Not only were the areas that were most strongly pro-suffrage predominantly Jewish, but about half of the Jewish neighborhoods were decidedly pro-suffrage. In the two elections at least 44% and 3 Joseph Huthmacher, "Urban Liberalism and the Age of Reform," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLIX (September, 1962), 235. 4 Demographic information obtained for election districts from Walter Laidlaw, ed., Statistical Sources for Demographic Studies of Greater New York, 1920 (New York: 1922), lists of registered voters published in the City Record and census manuscripts of the 1915 New York State Census.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 55% of the Jewish election districts in Harlem and on the Lower East Side were in the top 100 pro-suffrage election districts. Also striking is the number of pro-suffrage Jewish votes. At least 17,000, or 19%, of the 1915 pro-suffrage votes came from Jewish residential areas in Harlem and the Lower East Side. In 1917, the Jewish vote increased to at least 24% of the pro-suffrage votes cast. Thus while the number of pro-suffrage votes in Manhattan increased from 1915 to 1917 by 38%, the number of Jewish prosuffrage votes increased by 71%. In part this was due to an increase in the number of registered Jewish voters, the result of a concerted registration drive conducted by the Socialist Party in Harlem in 1916.» The question, of course, remains why New York Jewry was so supportive of the suffrage movement and what role the Jewish community played in its final success. During the last nineteenth and early twentieth century, the suffrage movement in New York followed a fairly conservative approach. The years 1907-1911, however, saw a resurgence of activity in New York City with many new organizations appearing together with increased popular support. The impetus for much of this change came from workingclass women, especially young Jewish workers on the Lower East Side. Suffrage leaders realized the need for new organizations and tactics when working with immigrant women on other issues. We can see this by analyzing the development of several such organizations. It would seem that the working-class and immigrant women thought more highly of the militant British suffrage movement and favored more aggressive tactics by the Americans. The National Progressive Women's Suffrage Union, following the British movement and seeking a working-class constituency, was formed in New York City around 1907. Although many of its members appear to have been German-Americans, its main bases of support were Jewish garment workers on the Lower East Side and in Harlem around 111th to 125th streets. The Union shocked the established suffrage organizations and the public by going to "the people direct, in the streets, on the highways and byways." It was the first suffrage group in the city to hold open air meetings, attempt a foot parade and to approach the urban working class at such public places as ball games, beaches and amusement parks. Its members staged a series of demonstrations and street meetings which were reported in the press and attracted crowds of thousands. They also distributed leaflets and demonstrated outside 5 Jeffrey Gurock, When Harlem Was Jewish 1870-1930 (New York: 1979), pp. 75-80.

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HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES of factories and formed alliances with workers on union and labor issues. In November, 1909 union members addressed a meeting of striking necktie workers on the Lower East Side, and were well received by the largely Jewish workers. They were then invited to address a mass meeting of the union and forty or more women left the meeting wearing suffragette buttons.* Another militant organization, the Equality League of SelfSupporting Women, was established in January, 1907 by Harriet Stanton Blatch, the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Upon returning to the United States in 1902 after many years' involvement in British socialist and suffrage activities, Blatch was disappointed by the stagnation in the American suffrage movement. Channeling her energies elsewhere, she became involved in civic reforms and the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL), which consisted of a group of middle- and working-class women attempting to organize women into trade unions. In working with young Jewish women on the Lower East Side in 1906, she became aware of the interest in suffrage among working women and the possibility of establishing an organization in the working class. League membership was open to any self-supporting woman, working-class or professional, and organizations of working women could also affiliate with the League. By 1909 the League contained over 1,000 individual members and 22,000 from affiliated societies.7 Reflecting its ties with the Jewish working-class community on the Lower East Side, the first mass meeting of the Equality League in Cooper Union on April 4, 1907 had among its speakers labor organizer Rose Schneiderman, garment union official Joseph Barondess, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, outspoken leader of the Jewish community. The meeting was attended by a large and enthusiastic audience which the New York Times described as an "undulating mass."' In 1911, the Wage Earners' League was formed by the Woman Suffrage Party (WSP), the major suffrage organization in New York City and the WTUL. According to Elizabeth Freeman, one of the organizers, the idea of forming the League began when WTUL and WSP workers attempted to enlist working women and immigrants on the Lower East Side to march in a suffrage parade. Impressed with the strong interest in suffrage and enthusiasm for the 6

The American Suffragette, November, 1909, pp. 3, S and August, 1909; New York Times, February 17, 1908, April 28, 1908 and October 6, 1908. 7 Harriet Stanton Blatch and Alma Lutz, Challenging Years: The Memoirs of Harriet Stanton Blatch (New York: 1940), pp. 90, 94; Equality League of SelfSupporting Women, First Annual Report 1908-09 (New York: 1909), p. 5. 8 New York Times, April 5, 1907.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE parade, Freeman and Lavinia Dock (a nurse at the Henry Street Settlement) thought of starting a suffrage organization for working women and addressed clubs at the Henry Street, College and Christadora settlements about such a possibility. As with Blatch's League of Self-Supporting Women, the initial interest in the formation of the Wage Earners' League came from working-class, immigrant women on the Lower East Side.® Although the first League officials were members of the WTUL and union organizers - Leonora O'Reilly was president and Clara Lemlich was vice president - most of the founding members were shirtwaist makers, bookbinders or gold leaf layers. Membership was confined to "working women from factories and shops and other places where trade union organization might be possible," and was limited so that there would be "harmony of purpose and propaganda and. . . . [for] the greatest possible freedom of discussion at meetings."10 Initially based on the Lower East Side, the League soon extended its activities throughout the city. A house-to-house canvass to contact working men and women of Manhattan was planned, open air meetings at factories employing women were held, a "distinctive" leaflet published and a press committee established. Several mass meetings and large rallies were held, at least one conducted with black women workers.11 The last organization to be discussed is the Political Equality League (PEL) founded by Alva Belmont, a wealthy New York society woman who devoted her fortune and time to the suffrage movement. Founded in 1909, the PEL had at least twelve branches by April, 1911 which were used to contact New York immigrants, the working class and blacks. Among the Manhattan branches were the Negro Men's and Women's branch in Harlem and the 14th Assembly District Club which attracted many young Irish women.12 Surprisingly little is known about these branches considering the range and popularity of their activities. In January, 1911 the eleven existing branches, with a membership of 1,431, held 186 meetings 9 The Woman Voter, November, 1911, p. 27; September, 1912, pp. 5, 28. 10 "Constitution of the Wage Earners' League" in Leonora O'Reilly Papers, Reel 12, Schlesinger Library, Cambridge, Mass.; The Woman Voter, September, 1912, p. 5. 11 The Woman Voter, September, 1912, p. 5; December, 1911; May, 1912; Minutes of the Regular Meeting of the New York Women's Trade Union League, September 9, 1912 in New York WTUL papers. New York State Department of Labor Library, New York City. 12 New York State Woman Suffrage Association, Annua! Report, 1913-14, p. 12; 1912-13, p. 9; New York Times, February 12, 1911.

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with a total attendance of 11,116. Mary Beard noted the ability of the branches to attract working-class support for suffrage. Commenting on the need of the WSP to take a more active interest in wage-earning women, she remarked "that such an army of tenement mothers and working women marched with Mrs. Belmont [in the last suffrage parade] ought to stir the sluggish to action." 13 The first branch, which opened in 1909 in the affluent section of Jewish Harlem, was a three-story house containing a large assembly room. Activities included clubs and classes in public speaking, debating, the study of government and political parties. Opening with much publicity and public interest, the settlement attracted large crowds, steadily enrolled members and developed a strong neighborhood following. The Wage Earners branch, located in the center of pro-suffrage sentiment on the Lower East Side, opened with a meeting in which a crowd of hundreds "literally packed the halls," which "many more would have entered if it had been possible." The officers of the branch were Jewish women who planned to hold alternate indoor and outdoor meetings nearly every evening at the Manhattan end of the Williamsburg bridge. 14 While relatively few Jewish women were among the nationally known suffrage leaders, evidence from New York indicates that Jewish women were active in formal suffrage organizations. The most prominent American Jewish suffragist in the nineteenth century was the Polish immigrant Ernestine Rose who was active in feminist, suffrage, and abolitionist movements between 1836 and 1869. Known for her "beauty, wit and eloquence," she was a friend and political ally of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the three of whom were instrumental in founding the National Woman Suffrage Association. Susan B. Anthony regarded Rose as one of the most important pioneers of the suffrage movement." Later, two New York City women, Maud Nathan and Rose Schneiderman, although primarily involved in other communal endeavors, achieved national renown for their suffrage work. Nathan, best known for her work with the National and New York Consumers' League, was apparently the only Jewish woman to hold a high position in a major suffrage organization. She was a founding member, an honorary vice-chairman and head of the fif13 Mary Beard to Leonora O'Reilly, May (1912?), Leonora O'Reilly Papers, Red 6, Schlesinger Library. 14 New York Times, December 25, 1909, January 13, 1910, January 1, 1910, January 2, 1910, June 23, 1910, March 21, 1910, May 12, 1910. 15 Man Jo Buhle and Paul Buhle, eds.. The Concise History of Woman Suffrage (Urbana: 1978), pp. 64, 202.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE teenth assembly district for many years of the Woman Suffrage Party (WSP) of New York City. She was also the first vicepresident of the New York City Equal Suffrage League and active in the Equal Franchise Society, frequently a delegate to the national convention of the National American Women Suffrage Association, delivered speeches at several conventions and traveled across the country on behalf of the movement. In 1913 she served as a member of the American delegation to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance meeting in Budapest. Unlike most of the leaders in the New York City suffrage movement, who were more secularly oriented, she was involved in the National Council of Jewish Women and in local Jewish affairs. 1 * Rose Schneiderman, an organizer for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and an officer of the New York Women's Trade Union League, worked full time on behalf of the National American Woman Suffrage Association during the 1912 Ohio campaign. A frequent and popular speaker at mass meetings and rallies in New York City, she also traveled often to Albany to speak on behalf of votes for women to the state legislature. Most of her suffrage activity was directed toward the working-class and immigrant population and she became the head of the Industrial Section of the WSP in 1917.17 Two other Jews - Lillian Wald and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise - were active in New York City suffrage activities. Both were founding members and honorary vice-presidents of the Woman Suffrage Party. Wald's suffrage activities were primarily connected with her work at the Henry Street Settlement. For a time, she was the official Woman Suffrage Party organizer for South Manhattan. Rabbi Wise, who was one of the most popular male speakers for suffrage in New York City, was a founding member of the Men's League for Woman Suffrage and also attended the Budapest International Woman Suffrage Alliance meeting.1* Important and noteworthy as the contributions of these few prominent Jews were, the major involvement of Manhattan Jewry in the formal suffrage organizations occurred at the lower level of organization. Since the WSP was structured like a political party, it had leaders and organizational units in both assembly and election districts. Organizational work was thus carried out in the small 16 Ida Husted Harper, History of Woman Suffrage (New York: 1922), vol. 6, pp. 250-251, 702, 857. 17 Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle (New York: 1972), pp. 258-259; Rose Schneiderman, All for One (New York:1967), pp. 121-124. 18 Harper, op.cit, vol. 6, pp. 484, 569, 858; New York Times, May 21, 1909, June 2, 1915, March 2, 1914, November 1, 1915, December 5, 1908.

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES election districts of immigrant communities. A study of the 804 delegates to the founding convention in 1909 and membership lists of some 472 original members in the first few years indicates that as the organizational and geographic subdivisions were more local, the composition of membership and leadership more closely reflected the local population and not the top leadership of the organization. At least 17% of the founding members were Jewish women and in the most predominantly Jewish assembly districts, 64% were Jewish women. Of the five assembly districts with the highest concentration of Jews, four had a continuous history of Jewish assembly district chairmen, often the same women for many years. It is also a testimony to the chairmen's hard work and effectiveness that these four assembly districts had the highest prosuffrage votes in Manhattan in 1915." Another indication of working-class and immigrant involvement in the suffrage movement can be obtained by analyzing the suffrage activity in certain neighborhoods. The WSP journal, the Woman Voter, published a monthly calendar of events and detailed reports of the previous month's work. The Jewish neighborhoods on the Lower East Side were among the most active in Manhattan. As a result of the reporting diligence of assembly district representatives, activities on the Lower East Side were carefully and conscientiously recorded. Over the years there were thousands of street meetings, larger meetings in local parks, indoor meetings, and special events such as dances and parties, with speeches both in English and Yiddish. The reports written by Wald and Lavinia Dock, as South Manhattan organizers, often commented on and praised the quality of local workers and leaders. Local Jewish women were noted for their political acumen, hard work and ability to relate to the community. One was commended for the "good practical speech in Yiddish" given to a large crowd at Seward Park. In 1911, Dock praised the "splendid captains and workers" who were "making woman suffrage known in shops and homes and even in the political life of the district." In 1913 Dock described the head of the 6th assembly district as a well-known resident, "much loved and respected" whose efforts together with those of other local workefs-"represented the most sincere kind of propaganda work, personal interviews, street 19 Based on names and addresses from membership lists in the Woman Suffrage collection, Columbia University, New York City and program of the "First Woman Suffrage Convention of the City of New York," October 29, 1909 in the New-York Historical Society, New York City. The Assembly districts were 6, 26, 8 and 4. The top three were the only Manhattan Assembly districts to have a majority for suffrage in 1915.

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meetings and earnest argumentation." Dock predicted that if their efforts were duplicated in every district, suffrage would win in New York City. In fact, the 6th Assembly district had the highest prosuffrage vote in Manhattan in 1915.20 Two special projects undertaken by suffrage workers on the Lower East Side provide us with some indication of the numbers of workers involved and the seriousness of their dedication. In 1913 the 2nd Assembly district began a detailed census of Jewish households in selected election districts to verify the accuracy of the lists of registered voters and to assess voter sentiment on the suffrage issue. In less than one month 440 voters were contacted and the results of the census analyzed. Realizing the importance of labor unions in the formation of political opinion and as a way of reaching large numbers of Manhattan Jews, two women in the 2nd Assembly district began a "systematic course of visitation to the Jewish trade unions of the lower East Side." It was later reported that one of the women, a lifelong unionist, had been able to attend fifty meetings including those of the Workmen's Circle and a women's society. Among those visited were bakers, cloakmakers, cap makers, furriers, trunk makers, umbrella makers, boys' and men's clothing makers, jewelers, raincoat makers, knitters and sweater makers and tailors. This visitor reported that the majority were in favor of woman's suffrage. In January, 1915 the two women were addressing Jewish trade unions and labor associations. In March they were still systematically visiting unions associated with the United Hebrew Trades. 21 A detailed description of the participation by Jewish women in the suffrage movement does not provide any information how this activity fit into the overall strategy and tactics of the New York City suffrage movement. We shall therefore investigate the scope and types of suffrage activities directed at Jewish and other immigrant communities to assess this aspect of the campaign. As early as 1909, the suffrage committee of the Socialist Party opened small, neighborhood suffrage headquarters on the Lower East Side and held suffrage meetings in Jewish Harlem. During 1910 and 1911 the frequency of suffrage activity in Jewish areas increased to match the level of other residential areas of Manhattan. By 1912 and 1913, more suffrage work took place on the Lower

20 The Woman Voter. September, 1915, p. 23; May, 1913, p. 33; October, 1912; August, 1912; April, 1915; June, 1913; July, 1913, p. 29; December, 1911, p. 23; October, 1913, p. 24. 21 Ibid., December, 1914, p. 22; June, 1914, p. 25; January, 1915, p. 21; March, 1915, p. 22; February, 1913, p. 33; March, 1913, p. 27.

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East Side than any other area of Manhattan. Still, during these years the upper-class social events and city-wide mass demonstrations were much more publicized and hid the large amount of organizing work being carried out in Jewish areas. During 1914 and 1915 more concerted efforts were begun in other immigrant communities, particularly the Italian areas in lower Manhattan and Harlem and the largely German community in Yorkville. Although most of this effort was done by local workers, it was planned and directed to a great extent by central city headquarters. The Woman Suffrage Party had carefully worked out plans for contacting all of Manhattan's population. The Press and Publicity Committee included professional women writers, artists and journalists who prepared articles on suffrage for New York newspapers on a regular basis, having established contact with 893 papers, including 683 trade journals, 21 religious papers and 126 foreign language papers. Some felt that if suffrage was covered in the Yiddish press it would be easier to receive coverage in other foreign-language papers, so special efforts were directed toward this end. By 1915, it was reported that all the Yiddish press were in favor of suffrage editorially and all gave space to suffrage news. 21 The Press and Publicity Committee also published millions of pamphlets, leaflets and flyers, many in Yiddish, German, Italian and Bohemian. Those designed to appeal to Jewish voters carried endorsements by Jewish community, political and labor leaders. The only surviving copies of Yiddish leaflets are those directed to tenement mothers, suggesting that the problems of poor housing and unhealthy food would only be solved if women had the vote. One city-wide strategy, employed with great success on the Lower East Side, was the neighborhood canvass. Long range plans developed by the WSP called for several visits to each household in Manhattan, with special attention to those with registered voters. Carefully coordinated from central headquarters, women canvassers were to keep card files, recording on different colored cards the sentiments of each voter toward woman suffrage, how often each had been contacted, what type of literature had been distributed, and whether they signed "enrollment slips" indicating support for suffrage and the WSP. Copies of these files were kept both in central Manhattan headquarters, and in the assembly district headquarters. 23 22 "Publicity Section Report," November 18, 1916 in Harriet Laidlaw Papers, Schlesinger Library, Cambridge, Mass.; Harper, op.cit., vol. 6, p. 472; The Woman Voter, April, 1915, p. 20; February, 1913, p. 33. 23 The Woman Voter, May, 1914, p. 23.

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Since this work involved a potentially personal discomfort for the canvasser (such as trudging "up and down tenement stairs," toiling "up to the roof of cliff-like apartments" especially in the hot summer months, or encountering hostility from those approached), suffrage workers had to be constantly encouraged to continue canvassing. In some areas, such as the Lower East Side, canvassing was often made into a social occasion with dinner before or after where the workers could relax, exchange experiences and techniques. Another approach, originating from central headquarters and used in various parts of Manhattan including immigrant neighborhoods, was the use of a traveling team of suffrage workers who would go from area to area with a special demonstration designed to attract a sizeable crowd. One tactic employed by such groups was the "voiceless speech," consisting of twenty to thirty large cards printed in plain letters that could be seen at a distance. Placed on a big easel, they were used where suffrage workers were not allowed to make speeches or in addressing an audience that did not speak English. They were so successful on the Lower East Side that for a time they were held weekly in Seward Park with signs in Yiddish. Voiceless speeches were used a year later, during the summer of 1914, to appeal to working men on their way home in the evening, and again were well received.24 Another very popular practice on the Lower East Side was the torchlight parade. Suffrage workers provided free yellow caps to those who wished to join in and, carrying yellow lanterns, the marchers went through the Lower East Side, leaving small groups to conduct street meetings at points along the way. According to one suffrage worker: "The East Side loved the night parades, with music, and great balls of yellow light bearing suffrage messages. Mothers . . . with babies on their hips, the green grocer, the delicatessen owner, all came out to watch. Children and dogs swarmed under foot, shrieking with joy at the lights and the bands, and it was all so lively and appealing that even tired housewives and young working girls fell in to help carry the banners." 25 Formal suffrage organizations, however, were not the only link with the Jewish community. Of particular importance for Manhat-

24 Gertrude Brown, "On Account of Sex" (unpublished manuscript), in Woman Suffrage-US papers in Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Library, Northampton, Mass.; Harper, op.cit., vol. 6, p. 472; New York Times, November 19, 1912; April 10.1913; The Woman Voter. July, 1914, p. 24; August, 1914, p. 18. 25 Brown, op. cit., ch. 9, p. 1; New York Tones, August 16,1915; October 2,1915.

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES tan Jewry were the Socialist Party, the garment unions and the settlement houses. Although the Socialist Party had been one of the first political organizations to endorse woman suffrage, it had expended little effort in the cause. For several years after 1907 a bitter debate was carried on within the party over the relationship of socialism to the suffrage movement and the place within the party for special efforts to organize women. During this time women in the party formed political study groups to educate women about voting and assisted immigrant women in becoming citizens. 36 Finally in 1909 the women members of the New York Socialist Party voted, with party support, to wage an aggressive suffrage campaign independently from the formal suffrage organizations. In 1914, New York Socialist Party women voted to work with the Woman Suffrage Party in a joint campaign for the 1915 referendum. In a massive campaign the Socialist Party paralleled the work of the suffrage organizations: speakers at mass meetings included some of the more prominent Jews in the Socialist Party such as Meyer London, Rose Schneiderman, and Meta Stern. In 1915 Eugene Debs was a featured speaker, talking nightly on suffrage and socialism. 27 In the 1917 New York mayoral election, Morris Hillquit was the candidate of the Socialist Party. Expressing a desire to keep the issue of woman suffrage non-partisan, he solicited the endorsements of the three other candidates in favor of passage of woman suffrage, an action which permitted the frequent discussion of the issue in a less controversial atmosphere. 2 * Closely allied to the Socialist Party within the Jewish community were the garment trade unions. But the importance of these unions was less in the area of active campaign than in providing a structure by which the suffrage message could be sent. Needle trade unions provided a handy vehicle for Jewish feminists to reach voters and also for suffragists to contact large numbers of young, working Jewish women. Woman suffrage was formally endorsed by many 26 New York Times, December 20, 1909; The New York Call. January 2. 1910; December 20, 1909; November 21, 1909, Marth 12, 1908, March 26, 1909; Mari Jo Buhle, "Feminism and Socialism in the United States, 1820-1920" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Wisconsin, 1974); The Progressive Woman, November, 1907, p. 3. 27 The Call, November 21. 1909; November 2, 1909; December 12, 1909; November 28, 1909; Feb. 25, 1908; New York Times, December 7, 1914; March 1, 1909; February 28. 1910; March 1. 1915; October 18, 1915; October 21, 1917. 28 New York Times, October 11. 1917.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE labor organizations which contained a large segment of the working class Jewish community of Manhattan, but many did little except pass resolutions at conventions, lend their name to public lists of endorsers and urge their members to vote for the suffrage amendments. But this endorsement was important since like that of the Socialist Party it lent credibility and legitimacy to the cause for those workers whose primary allegiance was to working class politics. Among the labor organizations who endorsed suffrage were the AFofL, the Federation of Labor of New York State, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, the United Hebrew Trades, the Cloth and Hat Makers of North America, the Cigar Makers International Union of America, and the Greater New York Labor Council." The ILGWU periodically printed brief items on suffrage and the relationship of the suffrage movement to working women in its journal, the Ladies' Garment Worker. Unions also facilitated the spread of suffrage propaganda and the involvement of Jewish working women in the suffrage movement in several ways. Many female union organizers had several political affiliations and were active suffragists. For example, both Rose Schneiderman and Clara Lemlich were active members of the Socialist Party and the Women's Trade Union League and worked closely with the Woman Suffrage Party. Both utilized their positions as union organizers when speaking to meetings of Jewish working women on the subject of suffrage. Clara Lemlich used her union contacts to organize a large contingent of women trade unionists to march in the 1912 suffrage parade.30 Suffragists also became very involved with working women during strikes. During the 1909 shirtwaist strike and the 1916 kimono and housedress workers strike, suffragists aided the strikers with money, publicity and picketing. The ILGWU noted that it was "gratified" by this "welcomed" aid and expressed special thanks to the New York State Woman Suffrage Association and Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont and Mrs. Milholland Boissevain. In one of the more publicized events of the 1909 strike, Mrs. Belmont rented the Hippodrome for a benefit for the strikers. Held under the auspices of the Political Equality Association, with the stage decorated as if 29 Ladies'Garment Worker, December, 1916, p. 19: November, 1917, p. 7; -Workingmen of New York," Leaflet in Jane Smith Collection, Schlesinger Library; Letter from Vera Whitehouse to Alice Chittenden, September 10, 1917, in Harriet Laidlaw Papers, Schlesinger Library. 30 The Woman Voter, May, 1912, pp. 4-5.

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES for a suffrage meeting, an audience of 8000 listened to union, socialist and suffrage speakers.31 Many attempts to reach the Jewish working men and women were conducted under the auspices of or by the efforts of women connected with the settlement houses. Most notable were Lavinia Dock and Lillian Wald of the Henry Street Settlement and Mary Simkhovitch of Greenwich House. Suffrage work was so common at Henry Street that local residents identified them more with the settlement than with the formal suffrage movement. The torchlight parades, for example, were called "Miss Dock's parades." Settlement workers also utilized organizations affiliated with the settlements for suffrage work. At large outdoor suffrage meetings sponsored by Henry Street, "the boys and girls of the settlement" sold buttons and flags, distributed literature and collected endorsements. A woman on the Lower East Side, active in the Wage Earners' League, used her club at the College Settlement to provide marchers for the suffrage parade in 1912." Settlement houses also established special suffrage clubs. Because of their physical facilities and contacts with the local community, settlements were ideal for local suffrage work. The Henry Street Settlement Suffrage Club, in existence from at least 1912 to 1915, was one of the most active. It sponsored dances, social gatherings, and indoor and outdoor meetings. In 1912 the club had 200 members and conducted its meetings in English and Yiddish. In the summer and fall of 1915 the club conducted a series of large outdoor meetings in various parks on the Lower East Side on Sunday evenings so that working people and religious Jews could attend. The meetings drew such crowds that "standing room was at a premium." A festive mood was created with suffrage banners and decorations, flower girls with baskets of flowers, and young boys with yellow lanterns. "To the delight of the music loving East Side" music was provided, ranging from opera to Jewish and Polish folk songs played by a Polish band. Meyer London, Socialist Party Congressman from the district, frequently spoke at these meetings." We must still explain why Manhattan's Jewish community was 31 Ladies' Garment Worker, June, 1916, p. 23: March, 1916, p. 13; Louis Levine, The Women's Garment Workers (New York: 1924), p. 160; New York Times, December 2, 1909; June 2, 1909. 32 New York Times, July 30, 1915; September 2, 1913; July 18, 1912; The Woman Voter, May, 1912, p. 28; March, 1912, p. 22. 33 New York Times, July 19,1915; July 18,1915; October 29,1915; Woman Voter, September, 1915, p. 23; August, 1915, p. 22.

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so overwhelmingly in favor of extending the franchise to women. The Socialist Party was firmly rooted in Manhattan's German community as well but this group was not pro-suffrage. We can possibly find the answer to this by looking at both the political ideology and interests of the Jewish community as well as the economic and social position of women within that community. One difficulty in discerning the basis for Jewish support is that it was so widespread and so accepted that it was taken for granted and rarely discussed. In 1911, Lavinia Dock noted that women and children in the neighborhood of the Henry Street Settlement were aware of the suffrage victory in the state of Washington. They knew the exact numbers of women registering and the details of the victory and Jewish women, on their own initiative, approached her with questions about suffrage and how to become citizens. In 1915 she reported that at least 75% of those canvassed in Jewish neighborhoods on the Lower East Side favored suffrage. 14 The Woman Suffrage Party, in an article on religions and suffrage, stated: u It is a well known fact that the Jewish people are in favor of the movement." And in an article on the prodigious effort required in Manhattan to enroll supporters in the WSP, the author noted: "In Manhattan among the Jewish people, Mrs. Lottie Levine and Miss Rose Shur led a delegation of their countrywomen who did not have to work as hard to convince their own people as did some others, since the Jews are favorably disposed toward the suffrage movement."" Jewish publications did not always devote much coverage to the issue, taking community support for granted. The American Hebrew carried very little suffrage news, but did note that a Russian-Jewish community in New Jersey had voted overwhelmingly for suffrage and that shortly thereafter the Lower East Side also had voted large pro-suffrage majorities. Commenting on this phenomenon, it pointed out that this "was to have been expected when one bears in mind the fierce longing for democracy which dwells in the hearts of Jews of Russia."36 Of course, given the liberal and radical political sentiment in the pre-World War I Jewish community, it is not totally surprising that suffrage was supported so strongly. Many Jewish men and women who came to the United States had been active in labor and radical politics iti Europe and continued these activities within the radical Jewish unions and the Socialist Party. Some American Jews justified their support for female suffrage on universalistic prin34 The Woman Voter, March. 1911, p. 3; May, 1915, p. 14. 35 Ibid., September, 1915, p. 9; August, 1915, p. 22. 36 The American Hebrew, November 12, 1915, p. 12; October 21, 1915, p. 718.

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ciples. Stephen S. Wise stated: "The women's movement is not a feminist movement at all, but a human movement. It is not a sectional movement but is international in scope."' 7 But, generally, more specific reasons were given. At a suffrage rally on the Lower East Side, Meyer London said: "The last persons to oppose granting suffrage. . . . should be the foreign-born men who had fled the political oppression of their own countries." Many Jewish immigrants had a sincere faith in democracy and were convinced that American democracy was deficient with segments of the population disfranchised. As Rabbi Wise noted: "If you believe in a democracy, you cannot escape the inevitableness of woman suffrage." During a period of considerable anti-immigrant, antiJewish feeling and concerted efforts to tighten the requirements for citizenship and limit immigration, American Jews favored the extension of civil rights to all groups, seeing any restriction as a potential threat to themselves. Certain groups also hoped to gain politically from the enfranchisement of women. The Socialist Party thought it could enroll many young working Jewish women and the labor unions, particularly the garment unions, hoped, by enlarging the franchise to elect sympathetic legislators who would enact prolabor legislation. Indeed, by 1918, 46% of Manhattan's voters registered with the Socialist Party were women. In Jewish Harlem, 52% of the Socialist Party registered voters were women and on the Lower East Side, 50% were." These often cited characteristics of Jews - political activism, social awareness, propensity toward unionization and radical politics - applied to women as well as men. Compared to other immigrants and working women in Manhattan, Jewish women seemed more politically aware, more concerned with education and intellectual matters, relatively easier to organize and more socially concerned. Some attributed this to uniquely Jewish characteristics, as did Rose Schneiderman when explaining why Jewish working women responded to unionization attempts: "We find the Jewish girl especially responsive to its call. Perhaps it is because of the centuries of persecution that the race has had to endure, that she is easier to reach than the American girl who believes there is freedom of opportunity for all. Then, too, the Jewish people are idealists

37 New York Times, March 2, 1914. 38 New York Times, July 19, 1915; November 18, 1910; Ladies'Garment Worker, December, 1912, p. 14; The Socialist Woman, February, 1908, p. 3; John Laslett, Labor and the Left (New York: 1970), p. 122; The Socialist Party registration computed from the New York City Board of Elections, Annual Report, 1918.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE and are ready to fight injustice whether it be industrial or political."39 The cultural and economic position of Jewish women in Eastern Europe is also offered as an explanation for the political and economic activism of American Jewish women. In Eastern Europe Jewish women functioned as an integral part of the family economic unit, especially where the male head was primarily a religious scholar and the responsibility for family support rested on the wife and older daughters. The most common occupations of women were shop owners, peddlers and seamstresses. When the mass immigration from Eastern Europe began, many Jewish women were also working in industry, usually the garment trades, in the large cities. Many Jewish women had also been active in labor and radical political movements in Eastern Europe and many middle class Jewish women were highly educated. All these factors came together and enabled Jewish women to face an easier transition to industrial city life and participate more easily in politics than women of other ethnic groups. The American Jewish community also contained no significant organization or institution that was outspokenly anti-suffrage. Unlike the Catholic Church, which was highly centralized, hierarchical and vocally anti-suffrage, Jewish religious institutions were decentralized and attitudes on suffrage were determined largely by the individual rabbi. As early as 1912, mass meetings for the woman's vote were being held in temples in Jewish Harlem. And by 1917 several religious organizations, including the Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, had endorsed woman suffrage. 40

The American woman suffrage movement was faced with the task of convincing men to share their political power. Its success depended on the ability of women, who had no formal access to the vote, to persuade men to grant them that right. Its success in a community, therefore, depended on strong support from women, a channel through which women could effectively convey their demands to men and the belief, on the part of the men in the 39 The American Hebrew, September 11, 1911, p. S10; Alice Kessler-Harris, "Organizing the Unorganizable: Three Jewish Women and Their Union," Labor History 17 (Winter, 1976), 5-23; Nancy Schrom Dye, "The Women's Trade Union League of New York 1903-1920" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1974), pp. 281-282. 40 The American Hebrew. July 6, 1917, p. 240; New York Times, April 24, 1917; Meeting announcements in Harriet Laidlaw Papers, Schlesinger Library.

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES community, that woman suffrage was, in some way, to their own advantage. Due to both past European and present American circumstances noted above, the Jewish community in Manhattan lent itself most readily to provide support for woman suffrage. In addition, because of family and occupational structure, male and female members of the household frequently worked in the same occupation. This, together with the high rate of unionization, provided a structure in which men and women had many of the same political and occupational interests and where it was possible for women to press feminist demands upon males in their workplace and family. Suffrage was thus seen by many Jewish men in political, rather than personal, terms. Women's votes were seen as being beneficial to union and radical politics and as advancing the interests of the worker and also those of the Jewish community. We must still explain why in reading accounts of the New York City suffrage victory there is no hint of the crucial role played by the Jewish communities. The Woman Suffrage Party attributed its success to the hard work and dynamic leadership of the suffrage organizations, massive public support, endorsement by such prominent men as President Wilson, and democratic sentiment engendered by World War I and women's patriotic war service. Without doubt all of these factors contributed to the victory, but they do not distinguish between those who supported and opposed the movement. Writing several years later, Carrie Chapman Catt claimed that "all parties, races, nationalities and religions supported the amendment" with most support coming from "uptown residential" districts not "radical downtown" ones. As we have indicated earlier, a careful analysis of the vote in 1915 and 1917 shows that this statement is erroneous.41 In an analysis of the 1915 vote, the Woman Suffrage Party noted that suffrage in Manhattan did better than in the other four boroughs, with three Assembly districts voting by a majority for suffrage. These three - the 6th, 8th and 26th - comprised the heart of Jewish Harlem and the Lower East Side and contained the highest percentage of Russian Jews of any Assembly district in Manhattan. Two other, mainly Jewish, Assembly districts (the 10th and 4th) lost by very few votes. This fact was not mentioned nor the Jewish composition of the districts providing a majority for suffrage. Instead, the article lauded the results in several middle-class, Anglo-Saxon districts, whose margin of loss was much larger than in the 10th and 4th. 4J 41 Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics (Seattle: 1970), p. 297; The Woman Citizen, November 10, 1917. 42 The Woman Voter, February, 1916, p. 20.

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This lack of recognition of Jewish support plus public statements by some suffrage leaders blaming their defeat on immigrants and working class voters led Lillian Wald and Lavinia Dock to protest both in public and to the Woman Suffrage Party. In a letter to the New York Times Wald pointed out that foreign-born voters had been much more in favor of suffrage than native-born or "Anglo-Saxon naturalized citizens." Although not mentioning Jews specifically, her letter made very clear exactly which sections of Manhattan had been most favorable to suffrage. Lavinia Dock wrote to the Woman Voter in which she pointed out the same information and chided the party for hinting that immigrants had not supported suffrage. With disarming innocence, the Woman Voter thanked Dock for her information! The party, however, continued to refer to "immigrants" and the "foreign-born" as if they constituted a homogeneous group with similar attitudes and political behavior, without distinguishing the different degrees of support between the Irish and the Jews or within the Italian community.41 These vague general statements, obviously misleading analyses and omissions cannot be attributed to ignorance. Suffragists in Manhattan were fully aware of the difference in support between Irish and Jews, the Catholic resistance to suffrage, and the split within the Italian community. The party maintained careful records of voters canvassed and knew where the support and opposition was located. Suffrage leaders, especially Catt, were known for their political astuteness, their ability to formulate long-range plans and careful attention to organizational detail. In fact, it may have been precisely these qualities which led suffrage leaders to minimize the crucial role of Jews and radicals in the New York city suffrage victory. During World War I this was viewed as a political liability in the effort to secure a federal amendment. In seeking support from conservative Southern states and desiring to represent themselves as "American," suffragists were particularly sensitive to accusations of radicalism, anti-Americanism and pacifism. The numerous controversies taking place during the 1917 victory in New York may help explain why Jews were not accorded recognition for their extraordinary support of woman suffrage. American entrance into World War I had heightened political tension in Manhattan and was an important issue in the mayoral campaign. The Socialist Party took a firm pacifist stand and, until the Russian revolution, many Jews were opposed to American involvement in the war. At the same time most suffragists wished very much to ap43 New York Times, November 4, 1915; November 6, 1915; The Woman Voter, February. 1910, p. 2; January, 1911, p. 2.

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES pear patriotic and the major suffrage organizations offered their services in the war effort. After the election, the extent of Jewish and socialist support became a political inconvenience for suffrage leaders whose sights were firmly set on Congress and the federal amendment. As soon as the 1917 election results were known, anti-suffrage forces proclaimed that socialists and pacifists were responsible for the New York victory. The Woman Suffrage Party denied these charges,but found itself hard-pressed to offer substantial counterarguments. In an attempt to disassociate itself from radicalism, the Woman Suffrage Party did not even invite a representative of the Socialist Party to sit on the stage, along with representatives from all other parties, at its mass meeting victory celebration. This public snub by the Woman Suffrage Party caused such an outcry that Vera Whitehouse, the head of the Party, formally expressed "gratitude for socialist aid" and noted that u the Socialist candidate for Mayor contributed generously to the cause." At a mass meeting several days later, Hillquit replied that socialists did not "expect either recognition or support" from suffragists. Claiming that the socialists had "secured the vote to the women of the State," he noted that the suffragists' "frantic disclaimers only amuse us."44 The Woman Suffrage Party continued with these disclaimers, thus making it impossible to fully recognize Jewish support in New York City. Because of the tendency of scholars studying social movements to focus on movement leaders and official statements of policy and analysis, especially when dealing with a politically self-conscious movement which wrote much about itself, the impression that the movement wishes to convey is often what is accepted. Consequently, the political need felt by suffrage groups to disengage from radical allies has resulted in obscuring the strong base of support for woman suffrage provided by New York City's Jewish population.

44 New York Times. November 21, 1917; November 23, 1917; November 19, 1917; The Woman Citizen, December 1, 1917, p. 7; December 22, 1917, p. 85.

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SEXUAL WARFARE IN THE SILENT CINEMA: COMEDIES AND MELODRAMAS OF WOMAN SUFFRAGISM

ΚΑY SLOAN The University of Texas,

IN T H E

DAYS BEFORE

Austin

MOVIES C O U L D T A L K ,

SILENT FILMS

SPOKE

clearly of sexual politics. As early as 1898, a short primitive film called The Lady Barber caricatured a woman suffragist who commandeered a barber shop and, with the zeal of a latter-day Delilah, began snipping the hair of bewildered men. The young film industry soon discovered a wealth of entertainment material in the votes-for-women movement. After the turn of the century, comedies, melodramas, and newsreels brought the woman suffrage movement onto the nation's nickelodeon screens. As state after state refused to grant women the vote, suffragism foundered at the beginning of the twentieth century, and film satires persistently told their audiences that women belonged in the home, not in the voting booth. Newsreels sensationalized the movement while comedies featured the antics of man-hating suffragists, bumbling husbands, and confused children. Melodramas warned of the sweeping peril of suffragism, when their brazen film heroines ruined family life and devastated their communities. The antisuffrage films echoed the vehement cries of politicians, journalists, and preachers who feared that woman suffrage would spell the death of femininity and the family. Dedicated suffragists, however, refused to let the cinematic ridicule go unanswered. Though the first decade of the twentieth century was one of scant political gain for their cause, the suffragists waged a battle that moved from churches and town meeting halls into movie houses. In 1912, 1913, and 1914, the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the Women's Political Union produced three melodramas and a comedy, all starring beautiful suffragist heroines who combined political activity with romantic and family interests. The antisuffrage comedies and the

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Charlie Chaplin, on the right, plays a suffragette who brutalizes a cringing man in Λ Busy Day.

suffrage movement's own films raised issues about women's roles which are still debated today, and the silent films offer a fascinating excursion into American sexual politics. Unfortunately, very few of the early films have survived. When silent films lost their commercial viability within several years after release, the early film companies, eager for fast production and quick profits, carelessly discarded them. Often the companies themselves were too short-lived to maintain their films. The perishable silver nitrate stock on which the films were printed further reduced their chance of survival; thus those that exist today are rare cultural documents. Since they have been scattered across the country in often obscure film archives, the suffrage films have been sadly neglected by both film historians and suffrage movement scholars.1 The suffrage films screened for this study span a wide range of propaganda material.2 Two comedies, Edison's How They Got the Vote (1913) 1 Cursory discussions of the woman suffrage films can be found in Maijorie Rosen, Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies, and the American Dream (New York: Avon, 1973); and Gretchen Bataille, "Preliminary Investigations: Early Suffrage Films," Women and Film, 1 (1973), 42-44. 1 The suffrage films analyzed here are held by the Paul KiUiam Collection, the Library of Congress, Classic Film Exchange, and Blackhawk Films. Newsreel material has also been preserved in a 1954 Canadian documentary. Women on the March, made by the National Film Board of Canada.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

and Charlie Chaplin's A Busy Day (1914), told moviegoers that masculine-looking suffragists would disrupt society and dominate men. A third c o m e d y . A Suffragette in Spite of Himself (Edison 1911), exploited the British suffragists' radical activities and featured an antisuffrage hero who unwittingly becomes involved in the suffrage demonstrations. In 1912, Anita L o o s ' s A Cure for Suffragettes, released by Biograph, satirized suffragists who neglected their children. Finally, two of the suffragists" own melodramas have survived the years. The W o m e n ' s Political Union's 80 Million Women Want—? and the National American Woman Suffrage Association's Votes for Women speak poignantly of the position of the w o m e n ' s movement in 1912 and 1913, addressing the fears raised by the film industry's comedies. The suffragists' heroines fought bravely for political r e f o r m s , and c o n v e r t e d their f i n a n c e s or h u s b a n d s to the "cause."' In addition, existing newsreel footage of suffrage parades and events provide a third dimension to the cinematic coverage of suffragism. Though the preserved film footage offers valuable insight into American sexual tensions, an understanding of the full impact of the films must, ironically, rely heavily on original printed material. The suffrage controversy spilled over into the pages of such early trade magazines as Moving Picture World, holography, Variety, and Photoplay, and their reviews testify to the lively argument over w o m e n ' s rights which the suffrage films once delivered. The first decade of the twentieth century was a pivotal period for both the suffrage movement and for the budding film industry. During this important era. the suffragists fought their opposition with arguments that women would usher in changes that the corrupt male political machinery resisted. Social problems of alcoholism, tenement conditions, sweatshops, urban overcrowding, and disease were addressed by the suffragists, most of whom represented the educated, upper-middle class. While progressive leaders supported the same reforms, they differed on the issue of woman suffrage. Woodrow Wilson refused to support votes for women until the very last years of the suffrage movement, and suffragists found themselves working for labor and social reforms alongside progressive politicians whose reformist policies ended at woman suffrage. More a frame of reference than a movement in itself, progressivism failed to unite the suffrage issue with widef reforms. 3 T h u s in the last years of its long history, the suffrage movement groped for new, more convincing arguments. While the suffragists pushed for reform, the cities' movie 1 See Robert M. Crunden's essay in John D. Buenker, John C. Burnham, and Robert M. Crunden. Progressivism (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1977). Also see Peter G. Filene, "An Obituary for 'the Progressive Movement,'" American Quarterly, 22 (1970), 20-34. I have also referred to Robert M. Crunden, "The Progressive Achievement in American Civilization. 1889-1920," manuscript in progress.

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houses drew working-class audiences seeking escape from the harsh realities of urban life which suffragists sought to change. Young, dynamic film c o m p a n i e s won c r o w d s in e v e r - i n c r e a s i n g n u m b e r s as new nickelodeons were built. By 1910, nearly 10,000 film theaters catered to large audiences across the country. Unfortunately, the suffragists had a far more difficult time in attracting working-class audiences. Ruth Hanna McCormick, a national officer for the N A W S A , remarked that suffragists spent most of their time giving speeches to each other in public.4 Clearly, such a strategy would not further the movement: by 1907, eleven years had passed since any state had granted its female citizens suffrage, and the movement seemed to be losing momentum under the cautious leadership of Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, the president of NAWSA. 5 Impatient with Shaw's conservative methods and inspired by the militant tactics of daring British suffragettes, Carrie Chapman Catt and Harriet Stanton Blatch (the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton) organized the Women's Political Union in 1907. And when Pathe, an innovative young film company, began a new cinematic movement with its newsreels in 1911, the suffragists became even more visible as movie cameras caught their colorful marches and demonstrations. It was the lively British suffragists, however, who captured most of the cameras' attention. In 1908 the suffragettes in England had already realized the vast capacity for publicity held by the burgeoning film industry. When they staged an important rally in Hyde Park, the women invited a film company to document the event. Apparently, this first suffrage news film appealed to a curious public: a trade journal claimed that the film's producers had "probably never played to a bigger house" than they drew with this footage. 6 Later newsreels, eager to entertain as well as inform their audiences, publicized the movement's violence and militancy. For the first time, the public could actually watch suffragists at work, and the picture they saw was a sensational one. Newsreels like Suffragettes Again (Pathe 1913), which featured firemen fighting a blaze ostensibly set by British suffragettes, told American audiences first-hand of the uncontrolled forces which women's suffrage could unleash. Even the title of this newsreel seemed to sigh at the acts of these brazen women who repeatedly struck out at society.

4 Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964), 528. James S. McQuade, " Y o u r Girl and Mine." Moving Picture World, 22, 7 Nov. 1914, 764. 5 For accounts of the political and ideological history of woman suffragism in the United States, see Eleanor Flexnor, Century of Struggle (New York: Atheneum, 1971): and Aileen Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement. 1890-1920 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1965). 6 Rachel Low, The History of the British Film, 1906-1914 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1949), 151.

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The Gaumont Film Company caught one of the most sensational events of the suffrage movement when it sent a cameraman to film the British Derby in 1913. As the King's horse thundered past, Emily W. Davison threw herself under its hooves to protest women's inequality and became a martyr for the suffrage cause. The unexpected suicide turned what was to have been an ordinary newsreel into a tragic display of the anguish and frustration felt by suffragists. Pathe further capitalized on the public's fascination with the morbid. The company covered Davison's funeral in detail, easing a camera slowly over the faces of solemn women marching behind the casket. Only the dramatic moments of suffragism merited newsreel coverage. When film companies failed to find the militant activities of the British within the United States, they settled for less incendiary subjects such as New York suffragists painting political slogans on a wall 7 —an act which the film company may well have staged. The women's rational arguments were forgotten in the scramble for colorful newsreel material. In 1912, one year after Pathe's newsreels had become a regular feature on nickelodeon programs, American women paraded down New York's Fifth Avenue and discovered film companies busily recording the event. At the time of the first suffrage parade in 1910, many conservative suffragists considered a parade to be such a radical departure from the ideals of soft-spoken, modest womanhood that they refused to march. By 1912, however, suffragists turned out in great numbers in a spectacular, dignified procession. The film industry's keen nose for the sensational found only well-dressed, respectable-looking women calmly marching down the street in numbers approaching 10,000. Footage from the newsreel captured the suffragists smiling and waving at the camera as they passed, perhaps well aware of the influence wielded by the new technology. This same footage found its way into both an antisuffrage comedy, Was He A Suffragette? (Republic Films 1912), and the movement's melodrama, Votes For Women. Despite their fascination with the lurid or titillating aspects of suffragism, the newsreels did not have a completely negative impact on the women's movement. The films introduced suffragists to nickelodeon audiences as real people rather than cartoon caricatures. Occasionally cameramen depicted the women in a sympathetic light. In a 1914 campaign report, one suffragist sounded bewildered at the attention that a newsreel crew paid her organizing efforts in Atlantic City. She announced that, during her meeting with the mayor, "the 'movies' took pictures of the meeting and had me pose especially for them with a great sheaf of 7

National Film Archive Catalog

(London: British Film Institute, 1965), 122.

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gladiolas." 8 Whether the newsreels' image of suffragists was derogatory or sympathetic, suffrage became an immediate issue when it was projected on movie screens. The films might ridicule the suffrage movement, but its power could not be denied or ignored. Newsreels heightened the public controversy over suffragism with their larger-than-life images of the movement's women. While the newsreels gave the movement dramatic publicity, antisuffrage comedies amused their audiences with authoritarian wives and emasculated husbands. With some variation, three broad themes emerged in the scores of suffrage comedies made in the pre-World War I era. The most popular formula featured militant women whose encounters with the world outside their homes soon sent them hurrying back to their families. A second pattern reversed the sex roles of the films' heroes and heroines, creating a brutal world in which women abused their husbands. Several comedies revealed a third theme which questioned the sexuality of cynical suffragists who attempted to destroy the romantic attachments of their younger, more attractive followers. Throughout the films, anxiety over the world of the future festered beneath the story lines. A perceptive film reviewer of 1911 wrote, "the richest field for farce comedy is not the musty past nor the inglorious future, but the gloriously uncertain future." 9 In 1913, when Thomas Edison filmed How They Got the Vote, the future was indeed uncertain for the position of women in society. Capitalizing on the new vitality of both the American and British suffrage movements, Edison's comedy assured audiences that, though sinister suffragettes might try to ban romance from the world, ingenious young men would inevitably prevail. Set in England, the plot revolved around a love affair between the hero and a young woman, the daughter of a suffragist leader who wore a feather boa to hide the 'Votes for Women' banner stretched across her chest. The surviving footage reveals the girl's mother at tea with male political leaders. All was calm and proper until she whipped off the boa to reveal her banner, at which the wide-eyed men cowered against a wall in fear. The suffragist proceeded to lecture them, shaking her fists while they held up their trembling hands as if to fend off an evil force. Indeed, Edison's suffragist looked evil. With an arrogant scowl, she spied on her daughter and the girl's fiance, finally ordering the young man away. But the hero was not so easily defeated: using supernatural powers he conveniently obtained from a magician, the young man secured votes ' "Nation-wide Suffrage Day Draws Near," The Suffragist, 2, 25 April 1914, 7. ' Louis Reeves Harrison, "The Comedy of the Future," Moving Picture World, 8, 4 Feb. 1911, 230.

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In the last scene of Λ Busy Day, the suffragette meets her demise after her humiliated male companion pushes her into the ocean.

for women. In a single act, he won both the hand of his lover and the gratitude of his future mother-in-law. Despite the determination of the domineering suffragist, it required the efforts of a wily man to win her political goal for her. Even then, of course, it was only through magical intervention that he succeeded. Edison thus added a unique twist to the traditional comic themes: this time the film's happy ending included both votes for women and a salvaged romance. How They Got the Vote managed-to straddle the suffrage fence, presenting a stereotyped view of suffragists while it reconciled the family with women's political equality. The following year, Charlie Chaplin's A Busy Day held no trace of ambivalence in its caricature of a suffragist. Originally titled A Militant Suffragette, the film was retitled by the Keystone Company when the Pathe Company released an antisuffrage melodrama with an identical title in the same year.10 Making his first appearance in a woman's role, Chaplin played a coarse suffragette who rescued a political partner trying to disrupt a parade. With fists swinging and his skirt swirling above his head, Chaplin's suffragette took on the police singlehandedly, and then 10 See John Stewart, comp., Filmarama I: The Formidable Years, 1893-1919 (Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow, 1975), 48, 242.

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suddenly realized that her male companion had turned his attentions to a more attractive woman. Chaos broke out as a jealous Chaplin fought to win her man back. But her struggle was short-lived: her companion pushed her off a pier into the ocean. Sputtering and spewing, Chaplin's caricature slowly sank, and no one came to her rescue. The final bubbles rising from the water's surface seemed to promise the last gasps of the votes-for-women movement. Edison's Λ Suffragette in Spite of Himself (1912) allowed the suffragettes to have the final word. When two young boys pinned a 'Votes for Women' sign on the unsuspecting hero's back, antisuffragists taunted the confused man. He fought back frantically, resisting the police when they dashed up to arrest him. Suffragettes further complicated this "comedy of errors" as they descended upon the police to protect their " a l l y . " But the bewildered gentleman emphatically assured the women that he was not interested in their cause, and staggered home only to find that his maid had impishly planted a 'Votes for Women' banner beneath his bourbon bottle. Again, the opportunistic Edison conveyed a double message: the "antis" he portrayed seemed as hysterical as the suffragettes. Earlier suffrage satires, however, made a less ambiguous statement. The stand-

The hero of Λ Suffragette in Spite of Himself emphatically assures his female rescuers that he is not interested in their cause.

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523

ard plots of such films as When Women Win (Lubin 1909), Will It Ever Come to This? (Lubin 1911), For the Cause of Suffrage (Melies 1909), and

Was He A Suffragette? (Republic 1912) revealed suffragists victimizing hapless men.11 The most innocent "victims" of suffragism were the children in the early comedies. A Cure for Suffragettes (Biograph 1912) opened with women parking baby carriages outside their suffrage meeting. While their stranded babies wailed in their buggies, the suffragists plotted new strategies to win the vote. "Let us stop at nothing in our fight for something!" shouted the leader. Outside, a police officer noticed the deserted children, and pulled them down to the station in a caravan of baby carriages. Benevolent policemen comforted the babies until their mothers, finally heedful of their maternal "duties," snatched their children away. Here, the gentle officers of the law proved to be more sensitive to the children's needs than their militant mothers. Anita Loos's script left the final message ambivalent: the last title card read "but even a suffragette can be a mother." Reviews of long lost comedies with titles such as A Day in the Life of a Suffragette (Pathe 1908), Oh! You Suffragette! (American Films 1911), The Reformation of the Suffragettes (Gaumont 1911), and When Women

Vote (Lubin 1909)12 indicate that the film companies had stumbled upon a successful formula of satirizing suffragism. In these comedies, masculine suffragists unleashed a tidal wave of irrational forces that left democracy in shambles and the family revolutionized. But, like Chaplin's character, they inevitably discovered that cruel fates awaited them when they ventured outside their prescribed roles. These would-be heroines often found themselves in jail, or imperiled by such menacing threats as tramps or spiders during their political meetings. When A Determined Woman (Independent Motion Pictures 1910) reunited its suffragette with her family, the reviewer noted an important function of the comedies. "Intended for a comedy," he wrote, "this film is really a subtle study of life and the influences which may be invoked to change the apparently uncontrollable currents." 13 Against the quickening pace of "uncontrollable currents" of suffragism, these films tucked independent women snugly back into their families (or, in Chaplin's case, simply drowned her), informing their audiences that the growing political interests of women were merely temporary whims, typical of hysterical females. The suffragist would soon dis" See, for reference, "Stone« of the Films," Moving Picture World, 5,2 Nov. 1909,1(0-, 8, 21 Jan. 1911, 151; 5, 23 Nov. 1909, 581; 12, 22 June 1912, 1128. u See, for reference, "Stories of the Films," Moving Picture World, 1, 22 June 1907, 252; 2, 2 May 1908, 401; 8, 25 Feb. 1911, 434; and 8, 8 April 1911, 787. u "Stories of the Films," Moving Picture World, 6, 25 June 1910, 1101

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her inability to handle the world outside the home and families would emerge from the turmoil with their patriarchal authority confirmed. Such conclusions would not have appealed only to male viewers. In 1912, one female antisuffragist wrote that "our greatest strength lies in the accepted fiction of our weakness." Many women worried that suffrage would erode their traditional sources of subtle power. When the films asserted the helplessness of women, they reassured female audiences that the qualities they used to beguile and influence their husbands were still valid. Suffrage threatened the self-image of those women who feared the ramifications of voting extended far beyond the ballot, and certainly the comedies encouraged such anxiety. One women claimed that suffrage would not only rob women of their power over the family, but it might cost them their husbands as well. In her analysis, suffragism and divorce went hand in hand as independent women sounded the death knell for the family.14 Comedies titillated their audiences with a fascination over sex role reversals, focusing on the deepest fears roused by the suffrage movement and soothing them with cathartic laughter. In fact, the idea that woman suffrage would produce a nation of masculine women was no joke: the comedies' sex role reversals merely reflected the thinking of such antisuffragists as Robert Afton Holland, who proclaimed in 1909 that the vote would render women "ugly and coarse." The suffragists themselves, he charged, were "large-handed, big-footed, flat-chested, and thinlipped."15 Preying on such fears, the comedies presented nickelodeon customers with a thematic circus of suffrage victims and villains. Audiences saw rebellious wives hurling food at their cowering husbands, women slugging each other over election returns, suffragists forcibly dressing men in diapers, and female sheriffs pretending to hang their terrified husbands.16 The world of the comedies spun about in confusion as men struggled for a steady footing in a society ruled by women. The films depicted women terrorizing men from coast to coast, from frontier towns to the streets of New York City. If the comedies were to be believed, suffragists were surging across the country leaving in their wake dazed men wondering what had happened to their wives. The women's movement symbolized a greater issue than political equality; it swept the ancient struggle over sexual power out of psychic closets and into the public arena. No weapon was too subversive in the ensuing 14

Ann Watkins, "For the Twenty-Two Million," The Outlook, 101,4 May 1912,29; Molly Elliot Seawell, The Ladies' Battle (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 110. u Holland, "The Suffragette," Sewanee Review, 17, (July 1909), 282. " These incidents were used in the plots ofCalino Marries A Suffragette (Gaumont 1912), When Women Vote (Lubin 1907), The Suffragettes' Revenge (Gaumont 1914), and The Suffragette Sheriff (totem 1912).

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battle, and the comedies reveal a veritable arsenal of antisuffrage arguments. Their suffragist caricatures were irrational; they neglected or a b u s e d their families; they a l t e r n a t e l y r e p r e s e n t e d a n a r c h y or authoritarianism; most insidious of all, the women were unattractive manhaters whose sexuality seemed to be in question. Michael Wood has written that film points out the unconscious worries of a culture; like dreams, the movies expose hidden anxieties and taboo subjects. Without sound to make images more concrete, the silent suffrage films created a nightmarish world of psychic fears. Men became powerless before witch-like, sinister women. But the comedies exorcised fear with humor, inflating sexual tension only to explode it with laughter. Rachel Low, a historian of silent film, found that the proliferation of suffrage comedies reflected the "hostility of the ignorant to anything new or strange, that hostility, hatred and fear which find their relief in j e e r s . " The images of silly suffragettes parading across nickelodeon screens allowed audiences to dismiss suffragism as a ludicrous activity of misguided, foolish women. One of the comedies' heroes, who lost his lover to suffragists in The Suffragettes' Revenge (Gaumont 1914), perhaps stated it best: " t h e spectacle of the suffragettes," he announced on a title card, " w o u l d make me laugh if it did not make me c r y . " The two intense responses rose from the same discomfort, and comedies substituted laughter for tears. 1 7 Suffragism became an increasingly emotional issue after the first decade of the twentieth century, and the films' sinister image of suffragists was a cinematic reflection of public alarm. A New York Times editorial of 1914 panicked over what it called " a n advance in the reign of terror" created by " f i e n d i s h " women. Condemning Harriet Stanton Blatch's " d e v i l t r i e s , " the writer charged that her followers were " a f r a i d of nothing; they want what they want when they want i t . " 1 8 The antisuffrage comedies and melodramas brought such hostile political rhetoric to life. This, then, was the climate in which the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the new W o m e n ' s Political Union struggled to be heard sympathetically. When the suffragists answered the silent accusations of these films with melodramas of their making, the women attested to the rising power of cinema. Movie screens provided suffragists with a national forum from which to appease the public's anxiety over votes for women. Between 1908 and 1914, the peak era of suffrage films, the nation's movie theatres grew in numbers from around eight or ten thousand to fourteen thousand. 1 9 Suffragists found that the lively new " Wood, America in the Movies (New British Film. 177; "Stories of the Films," " T h e Suffragists' Latest," New York '* Ray Fielding, The American Newsreel, 1972), 65.

York: Basic Books, 1974): Low, History of the Moving Picture World, 15, 27 Jan. 1913, 15%. Times, 11 Aug. 1914, 8. 1911-1967 (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press,

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entertainment form of the "photoplay" could be an exciting vehicle for their arguments. It was with high hopes of winning new support for their cause that the movement produced its four films. Dramatic tactics, perhaps, could succeed where rhetoric had failed. Portraying suffragists as deeply moral, attractive women who were devoted to their families, the movement's fiction films presented their heroines as sympathetic characters to audiences accustomed to seeing masculine or hysterical suffragette caricatures. The suffragists already knew the value of dramatic devices in their state campaigns. In 1911, the year preceding the first suffrage propaganda film, California had been won largely due to the use of lively pageants and plays. Among the California State Campaign's subcommittees was one specifically concerned with "Dramatic Entertainments, Stereopticon Talks and Moving Pictures." The NAWSA convention report from California in 1911 announced that the subcommittee's "picture slides and stereopticon talks . . . were very effective, particularly in the outlying districts." 2 0 A popular suffrage play, How the Vote Was Won, had proven to be an effective piece of propaganda and by 1911 suffrage groups across the country were acting out its scenes. The Suffragist, a weekly newspaper sponsored by Alice Paul's Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, called the play "one of the finest arguments for suffrage ever written," and noted that it attracted "many who are fond of the drama and somewhat less fond of debate." The play featured a comic antisuffrage hero who reevaluated his position on women's rights when two female relatives quit their jobs and moved in with him, raising issues of women's rights to work. 21 The idea of dramatic means for spreading the woman suffrage message had caught hold, and, by 1911, the suffragists had acquainted themselves with the relatively new technology of projection in their efforts to entertain as well as inform audiences. A "slide and lecture" show had become a popular new device. When the Equal Franchise Society held a "Suffrage Week" in February of 1911, the suffragists found that cooperative nickelodeon owners readily allowed them into theatres to address audiences with their slides. 22 Unaware that suffragists had developed the slide show, a film journalist suggested that "every propagandist, suffragistic or otherwise, might achieve great results by getting his cause illustrated by means of lantern slides. . . ." 2 3 Only a few weeks later, he noted with 20 The Handbook of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Convention (New York: NAWSA Publishers, 1911), 100-01. Hereafter cited as NAWSA Handbook. 21 "Suffrage Play." The Suffragist, 1, 20 Dec. 1913, 48: "How the Vote Was Won," The Suffragist, 2, 21 Feb. 1914, 7. 12 NAWSA Handbook (1911), 23, 155. " Thomas Bedding. "Propagandry and the Picture House," Moving Picture World, 8, 18 Feb. 1911,347.

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surprise that an enthusiastic lady suffragist has captured a downtown moving picture theatre, where she is showing lantern slides and talking the virtues of suffragism to large audiences. We are not going to say whether this is a step in the right direction but it is a straw which shows the direction of the wind. 14

According to this writer, approximately one-third of the nation's population attended the movies every week! The "wind" was clearly directed toward exploiting this vast audience for the suffrage cause, particularly since moviegoers were primarily the working-class men and women whose support the suffragists lacked. It seemed to be a logical next step for suffragists to enter the moviemaking arena; their dramatic use of plays and pageants had proven effective, and they were already addressing nickelodeon audiences. Trade magazines urged the use of film for reform. An article in 1912 might have further encouraged the suffragists, asserting that "the value of the moving picture as a means of agitating for the betterment of social conditions is self-evident. Nothing affects us more powerfully than the truth when it is preached in p i c t u r e s . T h e nation's leading suffragists must have agreed with this claim. In 1912 they began making films to circulate through the country's movie houses as well as for their own use in state campaigns. In June of 1912, both the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the Women's Political Union released films starring attractive, sympathetic suffragist characters to counter the stereotype of masculine, irrational suffragettes perpetuated in the comedies. NAWSA, in conjunction with Reliance Films, produced Votes for Women, a melodrama contrasting reform-minded suffragists with a corrupt senator, while the WPU collaborated with American Films on Suffrage and the Man, a comedy satirizing a man who left his fiancee because of her belief in suffragism. It was, perhaps, appropriate that the movement's only comedy should ridicule a man for disrupting a romance. Suffrage and the Man responded to the numerous comedies in which suffragists left their husbands or lovers. But even the suffragists' comedy cautiously played into stereotypes and conservative values. Its beautiful heroine vied against a conniving, jealous woman for her former lover, and finally won him back just as women got the vote. Romance was still the central concern of the women in Suffrage and the Man. An advertisement for the film displayed the happily reunited couple nestled cozily together, the heroine unmistakably labelled with her 'Votes for Women' parasol and banner. The most " Thomas Bedding, "On the Screen," Moving Picture World, 8, 4 March 1911, 472. a W. Stephen Bush, "The Social Uses of the Moving Picture,'' Moving Picture World, 12, 27 April 1912, 305.

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striking appeal to conservative moviegoers, however, appeared in the comedy's racist allusions to black male voters. Explaining his support of woman suffrage, the heroine's father asked, " M y butler and my bootblack may vote—why not my wife and daughter?" The implication that women should vote because "butlers and bootblacks" could also revealed the class nature of the movement. Perhaps the suffragists played on the status anxieties of the average moviegoer when they presented suffragism as a "respectable" concern of the upper classes in Suffrage and the Man. The comedy spoke soothingly to the prejudices and fears of mainstream America to expedite the suffrage cause. 28 Of the two films, however, Votes for Women created the bigger stir, possibly because two of the nation's most prominent suffragists appeared in it: Jane Addams and Anna Howard Shaw. The initial impetus for the Ν A WS A film came from the film industry, when Reliance Films approached Addams and Shaw to convince them that a movie could be a forceful argument for suffrage.27 Obviously, the young film industry had decided that both sides of the suffrage controversy could be profitable entertainment—Reliance had released a suffrage parody, Bedelia and the Suffragette, only a few months earlier. Shaw and Addams agreed to make a film only after much deliberation. Addams, in particular, had been a foe of the harmful world she felt the movies created. In 1909, she had warned that moving pictures were a "debased form of dramatic entertainment" that depicted "a primitive state of morality." 28 The irony of her appearance in Votes for Women did not escape one reviewer, who wrote: one of the significant facts in connection with this picture is that some of the ladies who appear in it at one time were to be classed as antagonistic to the moving picture.1*

The times were changing, however, and Addams's mind had apparently changed with them. She and her colleague Shaw decided that film could be fought with film and old stereotypes of suffragists countered with a more realistic portrayal in melodramas. Under the direction of Hal Reid, the two reels of Votes for Women turned the distinguished world of the United States Senate belly-side up and found it crawling with corruption. Beginning with actual suffragists speaking at a labor meeting, the film turned to a melodramatic portrayal of its heroines. The women opposed a villainous senator who owned a disease-ridden tenement and sweatshop. Only after the women converted " Advertisement, Moving Picture World, 12, 8 June 1912, 796; "Stories of the Films," Moving Picture World, 12, 8 June 1912, 962.

" "Anna Shaw and Jane Addams in Pictures," Moving Picture World, 12, 19 May 1912, 617. " Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York: Macmillan, 1909 and 1930), 87. " "Anna Shaw and Jane Addams in Pictures," 617.

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his fiancee to suffragism did the senator, pressured by romance, finally realize the need for reform. The melodrama pointed to several controversial issues of the era, exposing the needs of working women, tenement dwellers, and neglected children. Left to men, the film implied, these wrongs would continue. Give the vote to women, and reforms would be enforced. Votes for Women established suffragists as the upholders of far higher ideals than government officials who profited from the very conditions the women sought to correct. The theme of woman as reformer was hardly new, however, to the movie screen. Audiences who watched The Reform Candidate in 1911 and The Stronger Sex in 1910 saw heroines exposing injustice or corruption. Though certainly not an overt call for woman suffrage, the theme of brave, moralistic women continued into 1913: Her Big Story and The Grafters featured a reporter and a secretary, respectively, who uncovered political graft. Votes for Women thus followed a film tradition of sorts, but its call for woman suffrage was unique. Its closing shots left the message unequivocal, again using the footage of the 1912 suffrage parade in New York City that Was He A Suffragette? had exploited earlier that year. This time, of course, the context was different, and the Moving Picture World reviewer enthusiastically claimed that the parade sequence "makes a rousing finish to a picture that will undoubtedly be of great service to the advocates of women's rights all over America." 30 Apparently, this was an accurate prediction. At the 44th National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in late 1912, the women heralded the success of the new dramatic venture. One officer reported that "the play had been much in demand all over the country." A year later, the 45th NAWSA convention noted the diverse use of the film during the year's campaigns. In New Jersey, the Women's Political Union brought Votes for Women into the state and "secured its exhibition in many moving picture shows." In the Midwest, the Des Moines, Iowa suffrage club showed the film "in a small river front park near a bandstand where nightly concerts were given during Fair Week. Literally thousands of people saw the pictures and there were speeches two evenings to large crowds." At the Congregational Church of Appleton, Wisconsin, a smaller crowd paid five cents to see Votes for Women. Shown in nickelodeons, fairs, and churches, the movement's first melodrama impressed suffragists with its versatility and its ability to reach wide audiences. 31 Encouraged by the success of Votes for Women, in 1913 the Women's Political Union produced a second suffrage melodrama entitled 80 Million M

"Votes for Women," Moving Picture World, 12, 1 June 1912, 811. See convention reports in NAWSA Handbook (1912), 19, and (1913), 95, 101; Rev. E. Boudinot Stockton, "The Pictures in the Pulpit," Moving Picture World, 14, 28, Dec. 1912, 1285. 11

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Eighty Million Women Want—? ended as the hero handed his suffragist fiancee a marriage license, proving to movie audiences that suffragists were just as interested in romance and marriage as other w o m e n .

Women Want—?, an apparent reference to a suffrage book similarly titled What 80,000,000 Women Want. The W P U , having worked with Eclair Films on Suffrage and the Man, turned to the newly formed Unique Film Company with a plot similar to that of Votes for Women. Like its predecessor, 80 Million Women Want—? featured an attractive young suffragist who reformed her lover, a lawyer involved in political corruption. Starring Emmeline Pankhurst and Harriet Stanton Blatch, w h o followed their more conservative colleagues A d d a m s and Shaw o n t o the c o u n t r y ' s movie screens, this film depicted the staunchly moralistic suffragists waging war on the city's political boss and eventually driving him f r o m power. Romance and politics again successfully merged in the melodrama: having destroyed the corrupt forces of the political machine, the women won suffrage and the heroine w a s reconciled with her reformed lover. As the Moving Picture World reviewer wrote, " b o t h she and the hero look and act their best when they gaze upon the marriage license, which forms the finale of the s t o r y . " 1 2 Ironically, an incident at the first screening of 80 Million Women Want—? provoked some of the tensions that the film sought to resolve. A M W. Stephen Bush, "Eighty Million Women W a n t — ? " Moving Nov. 1913, 741.

Picture

World,

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long delay in the arrival of the film had made the audience restless and Harriet Stanton Blatch tried to entertain the crowd with a talk in which she humorously commented on the non-arrival of the man-made film which was supposed to have started for the showing at the Bryant Theater in a man-driven taxi, some short time previous and considerately pointed out to the man part of the audience that accidents happen at times even to men—at which the back row lost its last male occupants.33 A reporter noticed that the film's two-hour delay gave many press men an excuse to leave, "murmuring to themselves or to somebody else 'a previous engagement—I really can't wait,' and disappear(ing) in the direction of the nearest restaurant."34 Apparently, some nervous men found it uncomfortable to meet actual suffragists, particularly when they seemed as feisty as Blatch. Despite the near disaster of its first showing, reviewers praised 80 Million Woman Want—? and subtly indicated their own support for the suffragists' cause. W. Stephen Bush, writing for Moving Picture World, hailed the film's exposure of political corruption. "This feature," he claimed, "gives a most attractive picture of the defeat of the old and the victory of the new idea in politics." This reviewer suggested that the melodrama would give audiences a "new idea" of suffragists: Those who have looked upon the Votes-for-Women movement as the last refuge for old maids and cranks are due for a pleasant and agreeable disillusionment. The heroine of the story, though a stanch (sic) enough suffragette, is womanly from top to toe.34 Here, then, was one of the film's most important messages. Another critic echoed Bush's thoughts in a column that found the film "an agreeable surprise." Instead of a lecture by dogmatic suffragists, 80 Million Women Want—? was "really and truly [a] story [about] a young lawyer in love with a pretty girl." 36 Political expediency demanded that even the most radical suffragists—and Pankhurst's militant activity in England placed her in the front ranks of the radicals—portray their cause in a nonthreatening manner in the film, upholding rather than subverting dominant social values. " Anon., " W h a t 80 Million Women W a n t ? " Μolograph v. 10, 29 Nov. 1913. 407. 34 Ibid., 407. 34 Bush, "Eighty Million Women W a n t — ? " 741. » " W h a t 80 Million Women W a n t ? " 407.

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In the mayor's office, the villains of Eighty Million Women Want—plot their next strategy against the feisty suffragists. On the right, the black henchman reminded audiences that black men could vote while white women remained politically powerless. Even the most radical suffragists appealed to racist attitudes to win support for woman suffrage.

Again, the W P U made racist allusions to support votes for women. Scenes of the political boss's office included a black henchman, outfitted in top hat, tails, and cane, who pompously puffed on his cigar. The implication was clear: a black man held political power while white women were denied the vote. In her analysis of the suffrage movement's arguments, Aileen Kraditor has noted that the women appealed to racist impulses in their campaign for the vote, questioning a society that would grant the vote to black men but not to white women. 37 The Women's Political Union catered to dominant biases to expedite its cause. Nuances, however, abounded in 80 Million Women Want—?. One scene revolved around an episode in which the political boss selected a suffragist infiltrator for his secretary over a long line of other applicants because, according to the title card, he was "impressed with her appearance." The suffragists subtly conveyed a double message: a suffragist could easily stand out in a crowd with her beauty if a man were foolish enough to hire her on the basis of her looks. This artful scene told audiences that, while suffragists were attractive women, this was an unfair standard of judgment that belonged to the mentality of corrupt politicians. 37

Kraditor, Ideas of the Woman Suffrage

Movement,

25.

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The Women's Political Union celebrates winning the vote in one of the last scenes of Eighty Million Women Want—.'. Harnet Stanton Blatch is in the center behind the 'Votes for Women' sign.

Advertisements for the film expressed its dual images of suffragists. A full-page ad in Moving Picture World described the plot as "showing the pernicious activity of the 'boss' opposed by a beautiful 'Suffragette' who by a clever bit of detective work, saves her lover from jail, and who causes the boss's downfall by the aid of the SUFFRAGE PARTY." 3 8 If the image of rebellious but lovely suffragists failed to get bookings for the film, the ad continued with a pitch to commercial buyers that hailed 80 Million Women Want—? as "the biggest money-getter of a decade" and claimed that " n o more advertised personages can be found to-day" than the film's stars, Pankhurst and Blatch. Pankhurst was, indeed, a much "advertised personage" in 1913, and her numerous arrests piqued the public's interest in this seemingly notorious woman. When the WPU released 80 Million Women Want—? in November of 1913, Pankhurst travelled on the east coast speaking to packed houses on women's rights. On November 24, two weeks after the release of her film, the auditorium where she spoke was so full that over one thousand people had to be turned away. 38 The mass audiences Pankhurst attracted in 1913 reflected recent gains which the suffrage movement had made. Five states granted women the vote between 1910 and 1914, a rapid acceleration of progress over the fourteen years prior to 1910, when suffrage failed to gain even a single state. And, for the first time, Congress debated woman suffrage in 1913. Representatives to the NAWSA convention in November of 1913 excitedly discussed the movement's new momentum and its growing use of dramatic propaganda. 3

" Advertisement. Moving Picture World, 18, 8 Nov. 1913, 626. "Big Throng Hears Mrs. Pankhurst," New York Times, 25 Nov. 1913, 3.

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One woman reported that "suffrage in graphic and dramatic form is more than ever in demand." 4 0 The suffragists used dramatic forums wherever they found them: at a showing of a play, Her Own Money, at the Belasco Theatre in early 1914, suffragists decorated the theatre with colorful banners and streamers. 41 In Rhode Island, suffragists held a "Theatre Day," when "every theater and moving picture house is asked to present a suffrage play: to have a suffrage speaker between the acts; to run a moving picture film or in some other way recognize suffrage d a y . " 4 2 Commercial interests soon noticed the lucrative potential for profit in suffragism's dramatic tactics. After the release of Votes for Women in 1912, NAWSA found 1913 a boom year for publicity opportunities. The convention minutes of that year noted a rise in "propositions from people outside the suffrage movement for raising sums of money by combining commercial enterprises with suffrage w o r k . " Film industrialists, for whom profit mattered far more than politics, were eager to work with suffragists at the same time they were producing an abundance of suffrage comedies. Thomas Edison, whose company produced numerous suffrage parodies, is reported to have collaborated with NAWSA to make a "talking-moving-picture reel" for use in suffrage campaigns. The shrewd Edison may have been among those first in line at the suffragists' door when dollar signs appeared in movement propaganda. 4 3 NAWSA proved so receptive to the film industry's new approaches that in 1914 the organization had two films underway at once, each unknown to the makers of the other. Both films were planned on grand scales to surpass the earlier melodramas. Noting that the Women's Political Union had just released 80 Million Women Want—?, the more conventional suffragists of NAWSA competitively claimed that the Association was devising " a very big ambitious moving-picture plan, partly worked out, which will quite excel [sic] any previous thing of the s o r t . " It is an indication of N A W S A ' s confused leadership and lack of communication that the suffragists had to abandon this film when they discovered that one of their national officers, Ruth Hanna (Mrs. Medill) McCormick, was close to completing another film, Your Girl and Mine. Unaware of the film planned by NAWSA headquarters in New York, McCormick had collaborated with Lewis J. Selznick's World Film Company without notifying her colleagues. An undercurrent of frustration with NAWSA tactics surfaced in her statement on the origins of Your Girl and Mine. "Realizing that the suffragists . . . spend most of their time talking to each other in public, I felt it was necessary to try and originate a means of really reaching the public." 4 4 N A W S A ' s miscommunications over the

"NAWSA Handbook (1913), 20. 41 "Congressional Union Campaign Propaganda W o r k , " The Suffragist. 2, 10 J a n . 1914, 2. " "The Nation-Wide Suffrage D a y , " The Suffragist. 2, 18 April 1914, 6. °NAWSA Handbook (1913). 20, and (1914), 45. " McQuade, " Y o u r Girl and Mine," 764.

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films, however, indicated that they should have spent more time talking to themselves in private. Though the suffragists of 1914 had produced three films, made numerous slide shows, and had frequently spoken in person before nickelodeon audiences, 45 McCormick hinted that the movement had not yet used film to its full potential, and she immodestly touted her film as the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the suffrage movement. She envisioned a melodrama that would wring tears from its viewers and sway hearts to the plight of powerless women. Determined that her film would succeed, she shared power over the film with the director Giles Warren, casting some of the actresses and actors herself and conferring daily with Warren during production.46 McCormick's first goal for the film was that it "would appeal to every man and woman regardless of whether they knew anything about the suffrage movement or cared anything about it." 47 In an effort first to draw crowds and second to argue for suffragism, Your Girl and Mine blended lively entertainment with propaganda. The melodrama filled seven reels with spectacular action, following the troubled marriage between a wealthy young woman and her abusive husband. When the husband used the heroine's money to buy liquor, the title card quoted his dramatic lines: "I am absolute master here," he told his wife, along with "under the law your money is also mine." Upon the death of the manipulative husband, the heroine discovered that her problems had just begun, for the villain had maliciously bequeathed their two daughters to their paternal grandfather. But the heroine's Aunt Jane, a suffragist described as "the good angel of the helpless and downtrodden," secured a court ruling and rescued the children from the clutches of their grandfather, who had put one of them to work in a cannery. 48 In the final scenes, the governor signed a bill granting women the vote, assuring the female half of the population that they would be able to protect their rights. Your Girl and Mine's happy ending repeated the conclusions of all three previous suffrage films: after women won the vote, the beautiful heroine headed to the altar with the state's lieutenant governor, who had converted to the suffrage "cause." Apparently, the victimized heroine of Your Girl and Mine appealed to the compassion of audiences, as she conquered a legal system that granted men total power over the lives of women and children. The film 45

See NAWSA Handbook (1914), 113, 137, 171, 172. James S. McQuade, "Chicago Letter," Moving Picture World, 21,26 Sept. 1914,1782. 47 McQuade, "Your Girl and Mine," 764. 48 Original synopsis of Your Girl and Mine, ms.. Motion Picture Division, Library of Congress. 44

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touched the early film theorist and poet Vachel Lindsay. He praised the film's symbolic figure of the suffrage movement, a woman labelled the Goddess of Suffrage," who entered the melodrama "at critical periods, clothed in white, solemn and royal," to point out "the moral of each situation." 49 Lindsay noted that the character found a real-life counterpart in Jane Addams, doing "justice to that breed of woman amid the sweetness and flowers . . . of the photoplay story." The suffragists understood that thorny subjects could be concealed in "sweetness and flowers," and, as far as the reviewers were concerned, their hearts were won. Struck by the beautiful suffrage "goddess," one reviewer surmised that . . if all suffragettes were as fair to look upon, it is safe to say that Votes for Women' would be a reality in every state in the Union today." 50 The suffragists who chose attractive actresses to play their film counterparts recognized that physical beauty could win men's attention where arguments often failed. A Photoplay journalist even nominated his favorite actress for future suffrage films: William Henry yearned to see Cleo Madison in a suffrage melodrama, and he claimed that "Jane Addams and other loyal suffragettes are overlooking an awfully good bet in Cleo Madison. With the lovely but militant Cleo at their head, the suffragettes could capture the vote for their sex." 5 1 The positive reception of Your Girl and Mine initially suggested that attractive heroines and appeal to emotionalism could win the movement new support. When McCormick first showed her prized film in Chicago, the town's most prestigious citizens filled the theatre and enthusiastically applauded its dramatic title cards. The New York Times publicized the film's "ga!a opening performance" and the "unjust social conditions" it exposed, while Moving Picture World claimed that Your Girl and Mine proved that "moving pictures . . . will accomplish more for the cause than all that eloquent tongues have done since the movement was started." Everything pointed to success for the melodrama: press coverage was thorough and positive, audiences responded strongly, and Your Girl and Mine was scheduled to tour the nation's commercial theatres. 51 Unfortunately, after all its publicity and expense, the suffrage movement's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" never fulfilled its high expectations. A solitary footnote in Ida Husted Harper's volume of the massive History of « Lindsay, The Art of the Moving Picture (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 230-31. 50 Anon., Has Initial Showing," Motography, 12, 31 Oct. 1914, 589. 11 Henry, "Cleo the Craftswoman," Photoplay, 9, Jan. 1916, 109. a Anon., " H a s Initial Showing," 589; "Suffrage Play On Road," New York Times, 21 Dec. 1913, 9; McQuade, "Your Girl and Mine," 764; "Suffrage Play On Road," 9.

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Woman Suffrage barely nodded to the film, briefly commenting that McCormick "spent a large amount of time and money on this play, hoping it would yield a good revenue to the [NAWSA], but the arrangement with the Film Corporation proved impossible and it finally had to be abandoned." 5 3 No further details of the schism were offered. The footnote is a sad testimony to the historical neglect given the suffrage films even at the hands of the movement's own historians. Suffrage archives reveal no additional information on the conflict between McCormick and World Films that relegated the film to noncommercial showings. It must have been with great disappointment that McCormick presented her film as a gift to NAWSA in 1915 at the Association's 46th Convention, where it was placed on the nightly entertainment program." Her criticism of the movement as "suffragists talking to themselves" had become regrettably true of Your Girl and Mine. Though the film proved to be a financial disappointment, suffragists used it in their state campaigns and it even found its way into Canada, where the Montreal Suffrage Association showed it for fund-raising and p u b l i c i t y . T h e failure of Your Girl and Mine probably discouraged the suffragists; while they continued to use theatres for their slide shows,^ the suffragists apparently made no other films. The effect of the suffrage movement's films on winning support for their cause is difficult to determine, but they are invaluable today for the picture they paint of a society caught between Victorian mores, progressive issues, and the impulse toward freer sex roles. The weapons wielded by both sides of the suffrage issue surface in the films. Myth was fought with myth, as the suffragists accepted the dominant image of women as morally superior and used it to their own advantage. The suffragists stepped onto the traditional "pedestal" and it became a soapbox from which they preached, urging that women's inherent ethical sensibilities could not be wasted solely on the family when male-run politics were rampant with corruption. Thus the contradictions that characterized the suffrage movement in the twentieth century emerged repeatedly in the silent films. Conservative ideas of female superiority, upper-class benevolence, and racial issues " Ida Husted Harper, ed.. History of Woman Suffrage (New York: J. J. Little and Ives, 1922), 5:425. 44 NAWSA Handbook (1915), 17. 55 Catherine Lyle Cleverdon, The Woman Suffrage Movement in Canada (Toronto: Univ. of wToronto Press, 1950), 223. "The Election Campaign," The Suffragist, 4, 21 Oct. 1916, 5.

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surfaced alongside demands for wider roles for women, the dismantling of political machines, and attention to the needs of the working classes. The image of men in the movement's films fluctuated between one of villainous tyrants and weak-willed, insensitive "heroes" who needed women to elevate them. The suffragists' films both lectured male audiences on their inferior moral status, and catered to male egos with attractive actresses. According to the films, men needed women to care for them and the sharpwitted, beautiful suffragists could do the job best. Though the movement bowed to the expectations of movie audiences with attractive heroines, racist implications, and fairy-tale romance, an angry undercurrent rumbled beneath its cinematic gestures of conciliation. The frustrations and resentment that accumulated against a male power structure during the long suffrage struggle seethed beneath the movement's films. Several later commercial melodramas applauded the suffragists' long persistent efforts for political equality, continuing the appeal for votes for women. The Woman in Politics (Thanhouser 1916), One Law for Both (Abramsom 1917), and Maurice Tourneur's spectacular Woman (1918) raised issues surrounding the political and economic inequality of women. It is perhaps not surprising, however, that the film debate over suffragism ended in 1919 with a comedy that reflected ambivalence over women's changing roles. Experimental Marriage (Select Pictures) told a different story about independent women. Starring Constance Talmadge, this comedy featured a newly married couple who lived together only on weekends, since the wife's suffrage work demanded her full attention during the week. Marriage and a political career belonged in two separate worlds in Experimental Marriage. Described by one reviewer as a "thoroughly modern young woman of lovable disposition," 57 this flighty heroine finally sacrificed her work for a traditional marriage. Thus the early comic themes of antisuflfrage parodies survived World War I. If independent women were not members of a strange third sex, then they were indecisive, silly creatures who needed the love and guidance of a patient man. On the screen world of 1919, when woman suffrage was imminent, a comic suffragist could be attractive and "lovable." Experimental Marriage, however, indicated that the country would defuse the new political role of women by attaching an image of helplessness and irrationality to these would-be independent women. This last comedy 57

123.

Hanford C. Judson,

Experimental Marriage,"" Moving Picture World. 40, 5 April 1919,

WOMAN SUFFRAGE made the final film statement on suffragism: America could tolerate "liberated" women as long as they hid their strength behind a guise of frailty and indecision. Overt power would remain unacceptable for women in the decades to come. From their earliest years, the movies capitalized on sexual politics in America. Suffrage comedies and melodramas offered their audiences far more than entertainment when they reflected and then magnified sexual tensions, and theatre screens became a battleground for an ideological war that often forgot the real issue of woman suffrage. The suffrage debate set loose sexual apprehensions that extended far beyond the ballot and shook the roots of masculine and feminine identity. A brazen young film industry stepped without hesitation into the midst of the conflict for both profit and propaganda: in the process it exposed the insecurities of a nation of moviegoers.*

* The author wishes to thank the Bette Clair McMurray Foundation of Dallas, Texas, for grants subsidizing the acquisition and screening of the films discussed in this article.

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Woman Suffrage in the Progressive Era: Patterns of Opposition and Support in Referenda Voting, 1910-1918 EILEEN L . MCDONAGH Northeastern University H . DOUGLAS PRICE Harvard University

Sources of opposition and support for woman suffrage are analyzed with the use of the responses of male voters to constitutional referenda held in six key states during the Progressive era. Traditional axes of opposition and support for suffrage are examined, establishing that stable sources of suffrage support originate most often from Protestant and northern European constituencies (with the exception of Germans), whereas southern Europeans and Catholics (except for Germans) generally show no consistent patterns. Opposition to suffrage is most constant from Germans—both Catholic and Protestant—and from urban constituencies. A structural model indicating the greater importance of prohibition as an intervening variable compared to partisanship or turnout at the grass-roots level of voting behavior explicates the sources of direct and indirect support for suffrage while it also demonstrates the influence of educational commitment in determining suffrage voting patterns. Except in the West, opposition to suffrage was intense and greater at the grass-roots level than among legislative elites. The ultimate success of the federal amendment is discussed in the context of state referenda, the changed political climate after American entry into World War I, and the innovative efforts of state legislatures to grant "presidential" suffrage, thereby circumventing what proved to be the difficult referenda route. We begin with a question: In what decade have increased use of state referenda, national debate over the rights of women, the political rise of the western states, and intense divisions over proper roles for women been an important feature of American politics? Obviously, the past decade is one answer, but an equally appropriate answer is

Received: September 27, 1983 Revision received: September 15, 1984 Accepted for publication: November 9, 1984 An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1982 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Denver, Colorado. The authors thank Professors Hayward R. Alker, Jr., William H. Flanigan, John E. Jackson, Paul Kleppner, J. Morgan Kausser, Edward C. McDonagh, and David Rochefort as well as Ken Feingold, Jennifer Jackman, and anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions and criticisms and thank Mark Crimp for his programming assistance. Editor's note: Please note that on some tables and appendices editor's notes (in parentheses) clarify locations of those tables and appendicies.

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1910 to 1920. In that period both woman suffrage and a host of reform issues moved from the periphery of politics, becoming in some cases— such as woman suffrage and prohibition—amendments to the federal Constitution. Woman suffrage now appears uncontroversial, inevitable, and simply part of the larger question of women's rights, whereas prohibition's legacy is principally that of an unfortunate political aberration. At the time, however, both were achieved by major political campaigns involving elected political elites in state and national legislatures as well as the mass electorate empowered to vote on state constitutional referenda. Recent defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment significantly links the era of woman suffrage referenda to the politics of our own times. As a noted historian put it, "the most dramatic ramification for scholarship" of the ERA is "the esteem in which the [successfulj woman's suffrage movement is held," including the effectiveness of such leaders as Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul (Pieck, 1982, p. 3). Woman Suffrage: Historical Overview Before examining the neglected research opportunities at the mass electoral level, it may be useful to review the struggle for woman suffrage which formally began in 1848 with the Seneca Falls convention. Given the American federal system, full woman suffrage could be obtained either by federal constitutional amendment or piecemeal by state constitutional amendments. Early women's rights leaders viewed the ties between the suffrage and abolition movements as guaranteeing enfranchisement of both blacks and women after the Civil War (Flexner, 1975).' These expectations This project was supported in part by a grant from Northeastern University's Research and Scholarship Development Fund and Harvard University's Clark Fund. The data utilized in this research were made available in part by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. Neither the original source or collectors of the data or the Consortium bear any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here. 'Flexner (1975) provides an excellent general account of the suffrage movement in the United States. For the most detailed account, see Anthony et al. (1881-1922).

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

were soon dashed by Republican political leaders, who found it virtually impossible to maneuver even black suffrage (for which there was both an ideological and a partisan advantage) past a generally hostile white male electorate and consequently judged there was no hope at all for woman suffrage.1 In 1869 the woman's suffrage movement divided into the National organization favoring a federal amendment via congressional lobbying, and the American organization, committed to state-by-state change via state constitutional amendment. Owing to insurmountable political obstacles at the congressional level, the strategy of the latter initially prevailed. When the two movements joined forces in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association, an era ensued of literally hundreds of state campaigns. In the words of one of the most important veterans of this period:

To get the word "male" in effect out of the Constitution cost the women of the country fiftytwo years of pauseless campaign During that time they were forced to conduct 36 campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to get [state] legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 campaign* to get state constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into state constitutions; 277 campaigns to get state party conventions to include woman suffrage planks; 30 campaigns to get presidential party conventions to adopt woman suffrage planks in party platforms, and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses. (Catt & Shuler, 1926, p. 107)

From 1910 to 1920 efforts were made to hold referenda on woman suffrage in most non-

'Dykstra and Hahn (1968) establish that white electorates after the Civil War consistently voted down state referenda extending the franchise to blacks. DuBois (1978) presents a superb analysis of the difficulties of the woman suffrage movement in relation to black suffrage in the context of Kansas referenda in the Reconstruction era.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

southern states.' In some, the state legislature or governor blocked the move, but in a majority the issue ultimately was put to the voters (all male). Although there were early successes in the West, in all other regions the going proved much more difficult. 4 In fact, Kansas became the only state east of the Rocky Mountains to approve full woman suffrage before American entry into World War I in 1917. By contrast, prohibition gained strength first in the southern and border states, and after 1912 scored victories in the West.' An important legal difference between prohibition and state campaigns for full woman suffrage was that the latter could not be won by local option at the town or county level. Yet one important loophole enabled women in a given state to •Women in the South were slower to mobilize in support of suffrage. However, southern white leaden also had a morbid fear of any precedent of federal involvement in regard to the electorate. See Kousser (1974) for the definitive account of the turn-of-the-century disfranchisement Such support for suffrage as there was in the South generally was limited to the loophole of permitting women to vote in the primaries (usually decisive, and open only to whites), or later favoring state passage of a full suffrage provision in hope of avoiding the federal amendment. The territorial legislature of Washington had twice enacted legislation (1883 to 1886) to grant the vote to women, but both acts were voided on technicalities by the antisuffrage, Democratic-controlled state Supreme Court. (See the scathing discussion by Ostrogorski (1893, pp. 66-69).) Finally, in 1910 the state of Washington inaugurated a surprisingly successful round of suffrage referenda in the West with an almost two-to-one victory. California's Hiram Johnson, elected Governor in 1910, made woman suffrage part of his comprehensive 1911 reform package, and it was narrowly approved. In 1912 Oregon voters reversed themselves, approving suffrage narrowly. Ten of the remaining 11 western states fell into line by 1914 (Duniway, 1971; Larsen, 1971). The lone exception in the West was New Mexico, where a constitutional amendment had to be approved by three-quarters of the legislature, then by three-quarters of the voters, including two-thirds of all those voting in each county (Scott & Scott, 1982, pp. 132-136). 'Until American entry into World War I, the existence of statewide prohibition was of little assistance to the suffrage campaign, because it was concentrated

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

obtain by legislative action (rather than constitutional referendum) the right to vote for presidential electors, as provided by Article II, Section 2, of the federal Constitution, which states (in part): Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress' (italics added) This possibility came to the fore in 1913 in the state of Illinois where a vigorous campaign in the legislature for a partial suffrage bill succeeded despite intense opposition from the liquor and wet interest (Catt & Shuler, 1926, pp. 189-195). The Illinois law demonstrated powerfully a new type of suffrage campaign, opening an alternative route that did not require direct popular approval. Furthermore, the impact of this partial woman suffrage was brought to bear on the single office of most concern to the political parties, the presidency, thereby contributing to the eventual inclusion of the woman suffrage issue on the political agendas that determine national party politics.6 Table 1 summarizes the pattern of state ap-

either in the South (which was well-nigh hopeless for suffrage), or in the West (where suffrage had been achieved). Rather, the agitation for prohibition made the political situation more difficult for suffrage (Bordin, 1981; Epstein, 1981). On the other hand, in the West the existence of woman suffrage may well have helped the prohibition movement since Washington, Oregon, and Arizona each adopted prohibition either at the first or the second election after adopting woman suffrage. •As of mid-1920 and before ratification of the federal amendment, the presidential-suffrage states accounted for 173 electoral votes (excluding Michigan, which adopted full suffrage a year after the legislature approved the presidential vote) and full suffrage states (including the two admitted from territorial status with woman suffrage) accounted for 137 electoral votes. Thus, at the time of ratification of the national suffrage amendment, women already had either total suffrage or the presidential vote in states with 310 of the then 531 electoral votes. This total does not include Arkansas and Texas, which by 1920 had granted women the right to vote in primaries only.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

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