Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot 0190850361, 9780190850364

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Suffrage and the City

Suffrage and the City New York Women Battle for the Ballot

Lauren C. Santangelo

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1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978–​0–​19–​085036–​4 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Ben and Hudson, these “letters” are for you.

Contents

Acknowledgments, ix Introduction, 1 1. “The Wickedness of the Masses”: The Perils of Suffrage, 1870–​1894, 8 2. Becoming “A Lover of the Metropolis,” 1895–​1906, 33 3. Ushering in a “New Era,” 1907–​1909, 50 4. Geographies of Suffrage, 1910–​1913, 76 5. “Suffrage ‘Owns’ City,” 1913–​1915, 99 6. From Confrontation to Collaboration, 1916 and 1917, 124 Epilogue, 149 Appendix: Key Suffrage Organizations in Manhattan, 155 Notes, 157 Selected Bibliography, 225 Index, 245

Acknowledgments

One daydreaming strategy I  developed while struggling with a difficult text or after having a challenging day at the archives was to envision writing these acknowledgments. Thinking about all those who had shaped the project provided a helpful respite and critical momentum. Now that the time has arrived, though, actually expressing my gratitude seems like an overwhelming task as my debt—​both personal and professional—​is immense. Robyn Rosen and Lynn Eckert at Marist College inspired an unsure undergraduate to question the status quo. In graduate school at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, I benefited from Kathleen D. McCarthy’s generosity, dedication, and rigor. Every graduate student should be so lucky to have someone like Kathy as a dissertation adviser, and as a friend. This work was possible only because of her unceasing support. Carol Berkin, Gerald Markowitz, Sarah Deutsch, Kitty Sklar, Dagmar Herzog, Maureen Flanagan, Elisabeth Israels Perry, Susan Goodier, and Thomas Kessner provided feedback at critical junctures in the writing and thinking process. A fellowship with the Center for Place, Culture and Politics proved serendipitous as it took place just as I  was thinking more about the relationship between metropolis and movement. At Lehman College, Cindy Lobel pushed me to become a better historian—​and a better teacher of history. She was a role model whose support, kindness, and humor I miss dearly. And, I would be remiss to not recognize the works of suffrage that have provided anchors when I  felt unmoored in the archive:  Ellen Carol DuBois’s Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage, Susan Goodier’s No Votes for Women, and David Kevin McDonald’s “Organizing Womanhood.”

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Acknowledgments

As a graduate student, I  was fortunate to receive funding from the City University of New  York’s Graduate Center with an E.  P. Thompson fellowship, a Center for Place, Culture and Politics fellowship, and a Sponsored Chancellor’s fellowship as well as funding from the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of New York. A Bernard and Irene Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellowship from the New-​York Historical Society and the New School’s Eugene Lang College allowed me to continue researching and working in New  York after completing my dissertation. Princeton University and its University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences has supported the project as it neared completion. I could not envision a more collegial space in which to finish this manuscript than Princeton’s Writing Program. Amanda Irwin Wilkins has built a truly special place, filled with brilliant and caring people who thrive on each other’s and our students’ successes. Thank you especially to Shannon Winston and Gen Creedon for quite literally making Princeton my “home away from home.” I am grateful to Nancy Toff and Oxford University Press for helping this first-​time book author navigate publication. Every time the process seemed like a dark labyrinth, Nancy and Elizabeth Vaziri stood ready to shine a bright light. The anonymous readers for the manuscript provided comments that managed to be detailed, rigorous, and supportive. The final product is better for them. Portions of c­ hapter 1 were initially published in “‘The Merry War Goes On’: Elite Suffrage in Gilded Age New York,” New York History (Summer/​Fall 2017); the journal generously granted permission to republish them. On a more personal note, my parents have encouraged my curiosity; this book is a testament to my family’s patience and boundless love. The Hados reminded me that there is a world outside the archives. Logan McBride, Thomas Hafer, and Paula Austin have served as thoughtful readers of these pages and (less thoughtful readers) of many a text message. My friendship with Paula has sustained this project. And, those in Beacon have ensured that my house is one filled with laughter, acceptance, and celebration. That house would not be a home, though, if it were not for my partner, Laura, and children, Ben and Hudson. Laura has shaped more than this book project; she has created a life for us that a decade ago I  could barely have imagined. Ben and Hudson have enhanced this life immeasurably—​and it is to them that this book is dedicated. I hope one day they can find confidence, conviction, and courage in these “letters.”

Introduction

“Suffrage Fight Won in Cities,” one headline bellowed. “Greater New  York Carried State to Suffrage Victory,” another announced. “Suffragists Lost Up-​ State by 3,856,” cried a third.1 The newspaper headlines captured an unexpected twist in suffrage history. Empire State men had agreed in November 1917 to amend the state constitution to enfranchise women. This part many anticipated. But, that Gotham carried the vote, more than compensating for the deficit outside the metropolis, astonished pundits, residents, and movement leaders alike.2 In retrospect, their surprise itself puzzles. After all, New York City claimed an organized movement as old as the state’s. The New  York City Woman Suffrage League began in 1870, and from then until victory, Gotham boasted at least one dedicated association. Moreover, funding from city residents helped keep the campaign afloat during its darkest years. Manhattan provided a home to both the national and state associations. And, the city served as the backdrop for the campaign’s most spectacular displays:  brilliant parades brought Midtown Manhattan to a standstill as thousands of men and women marched in a near-​annual ritual supporting the ballot in the 1910s. New York City was not some remote outpost, without organization or management; it served as the movement’s epicenter. Still, the state split in 1917 baffled reporters enough that they spent precious headline space on it. Why did people react with such wonderment to these results? Why had pundits not forecasted them? Why did those closest to the campaign, its own leaders, seem bemused? And how did Gotham end up in this position in the first place, carrying the state to victory in 1917? These questions drive Suffrage and the City as it traces the sometimes empowering, frequently frustrating, but

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always complicated dynamic between gender, urbanization, and the women’s rights movement. Although leaders ultimately benefited from New  York’s restaurants and hotels, its busy streets and feminized retail districts, and its national publishing houses and burgeoning film industry, many initially fell somewhere between ambivalence and apprehension in their appraisals of the metropolis. In the heterogeneous, anonymous city, middle-​class activists encountered a mosaic of public spaces dominated by men and ostensibly perilous to “respectable” women. Lobbyists had to curate a specific political choreography attuned to urban etiquette, violence, subcultures, and spaces in order to build a diverse constituency and ultimately triumph at the polls. They had to claim a “right to the city,” a tedious step unnecessary in more rural regions where advocates first achieved the ballot.3 New York City was more than a setting for suffrage action; it was an essential part of the drama in women’s decades-​long quest for the state franchise and a national amendment. In the late nineteenth-​century and early twentieth-​century national imagination, Gotham claimed a rarefied place. “No great city on earth is in so constant and rapid a state of flux as New York,” a 1916 travel handbook expounded. “A guide book to Rome may stand without revision for a dozen years or a score of years  .  .  .  [but a] New  York guide book half as old would be most annoyingly out of date.”4 This frenetic energy was partly a result of the city’s divided elite. Unlike in Boston, where a coherent, monied world set the pace for urban development, New  York’s upper crust struggled to unify and wield such authority, permitting commerce and consumption to unceasingly reconstruct the streetscape as often as profitable.5 No building, avenue, or district seemed sacrosanct in the country’s largest metropolis. The National American Woman Suffrage Association’s president, Anna Howard Shaw, cheered this vitality, swearing that had she not owned a home in Philadelphia, she “would get one near N. York and settle down there within reach of human alive people instead of fossils.”6 New  York City’s relentless population growth added to the dynamism. Fewer than 1.5 million people resided in Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, and Brooklyn combined in 1870, when the movement began to crystallize there. Some 5.6 million people lived in New York City when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920—​a 273 percent increase. Half that number dwelled in Chicago, Gotham’s closest rival. Two million people, including 193,000 Russian, 184,000 Italian, and 116,000 Irish immigrants, crammed onto Manhattan alone in 1920. Some had resided there for decades, others for months; some arrived through Ellis Island, others traveled through Grand Central Terminal.7 Six hundred miles of streets, 1,300 banks and banking

Introduction    3 houses, 280 colleges and academies, 125 places of amusement, 600 hotels, 3,000 restaurants, 5,600 saloons, and 225 hospitals filled the landscape.8 Bustling streets, ethnic enclaves, and a unique cacophony could instantly overwhelm a person trying to absorb urban rhythms in their entirety. Still, women, like men, flocked to the metropolis for jobs, for leisure, for family, and for the future. At a moment when the number of women enrolling in higher education programs was rapidly increasing, the city contained dozens of training schools and colleges opened exclusively to them, most notably Barnard, as well as coeducational institutions.9 Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s roughly thirty nursing schools attracted even more women.10 Some crisscrossed the metropolis providing aid to struggling residents and campaigning to clean up the urban environment; almost one hundred thousand toiled in roughly three thousand garment factories.11 Money—​even in limited supply—​empowered these women to access the locale’s famed amusement parks, legendary department stores, and numerous nickelodeons.12 Gotham’s financial might and cultural sway attracted voluntary and reform associations, including the Young Woman’s Christian Association, the College Settlements Association, and the National Consumers’ League.13 Within the city then, women carved out feminized spaces and a public presence as consumers, professionals, socialites, and laborers. Suffrage would add political activist to this list of identities for many. Not all Americans celebrated New York women’s growing urban visibility. Some fretted about the “women adrift” who moved away from their families to come to turn-​of-​the-​century Gotham without friends or money.14 They worried about these women’s safety, concerned that the newcomers would succumb to the maelstrom of temptations whirling around them. Others proved openly hostile to the shifts in metropolitan gender norms, stewing that society had grown too genteel, brooding that office work impinged upon men’s masculinity, and condemning middle-​class women for emasculating society through their ambition and their ubiquity on city streets—​a startling departure from accepted custom.15 Lamenting the “Gynarchy[’s]” power, author Michael Monahan dubbed New York “the most feminized of the great cities of the world and therefore the flightiest, the most irrational and the least given to serious things.”16 Monahan was not entirely wrong. Other cities certainly attracted women searching for opportunities and housed feminized spaces. Much smaller, Davenport, Iowa, drew women looking for employment in department stores, textile factories, and button manufacturing.17 But New York City did so on an unprecedented scale. The metropolis contained twice the number of employed women as its closest competitor, Chicago.18 That Manhattan served as the

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national hub for entertainment and information provided people near and far a unique window into New York City’s culture, politics, and economy.19 The suffrage movement blossomed amid these changes, intersecting with and accelerating them. It played a critical role in destabilizing an urban gendered geography that had long reinscribed bourgeois women’s dependent status on men. From dining at restaurants to traveling on streets, metropolitan etiquette demanded that women have chaperones. Doing otherwise indicated a woman’s sexual availability in nineteenth-​century New York. Not all residents could achieve this ideal, of course, as race and class structured individuals’ realities.20 But the expectation’s very existence deputized residents to patrol a woman’s behavior and provided subtle reminders of her circumscribed power, as did her disfranchised state. Suffragists would learn that fighting for one meant combating the other. This book tracks how the Gotham movement came to accept that lesson. It joins and connects two different subfields of gender history:  those looking at gendered urbanity and those studying the women’s rights movement. The former has peeled back rich layers of women’s experiences in cities:  recovering the rhythm of the everyday; the nexuses of class, ethnicity, race, and gender; metropolitan spaces of empowerment; and even the gendered rituals around urban foodways.21 Suffrage and the City is especially indebted to Sarah Deutsch’s Women and the City, which did much to inspire the most recent scholarship by showing the ways in which race and class shaped Boston’s gendered geography.22 Historians of suffrage have had different priorities, tracing leadership strategies; excavating nativism, classism, and racism in campaign decisions; examining consumerist tactics; and illuminating the performance inherent in suffrage spectacles, among them.23 Most recently, scholars have focused their attention on the movement in the Empire State, analyzing everything from the anti-​suffrage drive to the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage.24 Rarely, though, have suffrage scholars been in dialogue with those studying the gendered metropolis—​despite the fact that the census officially found more Americans living in cities than outside of them in the same year that the Nineteenth Amendment removed masculinity as a qualification for voting. Suffrage and the City changes that, methodologically borrowing from one of the few works that bridge the divide, Jessica Ellen Sewell’s scholarship on suffrage and San Francisco, to uncover how movement leaders read the nation’s most crowded metropolis and approached its forever-​changing built environment, all in an effort to corral its diverse and divided masses.25 As Allison L.  Sneider has demonstrated in her work on imperialism and suffrage, it is imperative that we situate the women’s rights movement within its larger historical context—​in

Introduction    5 my case urbanization and urbanity, in Sneider’s empire-​building—​to uncover such subtle, but formative, intersections.26 Understanding the city as a dynamic environment in an investigation of the suffrage campaign destabilizes historical ground. With all its physical changes, population growth, and commercial development, the metropolis becomes its own entity that merits constant attention. But this method yields immense benefits: illuminating the specific political choreography necessary for organizers to win the vote in urban landscapes, highlighting the gendered nature of space and etiquette, and providing a more textured reading of the suffrage movement attuned not only to changes over time but also to the importance of place. The method also suggests a new answer to a long-​standing question in the literature:  Why did women in the West (Wyoming in 1869, Utah in 1870 and then again in 1896, Colorado in 1893, and Idaho in 1896) receive the ballot first? Answers have ranged from frontier conditions requiring greater collaboration between the sexes to the existence of fewer legislative hurdles in western territories (compared with established states).27 But we need to add the absence of metropolises like New  York, Boston, Chicago, or San Francisco to the list; suffragists’ assumptions about cities informed campaign priorities and strategies. Admittedly, in investigating suffragists’ “right to the city,” this book focuses on Manhattan at the expense of the other boroughs. That emphasis largely reflects movement priorities and leadership decisions, which centered the campaign in Midtown. It also pays particular attention to the constellation of professional women living in Gotham. Professionalization intersected with urbanization and the women’s right movement to refashion women’s quotidian experience at the turn of the century. Nurses, actresses, and teachers serve as windows into these changes in the work that follows: nursing because it was a newly emerging profession that put women into intimate contact with strangers; teaching because of the long-​standing feminized nature of a career in which women were expected to shape a new generation of voters; and actresses because of their celebrity and unique ability to tell stories. In addition, the book tracks socialites’ participation—​the women whose wealth made it most comfortable to abide by and dictate urban etiquette, even if they chose to ignore it. These recruits joined a campaign managed by white, college-​educated, middle-​ class women. Working-​ class women, native-​ born and immigrant, black and white, certainly also participated; a few emerged as influential figures, and some organizations even created ethnic-​, class-​, and race-​based affiliated societies. But the face of the campaign remained markedly white and middle class, far from representative of the diverse metropolis. Class-​based and racialized notions of urban respectability both constrained and empowered

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these leaders. On one hand, they had to combat their own long-​ingrained instincts about demonstrating in public. On the other, they manipulated expectations of chivalry to stir outrage when the state failed to protect them from the “masses.” In all, gender restricted suffragists’ mobility in the urban environment at the same time that leaders’ race and class bestowed on them a privilege most working-​class, African American, or immigrant women would never know. Organizers left the records detailing their struggle scattered across the country, from archives in St. Louis, Missouri, to an old Astor estate in Red Hook, New York. Their suffrage flyers capture their most public of positions, and the personal diaries that remain preserve their most intimate of reflections. New York’s daily newspapers regularly provided details about the movement as well. Some ultimately supported it, while others, like the New York Times, remained opposed, ensuring contemporary readers and historians studying them access to a variety of editorial opinions. Combining the wide range of sources the campaign left behind and journalists’ diverse coverage of the movement with government records, tourist guides to the city, and fire insurance atlases allows us to unearth the exchange between movement leadership and metropolis. While largely a top-​down account, we can occasionally hear the voice of rank-​and-​file supporters in the pages that follow if we listen carefully as well. Our story starts in 1870 with the founding of the New York City Woman Suffrage League. League members regularly expressed concerns that cities endangered “respectable” women in the 1870s and 1880s, and these concerns informed early tactics and routines. The 1894 New York State Constitutional Convention disrupted these routines, as Manhattan socialites unexpectedly rushed into the enfranchisement crusade. Though unsuccessful in amending the state constitution, the convention demonstrated that under the right circumstances New York could provide the campaign with unprecedented resources. It helped to create the context for an urban identity to haltingly emerge in the late nineteenth century. Although it was empowering for city leaders, those outside the metropolis found the new identity disconcerting, even alarming. New  York City’s campaign stood independent of both the national and the state movement by the early twentieth century thanks, in part, to this defensive reaction. But it also lacked leadership. The retirement or death of the nineteenth-​century managers who had shepherded the drive through its earliest years set the stage for a new group to take over and fundamentally alter the power dynamic between city, state, and national movements with innovative (and provocative) tactics. Manhattan became the suffrage capital. These

Introduction    7 second-​generation leaders used spaces more strategically, although not always successfully, in the early 1910s. At the same time, organizers allied with public health nurses to navigate immigrant enclaves and capitalized on New York’s dramatic profession and film industry to reach a broader swath of the population, crystallizing the image of suffrage as a distinctly urban affair in the process. Lobbying reached a frenetic pace once the state amendment passed its first legislative hurdle in 1913 and a referendum seemed likely in 1915. Advocates reinforced the bridges they had already built with actresses, socialites, teachers, and nurses; they engaged in outreach to African American and immigrant men; and they canvassed the metropolis without respite. Such politicking emboldened suffragists to claim a “right to the city,” even reimagining what polling sites would look like should they achieve the ballot. Their empowered attitude, however, did not convince New York City’s men to support enfranchisement in 1915. During the second referendum campaign in 1917, collaboration with public officials replaced such confrontation. For years activists had aggressively claimed a “right to the city.” Now, they used that right to help the metropolis during a devastating polio outbreak and World War I. When Empire State women finally won the ballot in 1917, with Gotham carrying the state amendment, journalists struggled to wrap their heads around the sea change. New  York—​its diversity, size, spaces, etiquette, and rhythms—​cadenced the movement as suffragists learned to harness its resources. As the nation’s information and communication capital, the city had the infrastructure to advertise ideas and images from the campaign across the country and influence other state drives. Concerns about work in the city might have initially hampered suffrage leaders, but they learned to marshal its female social geography, the iconic places it housed, and the feminized spaces it nurtured, using all to their advantage. Their victory in Gotham sent shock waves across the nation. As much as it was a political victory, it was also a cultural victory. Politically, men no longer had exclusive control over forty-​five votes within the Electoral College. Logistically, the achievement proved that states with large urban centers might support the ballot. Culturally, the struggle for the franchise in the nation’s largest metropolis helped to redesign that metropolis and women’s, especially white, middle-​class women’s, place within it. The suffrage campaign, individuals, and organizations traced within these pages represent just one segment of a far larger, longer, and more diverse drive for voting rights in American history. But their strategies, decisions, and success left an indelible imprint on the city, the government, and women’s day-​to-​day lives.

1 “The Wickedness of the Masses” The Perils of Suffrage, 1870–​1894

In fall 1871, a seemingly dull article entitled “City and Country Houses” appeared in the Revolution, a suffrage newspaper founded by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. A reader expecting to settle into a study comparing home design in urban and rural settings was in for a surprise. The article contained a blistering review of metropolitan life—​one that clearly favored the rural over the urban. The anonymous author drew stark distinctions to hammer the point. Where the flowers and grass, piazzas and “climbing vines” served to make the country “humanizing, hospitable, and good,” the scribe detailed, the “corpselike” parlor windows, iron-​spiked fences, window gratings, and double locks created a hostile atmosphere in cities. The problem did not end there as the architecture reflected residents’ strikingly different understanding of community. Country folk might be intrusive, but the journalist believed they “mean[t]‌well.” Oblivious city residents, in contrast, caroused even while those in adjacent apartments mourned. The columnist predicted that newcomers would “perish” when left alone in such a soulless environment; “the wickedness of the masses” would quickly crush them.1 The article reflected an important thread in suffrage thought, one that proved particularly consequential for the Manhattan campaign during its earliest years. Activists in the 1870s and 1880s accepted and even helped reify a long-​ standing trope about urban danger when ruminating on New  York City. Gender increasingly colored this trope in the middle and late nineteenth century. With women pouring into the metropolis, commentators obsessed over the unknowable and potentially dangerous men that “respectable ladies” would

“The Wickedness of the Masses”    9 encounter daily.2 Suffrage organizers in Manhattan proved unwilling to challenge this belief and indeed reinscribed it in the Gilded Age. As a result, ambivalence and pessimism defined their approach to the nation’s largest city in the first two decades of campaign work. Where early twentieth-​century leaders would understand their metropolis as a mosaic of neighborhoods, these late nineteenth-​century pioneers saw an inscrutable monolith. This perspective prevented them from strategically approaching the city’s diverse enclaves, and generally confined their meetings to scattered private homes and commercial halls. Beliefs about metropolitan perils circumscribed their activities, while flickers of insight about New York’s strategic importance on the national stage only exacerbated their frustration. The New York State Constitutional Convention in 1894 disrupted this monotony and energized the New York City campaign. Lobbyists mobilized to an extent unthinkable even the year before. Wealthy women joined the cause in 1894, adding their signatures to petitions, opening their homes to meetings, and contributing their voices to hearings. An exclusive Manhattan restaurant hosted suffrage gatherings. Newspapers detailed the fashionable craze. Ultimately, though, metropolitan organizers proved unable to combat a belief that enfranchising women would damage democracy—​one with uniquely urban undertones that they themselves had legitimized. Decades before the 1894 Constitutional Convention, New York State acted as a chrysalis for the woman suffrage movement. Even prior to the famed 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, some women in New York campaigned for the ballot. In 1846, six Jefferson County women petitioned the New  York State Constitutional Convention to live up to “democratic principles” by recognizing women’s right to vote.3 The reform tradition rooted in the Burned-​over District’s evangelicalism combined with the Quaker population in western New York to make the state a generative landscape for organizing. With Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s decision to host the first women’s rights convention in the United States at Seneca Falls, the Empire State cemented its place in the campaign’s annals.4 Seneca Falls gained an especially revered position within movement memory in the decades following the groundbreaking convention.5 It took another two decades, though, for the cause to formally organize in New York State. The Civil War contributed to the delay, as relief work reordered suffrage priorities. But budding activists rallied in 1869 when the Empire State considered licensing prostitution. Appalled and frustrated by their inability to influence political decisions, a small band of women established the New York State Woman Suffrage Association.6 The next year, New York City advocates followed suit and began the New York City Woman Suffrage League.7 The Woman Suffrage League, which Lillie Devereux Blake managed, was

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Manhattan’s leading women’s rights organization throughout the late nineteenth century. A North Carolinian by birth, Blake grew up near Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Her first marriage to a Philadelphia lawyer ended tragically with her husband’s unexpected death, leaving Blake alone to care for their two young daughters on the eve of the Civil War. The twenty-​six-​year-​old turned to writing to earn an income for her struggling family. In 1863, she relocated to Manhattan, believing that Gotham held out the possibility for greater professional success. Writing, a new marriage, and caring for her daughters filled Blake’s daily routine during the 1860s. But, in 1869, she finally found the time and mustered the courage to satisfy a long-​standing curiosity about women’s rights and sought out suffragists. Their crusade quickly engrossed her. Colleagues would soon discover that they had recruited a headstrong and committed, if easily slighted, woman. Within a decade, Blake gained control of the state association, a position she held for more than a decade. She took charge of the city organization midway through her state presidency; Blake remained in that office for fourteen years.8 Her overlapping tenures at the city and state levels ensured she had an outsized influence on the women’s rights campaign and that both organizations moved in sync, at least until 1890 when a Rochester resident took charge of the state association. Blake and her peers understood that the Empire State could be pivotal for enfranchisement.9 Its symbolic and political weight might shift the nation toward women’s rights. But, in order to win New York State, their cause would need to gain traction in the state’s most important and complicated metropolis:  Manhattan. One member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association put it most colorfully when she announced, “I believe that it is about as much use to try to carry New  York for woman suffrage as to try to climb to the moon.”10 Victory seemed as far-​fetched as a nineteenth-​century moon landing thanks, in part, to Gotham’s immigrants and corporations. According to suffrage thinking, Old World patriarchal customs would make it difficult to convert those flooding Ellis Island. Advocates expected that their alliance with temperance reformers would further alienate the newcomers who they assumed regularly imbibed. The movement predicted that New York City’s status as the nation’s corporate headquarters would only compound these obstacles.11 Leaders felt confident that business magnates would resist any action that might increase the working-​class’s power. The violence of the Great Railroad Strike (1877), the Haymarket Affair (1886), and the Homestead Strike (1892) doubtless served to reinforce this perception. Organizers might have managed these concerns about immigration and corporations via strategic decision-​making if a more abstract and powerful

“The Wickedness of the Masses”    11 one about urban life did not exist. For many nineteenth-​century Americans, metropolises seemed pregnant with dangers. For one, they lacked clear boundaries; their streets threw men and women of all backgrounds together. The anonymity that characterized urban life heightened this sense of vulnerability. Unlike in rural districts, individuals could not expect to recognize those who stood next to them at a market or on a streetcar. They would not know the other person’s family or the location of their home, and would rightly expect to never see the person again. The anonymity erased the sense of security and accountability that familiarity bred.12 Early nineteenth-​century advice manuals teemed with dire predictions about the temptations young men would encounter when they left family farms to find jobs among these nameless masses. Gambling dens and prostitutes could corrupt them. “Confidence men” reportedly skulked, waiting to trick naïfs into friendships and then turn them into criminals.13 This maelstrom of diversity, anonymity, and congestion appeared particularly dangerous in Gotham, a city of extremes—​home to the country’s wealthiest individuals and its poorest.14 In 1852, the Young Men’s Christian Association opened in Manhattan in order to shield the “young stranger” from the “wicked city[’s]” “snares.”15 The press and publishing houses fueled this fear by churning out articles and books detailing the city’s growing underworld.16 Pickpockets, blackmailers, opium addicts, gangs, and murderers all resided in New York and tormented unsuspecting citizens, readers learned.17 The dangers inherent in urban life were thought especially threatening to bourgeois women.18 They not only had to agonize over all the perils men confronted; city streets also exposed them to everything from ogling to sexual assaults.19 Something as simple as visiting an acquaintance demanded a whole etiquette of calling.20 Those who dressed “conspicuously” (large hats, fancy lace, bright colors) exposed themselves to the male gaze and potentially snide and sexual taunts.21 A woman needed to show “reserve” on city streets, an etiquette manual decreed, and act “oblivious of those whom she does not include within her circle of friends.”22 Some, like the Salvation Army’s “Slum Sisters” or the Charity Organization Society’s “friendly visitors,” could cloak their public actions in religion and morality to navigate this map of propriety—​ a tradition that dated back to the early nineteenth century.23 But the majority of women could claim no such protective mantle. New  York State suffragists responded to discussions about legalizing prostitution by championing women without confronting this gendered geography.24 The most infamous licensing policies came out of Britain in the 1860s. The Contagious Disease Acts empowered policemen in specified areas to force women they accused of prostitution to undergo internal examinations

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for venereal disease. Following this model, municipal authorities from San Francisco to Chicago to New York City considered regulating women’s bodies as a way to ensure the health of men soliciting “fallen” women.25 In Gotham’s case, the proposal called for the creation of a board that would license “houses of prostitution and assignation” as well as report on the medical “condition of the prostitutes licensed under the act.”26 As middle-​ class women, suffragists could have easily accepted this proposed policy, considering it either irrelevant to their own lives or a way to protect them from male peers who might take up with “women of the night.” Indeed, at least one woman, “A Mother, and a Woman of Sad Experiences,” did write the Revolution to make this argument.27 While the Revolution took on a more moderate tone following Anthony’s and Stanton’s departures in 1870, the editors still vehemently refused to accept this “Mother[’s]” rationale: “We say that legalization does not insure public health, that it erects one of the greatest crimes of society into an institution, and sets apart thousands of women solely to minister to the lusts of men.”28 They contended that such licensing would unleash men’s latent sexual desires and leave all women vulnerable to state policing. Suffragists used this as an opportunity to celebrate female solidarity, while also legitimizing cultural scripts of male hypersexuality, women’s vulnerability, and urban vice.29 Gotham did not lay exclusive claim to concerns about women’s safety. Suffrage publications mentioned assaults on Milwaukee’s streets at night, sexual exploitation of employees in Philadelphia, and the arrest of “girls” smoking in public in Chicago.30 Blake’s husband even warned her about walking around the streets of Philadelphia alone at night when she visited that city. His concerns proved well founded. Though she ultimately made it home “quite safely,” a group of “young rowdies” did jeer at her along the way.31 Manhattan’s position as the largest metropolis with newspapers obsessively covering its debauchery, however, earned it a degree of notoriety smaller cities escaped. At the same time that cities might endanger women, new opportunities were emerging for white, middle-​class women like Blake and her colleagues. Across the country, women increasingly pursued higher education. In 1870, less than 1  percent of women aged eighteen to twenty-​one attended college. By 1910, that number had quadrupled to nearly 4 percent, and these women represented roughly 40 percent of all of those enrolled.32 Manhattan boasted its own premier women’s college beginning in 1889 when Barnard College opened.33 Beyond the academy, the late nineteenth century also ushered in changes in shopping. In the mid-​nineteenth century, a buyer would request a specific product at a dry goods store, which the owner would retrieve

“The Wickedness of the Masses”    13 from his stockroom. Negotiations over the price ensued. Department stores revolutionized this, elaborately displaying wares, encouraging leisurely browsing, setting prices, and prioritizing customer service. The stores themselves—​with their lavish interiors, marble exteriors, and plate glass show windows—​existed as feminized retreats in a masculinized city. That retailers congregated their consumer wonderlands in specific neighborhoods redefined the urban landscape in the late nineteenth century, creating an entire district in Manhattan where a bourgeois woman might window-​shop or meet friends for lunch without having to worry about her reputation being questioned.34 Etiquette guides struggled to keep up with the greater freedom unleashed by the consumer metropolis. As late as 1899, one continued to advise, “A lady should not venture out upon the street alone after dark. By so doing she compromises her dignity, and exposes herself to indignity at the hands of the rougher class.” And the guide reminded that a woman should “not form acquaintances upon the street, or seek to attract the attention of the other sex, or of persons of her own sex. Her conduct is always modest and unassuming.”35 Capturing this anxiety, a new caricature emerged in the literature and journalism of the 1860s and the 1870s—​the “New  York Woman.” This figure ignored her children to waste time flirting and shopping in the new retail spaces.36 These changes whirled around Blake and her fellow suffragists, trapping them between increased independence to roam the city and long-​held fear that doing so might jeopardize their respectability and even safety. Mainstream leaders chose to question advocates who aggressively embraced the new freedoms. Their reaction to Victoria Woodhull is a case in point. Woodhull challenged gender expectations at every turn—​she started her own newspaper, opened a Wall Street brokerage firm, and, most scandalously, promoted free love. Although Woodhull might enjoy Gotham’s resources, she found few long-​term cheerleaders among mainstream suffragists—​even after promising $10,000 to fight for the ballot. Stanton and Anthony did defend her on occasion, but overall cautious distance, rather than warm embrace, defined Manhattan leaders’ approach to the firebrand.37 Instead of following Woodhull’s lead or tapping into the city’s wealth, publicity potential, and entertainment venues, Gilded Age activists living in Gotham spent the 1870s and 1880s complaining about the metropolis’s labyrinth-​like landscape, carping about the annual ritual of moving day on May 1 (the day that tenants’ leases expired and thus many moved to new homes), and grumbling about men jostling women on public transportation.38 Blake’s 1874 novel, Fettered for Life Or Lord and Master, A Story of To-​Day, provides a window into Manhattan suffragists’ deep-​seated ambivalence about

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urban living. The novel revolves around Laura Stanley, a young, white, middle-​ class woman who travels from her father’s farm in rural Dutchess County to New York City in hope of earning a living. Within the first three pages, a reader learns that city life endangers young women like Laura, a refrain throughout the novel. Blake has her protagonist arrive in Manhattan at night, mobilizing commonly held perceptions about metropolises after dark in order to build drama. A nighttime arrival means that Laura cannot find a room at a reputable hotel and quickly discovers that it is “not safe . . . to be on the streets alone” when men molest her.39 Ultimately, a police officer escorts her to a station house, but it provides no more safety than the streets, since it leaves her the prey of a corrupt judge.40 In reviewing her first night, Laura admits her naiveté, reflecting, “I had heard much of the dangers of your city . . . but I had no idea it was so terrible a place for a woman who is alone.”41 Blake cast Manhattan as a largely menacing character to advance her plot. In fact, the author developed only one female character who achieves complete success upon moving to New York City. In order to do so, however, this woman needs to present as a man, Frank Heywood. Blake introduces Frank to the reader at the very beginning of the story as the astute reporter who saves Laura from the lecherous judge. On several other occasions, Frank serves as the story’s hero: rescuing Laura from an attempted abduction, protecting women unjustly imprisoned, and escorting an impoverished, dying woman out of the city. Only at the end of the novel—​after a reader has accepted Frank as a trustworthy, male lead—​does Blake provide the character’s backstory. Like Laura, Frank felt “entirely unprotected” when arriving in Gotham. “I was insulted, refused work, unless I would comply with the disgraceful propositions of my employers,” Frank divulges; “in short, I  had the experience which so many young women have in the great city; poverty, temptation, cruelty.” Frank started wearing men’s clothing to survive and realized the privileges bestowed upon metropolitan men by their gender: successful careers, professional respect, and freedom of movement.42 Blake intended the revelation of Frank’s identity to challenge people’s perceptions about gender. In one swift move, she defied the trope of male heroes in literature. But her subversive intentions did little to undermine the idea of cities as female dystopias. Instead, they reinforced this perception. Frank does not claim a “right to the city” as a woman but as a woman presenting as a man.43 Blake’s story reveals deep-​seated ambivalence about urban life. Even when trying to create an empowered character who transcends gendered assumptions, it relies on a hostile metropolitan universe with clearly defined boundaries for “respectable ladies.”

“The Wickedness of the Masses”    15 In the story, gender discrimination is pervasive. Laura flees her family because inequality thrives in her father’s upstate home, and Laura’s socialite friend attempts suicide to escape an unhappy marriage in luxurious Newport.44 However, in Blake’s story, it is only in the metropolis that women confront sexual danger. It is there that sexual advances threaten, peers scrutinize their reputation, and trustworthy strangers mix with fiendish predators. Blake does note Gotham’s advantages: it houses a female community that helps Laura assimilate to city ways and contains cultural and educational resources unavailable in the country.45 But, in exchange for these assets, Laura must live within an urban environment filled with serious pitfalls for a “respectable” woman.46 Blake’s work was fiction, but reviewers believed it accurately captured life in 1870s New  York City. In its praise of the book, the Independent Statesman commented, “The scenes are laid in and about New  York City, and many of the follies of the social life of that city are satirized sharply.”47 According to the Home Journal, “The great merit of this story is its startling reality, its truthfulness to every day [sic] life. Mrs. Blake writes of what she knows and some of the characters introduced to the reader are easily recognized by people acquainted in New  York.”48 Another critic emphasized the moral of the story:  young women “without friends” in the city should not travel there alone. Doing so would only endanger them.49 Believing that the city threatened women created a critical problem for metropolitan suffragists in the 1870s and 1880s. How could they convince individuals to enfranchise New  York women when, even organizers seemed ready to admit, going to the polls might jeopardize their safety and respectability? This proved more than a hypothetical question; Blake confronted it when she traveled. Those she met outside of Gotham considered rural women voting “reprehensible enough,” and were convinced that city women voting would be “intolerable.” They imagined the women “surrounded by a crowd of roughs” in the “slums” clinging to their ballots.50 Envisioning the polls in this manner served as another way to police the boundaries of male politics and preserve the ballot as one of the few remaining badges of masculinity—​it provided a spatial reason to prevent women from voting. Early suffragists did little to counter it. Instead, their effort to expose gendered injustices resulted in perpetuating fears about women’s vulnerability in the city. Leaders’ concerns about respectability and safety severely circumscribed urban activists’ approach to the metropolis in the Gilded Age. Male reformers could choose from myriad venues for events—​private homes, hotels, theaters, streets, and public parks. Suffragists’ decisions required a more delicate calculus, one that balanced concerns about propriety and protection with the

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need for publicity and coalition-​building. Though they regularly prioritized the former over the latter during the Gilded Age, the sanctity of the contract along with gendered customs surrounding memorialization did provide fleeting opportunities to claim a limited and temporary “right to the city,” a harbinger of future tactics. Private homes provided the most accessible spaces for organizing in this time period. They did not add another expense to an impoverished movement’s budget.51 Gathering in someone’s house also signaled that activists did not intend to undermine the family, a favorite anti-​suffrage position. Finally, in a city supposedly filled with dangers, parlor meetings provided a secure arena for middle-​class women to discuss their ideas. Going to a gathering at someone’s home was no different than their usual custom of calling on a friend.52 Suffragists thus relied on a familiar gendered tradition to create a personal, friendly environment for discussing ideas in a city that many deemed unfriendly to women. Rather than open a long-​ term headquarters in a commercial building—​a strategy that would have symbolized its professionalism, allowed for more efficient organizing, and made it easier for newcomers to locate the campaign—​Blake’s New York City Woman Suffrage League clung to private homes scattered across the city for its monthly meetings. These regular suffrage gatherings proved small enough to fit within private residences, but larger meetings, especially state conventions, demanded more space. Manhattan contained a range of commercial halls for organizers to consider, from the compact Frobisher Hall to the larger Masonic Hall and the elegant Chickering and Steinway Halls.53 Different venues attracted different audiences, a point Blake appreciated. When she hoped to attract wealthy women, the New York City leader turned to Chickering Hall, while she assumed that Masonic Hall would suit working women.54 Sometimes suffragists received the halls free of charge; other times they paid to rent them.55 Though it was a budgetary burden given the early movement’s small treasury, renting venues allowed activists to temporarily create a feminized, political space in a masculinized city. It also granted them a contractual right to the venue. Men might not recognize women’s right to vote, but they did respect their right to contract. This right itself was a relatively new one for women. Married women in early nineteenth-​century New York State lived under the system of coverture, a common-​law tradition that forced women to surrender their property to husbands upon marriage. This slowly began to change in 1848 when New York State passed a law that allowed wives to maintain a degree of control over their real property. Activists, including Anthony, petitioned state legislators during

“The Wickedness of the Masses”    17 the 1850s to expand this legislation. Representatives in Albany finally conceded in 1860, passing the Earnings Act, which recognized married women’s control over their personal (in addition to real) property and their right to contract.56 Blake put this right to the test at one meeting at the Cooper Institute in 1872. She paid fifty dollars to rent the hall for a general suffrage gathering devoted to marriage (in response to those demanding free love). While traveling to finalize the details and before she could even post information about it in the city newspapers, she read in the Herald that Civil War veterans planned to use the space at the same time as her scheduled event, already plastering the city with posters announcing the presence of Civil War heroes like Generals Burnside and McClellan. The suffrage director reported she felt “small and weak” informing General Burnside of his error. She did not surrender, though, even after a crowd confronted her at his office, confident that her rent gave her ownership over the hall. One officer threatened that they would seize the venue anyway. But Blake mustered the courage to retort, “I think not, sir. I think you will find that the hall is as much mine as my house, since I have paid the rent for it.”57 At moments the city’s commercial and gendered geographies collided. Custom suggested that women should not claim ownership over semipublic establishments, especially in the face of threats from men (and Civil War veterans, at that). But the sacredness of the contract and money in the “capital city” empowered suffragists to do so.58 Even in the “capital city,” though, money had its limitations. It granted activists temporary control over commercial venues for meetings. There, organizers could monitor who entered and shape the day’s program. However, money did little to tame public spaces like streets or squares where people interacted in largely spontaneous, unmonitored fashions. Though working-​ class women regularly used the city streets, suffragists declined to challenge the notion that middle-​class women should exist only on these spaces’ margins.59 Undoubtedly they believed that taking to the streets would expose them to hecklers and other dangers inherent to city life. It might also tarnish their reputation, a risk campaigners who already struggled to make their cause seem respectable proved unwilling to take. After all, etiquette guides laboriously detailed how women should behave in public; the worst thing a “lady” could do was to use the streets to make a spectacle of herself, especially a political one. Public celebrations momentarily changed the rules. Since the early nineteenth century, women had participated in as well as attended these festivities. By the 1850s, cities even set up viewing stands from which they could comfortably watch parades.60 Following the Civil War, women took on the monumental task of memorializing fallen soldiers. Suffragists capitalized on this long history of women’s participation in civic ceremonies.61 Although urban

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activists would not employ public spaces on a routine basis during the Gilded Age, they would readily occupy them when other “respectable” New  Yorkers already did so. In the process, they simultaneously mobilized and scrutinized the feminized traditions around commemoration. Their protest at the unveiling ceremony of the Statue of Liberty in 1886 is a case in point. People from across the nation flocked to Manhattan for the October unveiling, providing struggling suffragists with a potentially invaluable opportunity to broadcast their message. Ceremony planners crammed the day’s schedule with events: a morning parade, an afternoon flotilla, and evening fireworks.62 Blake and her peers had hoped that activists would receive seats at Bedloe’s Island for the unveiling itself. They decided to hold a demonstration when they realized that they would not be included in the day’s programs. Scraping together $100, activists chartered a cattle barge to protest the ceremony from the harbor.63 Blake led followers in an “indignation meeting” on the vessel’s lower deck immediately after Lady Liberty’s veil fell. “In erecting a statue of Liberty embodied as a woman in a land where no woman has political liberty,” she sneered, “men have shown a delightful inconsistency.”64 The remarkable protest drew notice from reporters at the New York Times who detailed the proceedings. Still, even this unprecedented use of public space by suffragists had clear boundaries: activists did not plan to actually disembark from the boat to protest at the feet of the Statue of Liberty. Instead, they clung to the vessel, a space they could claim temporary ownership of because they paid to use it. Similar to Blake’s struggle with the Cooper Institute, the sanctity of the contract provided a degree of insulation to women acting outside of the home, this time creating a floating platform for protest. Moreover, the public ceremony temporarily shifted the city’s gender dynamic. On an ordinary day etiquette demanded that “ladies” act as inconspicuously as possible in public; ceremonies sanctioned and even encouraged them to take on a more visible presence. Program organizers might have disappointed activists, but the ceremonial atmosphere emboldened them. Campaigners planned similar stunts during other celebrations. In 1892, the New  York City League secured forty seats on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fortieth Street for a parade commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. Covering the whole section in yellow (the movement’s color), they unfurled a large banner insisting that New Yorkers “Forget Not Isabella.”65 In their fight for the ballot, suffragists transformed civic celebrations into opportunities to recognize women’s contributions. This would not be the last time that they highlighted these past contributions to world history. Their 1911 parade included a float dedicated to women’s work in eighteenth-​century America; banners celebrating

“The Wickedness of the Masses”    19 the memory of Anthony and Stanton featured in the spring 1912 march; and an activist dressed as Joan of Arc participated in the fall 1912 torchlight procession.66 Suffragists were in some ways early historians of (white) women, working to ensure that their predecessors’ experiences remained visible to the public and recognizing that these experiences had worth. They also never failed to use these past experiences for their present strategic gain. Manhattan did not lay exclusive claim to such early spectacles, forerunners of future demonstrations. The National Woman Suffrage Association staged an impressive protest in Philadelphia during the centennial jubilee. Organizers lay in wait with a “Woman’s Declaration of Rights” amid a crowd exceeding thirty thousand people that had gathered at Independence Square to commemorate the milestone on Independence Day 1876. They struck immediately after the ceremony’s capstone—​a reading from the original Declaration of Independence by a signer’s descendent. Shoving their protest into Vice President Thomas Ferry’s hands, they distributed copies to those in attendance as they left to climb a separate platform outside Independence Hall. Newspapers from New  York to St. Louis covered the action—​some sympathetically and some critically, censoring activists for the “discourteous interruption.”67 Such stunts required a degree of organization and preparation that escaped lobbyists on a more regular basis. They also brought advocates out of the sheltered spaces of the home and commercial halls. Perhaps the women expected a greater police presence than normal during civic ceremonies and therefore felt less vulnerable. The New York Times informed readers that fourteen hundred policemen would patrol Gotham during the unveiling ceremony itself.68 That the authorities meticulously planned the day’s events also likely helped make the environment seem less chaotic than the everyday landscape—​in fact, organizers could expect that they would be responsible for the day’s only surprise. Women’s long history in public celebrations further empowered activists, even as they used this tradition to call into question the gender status quo. But, these proved to be short-​lived and rare tactics during the Gilded Age. And their effect seems limited. Only when special commemorations disrupted the everyday rhythm of city life did lobbyists generally claim public space.69 Out-​of-​state tourists mixed with the residents who actually needed to be converted during these moments. The day’s festivities could easily eclipse the stunts in people’s memories. And suffragists risked offending those who came to celebrate America’s achievement, not reflect on its shortcomings. Leaders limited their message by not independently using streets or parks in New York on a more regular basis in the Gilded Age. No matter how large the hall or the home, street protests could reach more individuals. Men’s labor organizations knew this and used Tompkins and Union Squares to spread their ideas.70

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Suffragists refused to take such action. This would change by the early twentieth century as they worked to dismantle the city’s gendered geography for middle-​class women and make public spaces more genuinely “public.” Until then, advocates sheltered themselves in the protected venues of parlors and rented halls with few, fleeting exceptions. The 1894 New  York State Constitutional Convention interrupted this suffrage routine.71 The state constitution empowered voters to request these conventions every twenty years. The 1894 convention was the state’s sixth such gathering. It promised an alternative means through which women might achieve suffrage—​one that did not require approval from two separate legislatures and then endorsement by voters, as an amendment introduced via the regular legislative session did. Instead, the convention delegates would need to believe in suffrage only enough to include it in a revised constitution and put it before voters.72 Suffragists across the state hoped to use the occasion to establish a women’s rights milestone. New  York City especially buzzed with activity, as wealthy women for the first time campaigned for the ballot alongside (and sometimes in competition with) Blake’s New York City Woman Suffrage League. Exclusive Manhattan restaurants transformed into battlegrounds for women’s rights, and metropolitan newspapers could not satiate readers’ appetite for movement gossip. The city’s latent potentials became strikingly visible in 1894. But, just as Gotham organizers began to capitalize on the metropolis’s resources in a sustained manner, they also realized that their foes could brandish the very perceptions of Manhattan that they themselves had endorsed in the 1870s and 1880s. Suffragists had a lot invested in success in 1894. Many imagined that the convention’s decision would be pivotal for the nation: if the Empire State enfranchised women, other states would quickly follow. Some even optimistically predicted that the effect would ripple across the Atlantic to Europe.73 Movement leaders frequently tried to capitalize on ruptures in the political landscape to promote enfranchisement. As early as the 1870s, activists inserted demands for women’s rights into conversations about national expansion and imperialism.74 In 1894, they followed a similar strategy at the state level: lobbyists expected to use the constitutional convention to promote their demands. That Kansas voters were also deciding on enfranchisement in 1894 heightened the possibility for a milestone year. At the same time, it escalated tensions within the National American Woman Suffrage Association over the national campaign’s limited resources. These tensions came to a head at the annual meeting when both Kansas and New York activists requested aid: New York

“The Wickedness of the Masses”    21 for speakers and Kansas for money. Blake set the tone, stressing New York City’s national “importance” and suggesting that a win in the Empire State would persuade other states to follow suit. “I do not think that the effect of a victory in Kansas will be as great,” she said dismissively. Those representing Kansas pointedly pushed back, declaring that resource allocation decisions should not be based on “age or prestige,” but on likelihood of “success or defeat.”75 The clash itself is surprising considering that New York organizers indicated that they did not want financial aid, just speakers.76 Its existence, however, demonstrates how the national association’s limited resources bred internal disagreement and jealousy, while suggesting how other state movements responded to New York’s national clout. Kansas thought it had a right to assistance because success seemed likely there; New York claimed this right by focusing on what would happen if the state won. Prestige was pitted against likelihood of success within the national campaign, revealing insecurities, frustrations, and varying priorities. Ultimately, the National American Woman Suffrage Association provided Kansas with $2,570 and the Empire State with $8.77 Tensions existed within the New  York State movement as well. State leaders wasted no time developing a strategy they hoped would ensure success. Each of New  York State’s sixty counties would hold a meeting. The legendary, Rochester-​based Susan B.  Anthony would address each one.78 Securing one million names on a petition was a top priority.79 Activists planned to rely on paid organizers canvassing voters via house-​to-​house visits to reach this ambitious goal—​an approach Anthony advocated. They hoped it would be enough to pressure delegates to endorse a constitutional change, or at least make the public more aware that women wanted one.80 Blake, however, objected. The New  York City leader questioned applying the statewide strategy to Gotham, an early indication of the tension building between state and city leaders. At a Campaign Committee gathering she labeled the canvassing plan “impractical”;81 in her diary, she derided it as “arrant nonsense.”82 Once a staunch supporter of Anthony, Blake had grown skeptical of her strategies.83 Only later in the campaign did she publicly explain her opposition. House-​to-​ house visits would not work in Manhattan, according to Blake, “not because people were opposed, but because, in a great city, the rule of most people is that they will not receive unknown callers.”84 Urban customs demanded different strategies than those used in rural communities. These concerns should not have been brushed aside. After all, Blake had years of experience leading Manhattan’s movement. But Anthony refused to budge.85 New  York City activists, like those in the rest of the state, canvassed.

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Whenever possible, though, Blake did try to tailor strategies to Manhattan’s diverse landscape. Her New  York City Woman Suffrage League organized meetings in churches, schools, and parlors. It established headquarters at 10 East Fourteenth Street, a significant step for a campaign more accustomed to isolated meetings in private homes. Beginning in January 1894, individuals seeking information did not need to rely on a chance encounter with a suffragist to learn more. They simply needed to visit headquarters any time between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00  p.m.86 The location itself underscored city organizers’ burgeoning savvy. Ten East Fourteenth Street sat in one of the metropolis’s few feminized districts:  Ladies’ Mile, known for its high-​ end shopping.87 An 1892 travel guide celebrated Ladies’ Mile as home to “prominent retail establishments” that “are the wonder and the admiration of all who see them, and in extent and in variety of goods they are not surpassed elsewhere in the world.”88 Le Boutillier, an elegant dry goods store, Macy’s, and Tiffany’s Jewelers were located near suffrage headquarters.89 Such stores worked to attract bourgeois women by providing a safe and respectable space to leisurely browse, installing electric lights, telephones, and even air ventilation systems during the last decades of the nineteenth century.90 Headquarters then provided the Manhattan campaign with a degree of stability and visibility, and did so in a way that tapped into the city’s highly feminized consumer geography. However, it was not mainstream suffragists’ strategic approach to the metropolis that brought the Gotham campaign unparalleled attention in the months leading up to the Constitutional Convention. The frenzy over women’s rights in New  York City was fueled by the participation of a new coterie of supporters in 1894—​Manhattan socialites. By the early 1890s, 30  percent of the nation’s millionaires resided in New York City. Some had lived there for generations, whereas others like John D.  Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie had arrived more recently.91 Manhattan’s deep business resources combined with its social clout attracted such members of the nouveau riche. A wealthy American could not claim to be au courant in the Gilded Age without a residence in New York City. The New  York City Woman Suffrage League had long understood the benefits the campaign would reap if it attracted socialites. Elite women might donate money to a cash-​starved operation. Their participation would certainly enhance the movement’s reputation and also garner press attention.92 Prior to 1894, though, establishment leaders like Blake generally found only apathy and antipathy among the wealthy. The elite women of Fifth Avenue and Murray Hill even mobilized against enfranchisement in 1885, sending a petition to the state senate.93 Their participation in 1894 thus rightly surprised long-​time supporters. One woman canvassing the financial district in early

“The Wickedness of the Masses”    23 1894 grew so annoyed by “head of monopolies[’]” reluctance to donate money that she urged Blake to fundraise by cobbling together small sums from every individual in Gotham, rather than a few sizable donations from a handful of wealthy New Yorkers. Such haphazardness seemed more efficient than targeted fundraising, given wealth’s long-​standing ambivalence about the ballot. “It is the servants[’] ten cents,” she reflected after her ordeal, “that have made the Catholic Church so powerful in this Country.”94 That some robber barons did agree to sign her petition (albeit in lieu of donating money), however, marked a significant shift in society sentiment. Mary Putnam Jacobi deserves much of the credit for this breakthrough. A well-​ respected physician by 1894, Jacobi spent much of her adult life connecting her professional work to her passion for reform. She fought to improve medical training during her tenure at the Woman’s Medical College, while advocating for women’s health in the Consumers’ League and the Working Women’s Society, organizations devoted to aiding the working class. Suffrage interested the physician only marginally until the early 1890s, when Anthony successfully recruited her.95 Jacobi—​ with her years of outside experience and established medical reputation—​ did not simply listen to Anthony, however. She doubted the canvassing plan, like Blake, and instead hoped to convert a few highly respected women, predicting that these women, once recruited, would draw in their friends.96 Jacobi could expect to capitalize on her contacts in the reform world as well as in intellectual and elite circles, thanks to the reputation of her father’s publishing house, G.  P. Putnam’s Sons.97 Even with these connections, her strategy proved difficult to enact. The first woman Jacobi approached swiftly rejected her arguments, fearful of “ignorant and irresponsible” women voting. Unfazed, she pursued her top-​down plan and ultimately helped to found the affluent, Manhattan-​based Volunteer Committee.98 Anthony did not find an obsequious supporter with Jacobi, but she did find someone with moxie, someone willing to mine her own rich resources for the crusade’s benefit. The other founders of the Volunteer Committee constituted hubs in New  York’s intricate, elite web. Lucia Gilbert Runkle married an esteemed lawyer, who died suddenly in 1888. She remained active in New York after his death, gaining recognition within literary circles.99 Widowed three years after Runkle, Lee Haggin had married the son and partner of a millionaire mine developer and horse breeder.100 Catherine Abbe also lost her first husband, the Nineteenth Century Club’s founder and free-​thought advocate, Courtlandt Palmer. But, unlike Runkle and Haggin, she remarried, wedding the influential New  York surgeon Robert Abbe in 1891.101 Eleanor Butler Sanders’s husband was Henry M. Sanders, the reverend of the Central Presbyterian Church

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and later the Madison Avenue Baptist Church. Her father was the late Theron R. Butler, former president of the Sixth Avenue Railroad Company and a notable art collector.102 Unlike the other five founders, Adele Fielde never married and did not come from a prominent family; she gained her celebrated status through missionary work in China instead.103 All told, these women traveled comfortably in a world that the wider masses could only imagine. Those joining in the new campaign that the Volunteer Committee initiated ranged from individuals with old money and decades-​long ties to Manhattan to newcomers whose fortune still reeked of new money. At a single meeting, a journalist counted almost “ninety representatives” of the Four Hundred, a designation applied only to the most prestigious families in the elite orbit.104 Margaret Chanler proved the most active member of New York’s old money. Her background combined blue-​blood status (she was William B. Astor’s great-​ granddaughter and Caroline Astor’s great-​niece) with reform impulses (her great-​aunt was abolitionist and suffragist Julia Ward Howe). But, because her parents had died when Chanler was a child and before they could leave a mark on New York’s social world, and because her last name did not reflect a direct connection to the Astor dynasty, newspaper reporters did not always piece together her genealogy.105 Laura Spelman Rockefeller and Olivia Sage could not claim the same deep attachment to Manhattan and its haut monde as Chanler. Both moved to Gotham following the Civil War, after their husbands had acquired their immense riches.106 However, their last names were familiar to the public in a way that Chanler’s was not. In 1894, they threw their celebrity behind suffrage. Both Laura and Olivia (along with John D.  and Russell) signed the suffrage petition and agreed to host lectures in their homes.107 One meeting at Sage’s Fifth Avenue residence in April 1894 drew more than two hundred individuals, including Helen Gould, Jay Gould’s daughter, and Harriot Stanton Blatch, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter.108 The elite settings did not temper suffrage rhetoric. Jacobi refused to “act in a conciliatory manner” amid a crowd of three hundred people crammed into the Rockefellers’ home. Calling her peers to arms, she roared that she was on the “warpath” for suffrage.109 Newspaper reporters craved such campaign details. The doings of New  York’s social world fascinated their readership; publications had even created gossip columns cataloging highbrow scandals in the 1880s.110 The Volunteer Committee’s elite status made suffrage suddenly fashionable. The World promised to triple its regular sum if Blake wrote a column about the movement’s progress, an offer she could only dream of a year earlier.111 But the Volunteer Committee’s target audience required that it strike a delicate balance between publicizing the cause and protecting potential enrollees from

“The Wickedness of the Masses”    25 ridicule. Exclusive parlors housed meetings. Supporters refused to disclose to the media the names added to the suffrage petition.112 And leaders did not publicize notices for upcoming gatherings. One woman lectured a reporter on this secrecy, admonishing, “We can’t have unpleasant women in the drawing-​room, you know.”113 Still, journalists detailed meetings in parlors from Forty-​Fourth Street, the home of Henry M.  Day, a lawyer and New  York Stock Exchange member, to the Tiffany Building on Seventy-​Second Street, home of Caroline De Forest and May Callender.114 The coverage, including visual renderings of meetings and selections from speeches, suggests that reporters had made their way inside. The political nature of suffrage work required that sometimes the need for publicity trumped the desire for secrecy—​a necessary compromise that even newly minted elite leaders seemed to recognize. Some of the reporters treated the campaign respectfully. Others mocked the upper crust’s commitment to enfranchisement. One journalist teased that “restless young women” simply wanted a “diversion” from boredom.115 Another claimed that the “gay world is dead; [so] the fashionables want something to do.”116 A  political cartoonist aimed his pencil in the Volunteer Committee’s direction. In “Society’s Latest Fad,” the illustrator drew an elegant woman hovering over a dapper, mutton-​chopped man as he scrawls his name on her “suffrage equality petition.” A sign in the background announcing “This Is My Busy Day” ridiculed the gentry’s “conspicuous leisure” and lampooned these newcomers’ dedication.117 New York was mired in an economic depression in 1894. Triggered by European banking instability and compounded by railroad speculation, the Panic of 1893 left seventy thousand jobless in Manhattan alone and twenty thousand without homes.118 Elite women’s newfound political interest provided an outlet for some in the media to question the economics of the age and its culture of extravagance. The press ridicule could not stop the elite suffrage juggernaut. Like the New York City Woman Suffrage League, the Volunteer Committee established headquarters to make itself more visible and accessible. Its members’ wealth gave them entrée to spaces largely out of mainstream suffragists’ reach; their rearing made them acutely aware that certain venues—​elite hotels, restaurants, and concert halls—​ conveyed status precisely because of such exclusivity. Whereas the League tucked its tiny office into a place convenient for shoppers, fashionable women opened headquarters in one of Manhattan’s most elegant restaurants—​Sherry’s, a respected eatery where society already felt at home.119 Separated from the main floor by blue drapery in a room the New York Times described as a “feminine snuggery,” the Volunteer Committee welcomed supporters and talked politics in the famed venue.120 As one reporter remarked, it took “political skill” for these women to realize that installing “their citadel

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In an 1894 political cartoon, a socialite pressures a businessman to endorse equal rights, which the cartoonist dubs “Society’s Latest Fad.” Although journalists regularly poked fun at elite women’s commitment to enfranchisement during the 1894 New York State Constitutional Convention campaign, they also made the cause more visible to a public that had largely ignored women’s rights. National American Woman Suffrage Association Records, Reel 1, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

on the crest of Murray Hill” was more effective than “trailing their skirts in the byways of the city.”121 The location served as a reminder of the Volunteer Committee’s social cachet, while also making suffrage accessible to others in Gotham’s monied world. Remarkably, leaders took it a step further and encouraged all citizens over the age of twenty-​one to call at Sherry’s.122 New  Yorkers took tours up Fifth Avenue to gawk at the opulent mansions and waited outside opera houses to catch sight of the fashionable world.123 Now, the Volunteer Committee invited them into one of the elite’s most luxurious establishments; the entrance fee was simply an interest in enfranchisement. It was like “being asked to drop in at Mrs. Vanderbilt’s.” This “alluring bait,” noted one reporter, “was eagerly

“The Wickedness of the Masses”    27 taken.”124 The Volunteer Committee capitalized on its access to elegant, leisured spaces to lure in individuals to sign the petition. Socialites might fiercely protect the privacy of their individual parlors, denying entrance to anyone outside their contacts. But their 1894 suffrage activities cracked the door open to Sherry’s, even if not many New Yorkers took advantage of it. That the Volunteer Committee and the New  York City Woman Suffrage League did not pool resources to establish a joint headquarters hints at the friction simmering between newcomers and the suffrage establishment in Manhattan. Socialites made it a point to distance themselves from the “professional ‘woman’s rights’ agitators” in the press.125 Partly they hoped to avoid tarnishing their reputation by association. Irritation with the slipshod quality of campaign work also drove their decision. Chanler publicly labeled League members “poor organizers” decades after the fact.126 Privately, Jacobi expressed concern about the campaign’s disappointing state in an 1894 letter to Blake herself. “With twenty years in which to prepare for this convention,” she criticized, “I am surprised that some skeleton of organization . . . had not been arranged.”127 Such commentary doubtlessly ruffled the feathers of establishment activists who had spent years fighting for the ballot with none of the resources available to the newcomers. Perhaps most frustrating, fashionable women’s activities regularly eclipsed the League’s undertakings, leaving it at pains to point out that the campaign extended beyond the affluent.128 Because the associations remained separate, the press easily compartmentalized the movement into respectable ladies who happened to support the vote and aggressive activists who happened to be female. In this way, society women’s support both helped the movement and reinforced tropes about it. Still, leaders in both organizations understood that cooperation would carry the cause further than conflict—​a scenario the press would quickly turn into newspaper fodder. Chanler delicately proposed an alliance in an informal report. “While we are in no wise bound to each other,” she acknowledged, “as much and as constant interchange of work, of methods and of result as is possible, will both simplify and enrich what each of us does.”129 And the Volunteer Committee and League did collaborate, exchanging arguments and information.130 They seemed to have unofficially split up metropolitan work as well. Blake’s League targeted working-​class men and women, including immigrants. Its efforts proved relatively effective. Ultimately, in New York City, suffragists claimed endorsements from labor organizations representing more than a hundred thousand men.131 Meanwhile, the Volunteer Committee pursued its privileged peers; other converts made in the process were merely welcome byproducts of this elite-​centric focus. The work on one early April evening reflected this division of labor: Blake’s League delivered the “same arguments”

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to a “strictly cosmopolitan” group in the tenement-​filled Lower East Side that society leaders provided to rich New Yorkers in an uptown parlor, the Herald reported.132 An unexpected enemy further crystallized the relationship between the League and the Volunteer Committee. In mid-​April, a group of Brooklyn women met to protest enfranchisement in New  York State. Fearful that suffragists might actually achieve success in 1894, they felt compelled to let delegates know that many women opposed the measure.133 The ideas from the Brooklyn Women’s Anti-​Suffrage League rapidly jumped the East River, spreading to Manhattan and the rest of the state.134 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle predicted that anti-​suffrage had gained enough momentum to block enfranchisement until the year 2014.135 Gotham “remonstrants” copied their foes’ strategies, establishing a campaign with an elite following and opening posh headquarters. On the committee organizing the resistance were such influential women as Frances Tracy Morgan, the wife of the powerful financier; Helena de Kay Gilder, the wife of the editor of Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine; and Sarah Hewitt, the wife of the former mayor.136 The fashionable Hotel Waldorf, “a resort vying with Sherry’s in social reputation,” served as headquarters.137 Like their suffrage counterparts, they circulated a petition to present to Constitutional Convention delegates. Only women could sign their names on the anti-​suffrage version, a prescription meant to emphasize that women themselves did not want the ballot.138 Their arguments ranged from concern that enfranchisement would lead women to accept public office to outrage that voting would be an additional chore for women to perform.139 They mobilized anti-​immigrant sentiment as well. Amending the constitution, according to anti-​suffragists, would increase the quantity, not the quality, of the electorate—​a concern shared by the first woman Jacobi had tried to recruit and one they could expect would resonate in a nativist-​leaning populace.140 At first suffragists celebrated this resistance. Blake actually exclaimed that “opposition is a healthy sign,” and Stanton hoped that it would push apathetic women to pay more attention.141 Despite the flippant tone they struck with reporters, both the League and the Volunteer Committee worked to vanquish anti-​suffrage attacks. One member of the Volunteer Committee designed a statistical analysis based on census data that anticipated and responded to the argument about immigration.142 Adele Fielde claimed that female enfranchisement would not result in immigrants dominating the electorate, but rather would improve the balance between native-​and foreign-​born voters.143 That New York City contained nearly 109,000 more native-​born white females than foreign-​born white females, compared with just 106,000 more native-​born

“The Wickedness of the Masses”    29 white males than foreign-​born white males, proved pivotal to her argument. Enfranchising women would mathematically improve the ratio between foreign-​and native-​born voters. She complemented this quantitative argument with a more qualitative justification: since “tribes” of Germans, English, and Irish composed the diverse immigrant population, newcomers would not cohere to threaten the “native” voter.144 With 80 percent of immigrants coming into the United States in 1894 through New York City, activists doubtlessly expected this to be an effective argument.145 And they were not shy about broadcasting it. Fielde boasted of her findings to a New York Times reporter, celebrating that her numbers proved the “kitchen” would not “outvote the parlor” if delegates amended the state constitution.146 Future organizers would radically revise most of these early strategies, but such nativism did regularly re-​emerge during later campaign moments. The Volunteer Committee and League refocused on the Constitutional Convention itself in early May. One hundred seventy-​five delegates were expected to travel to Albany for the summer-​long convention. Activists hoped the Suffrage Committee would endorse their proposal—​a step that would ease its passage through the general convention. The convention opened on May 8, on the heels of two early May suffrage rallies in Manhattan that attracted upwards of two thousand people.147 Sixteen days later, the state suffrage president addressed the Suffrage Committee. Delegates allowed four New York City campaigners to present their positions the following week. Blake and Harriette Keyser spoke for the League; Jacobi and Chanler represented the Volunteer Committee.148 Perhaps the most reflective of her class position, Chanler’s speech told of a propertied young woman with “responsibilities and social claims . . . for whose proper discharge she felt the need of the suffrage.”149 Meanwhile, the physician struggled to balance universal rights, nativism, and upper-​ class distrust of laborers in her hour-​long address. At some moments a philosophical treatise and at others a defensive response to anti-​suffragists, Jacobi’s speech focused on women’s evolution, stressing that she and her colleagues demanded the vote “as a right” and need not depend on expedient ideas to persuade the delegates. At the same time, she seethed that “the white woman—​the American woman—​the woman in whose veins runs the blood of those heroic colonists . . . is excluded,” but immigrants and African Americans “share in the sovereignty of the State.” She reassured those worried about the “illiterate” vote that “the women who are now busily engaged in civilizing the hordes of uncivilized people in our midst will be utilized . . . to guide ignorant women voters.”150

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Blake gave the most legalistic of the four speeches, likely a product of her years studying the suffrage situation in New York and her position as president of the New York City Woman Suffrage League.151 Harriette Keyser was the sole advocate to focus exclusively on working women. A  largely forgotten figure, the League “Organizer” celebrated working women as “uncounted political factor[s]‌,” including a wide swath of women in this category—​from industrial laborers to doctors and teachers. It was these women, not their leisured sisters, who made the suffrage movement possible, according to Keyser, since their toil proved women’s equality to men.152 Both League and Volunteer Committee leaders traveled to Albany to address the Constitutional Convention, but their opponents asked men to represent them. In mid-​June, Francis M.  Scott delivered the first speech. In Scott, anti-​suffragists had found a surrogate with political experience. An active member of the New York City Democratic Party, he had run for mayor in 1890.153 He began his address with rote anti-​suffrage positions: the ballot was not a right, those who voted needed to be able to enforce the laws, and the suffrage movement was simply a “fad” started by women looking for something “new” to do. A more novel one crept in toward the end of Scott’s address, one that, given the cultural zeitgeist, he might reasonably hope would appeal to delegates. He worried about the forty to sixty thousand “unfortunate women” living “outside the law” in New York City who would gain the right to vote if delegates amended the state constitution.154 New York City’s reputation—​one darkened by assumptions about the lasciviousness that the metropolitan landscape bred and one that the League had left unquestioned—​became a weapon brandished against enfranchisement. The Suffrage Committee ultimately reported adversely on the proposal. We cannot know for certain which strategies carried the day for anti-​suffragists, but suffragists had their theories. They saw a conspiracy spearheaded by Joseph H. Choate, the convention’s chairman and an influential Gotham resident, who supposedly hoped to use the convention to catapult himself into the governorship. A rumor spread that Choate deliberately stacked the committee with opponents so as to avoid alienating potential backers by seeming friendly to enfranchisement. This was a personal blow to organizers, since Choate’s wife supported their cause and even hosted “suffrage teas” at their home. Choate himself, though, refused to become embroiled in the suffrage controversy. Political opportunity trumped familial loyalty and democratic principles, at least in activists’ retelling.155 Scott’s metropolitan-​dangers comment seems to have struck a chord as well, with some delegates echoing his rationale during the August debate on the Suffrage Committee’s recommendation. One man from rural Genesee County

“The Wickedness of the Masses”    31 worried about the corruption inherent in urban life. In “cities where drunkenness prevails and where votes are sold by the hundred,” Nathan Woodward preached, political equality “would only enable the drunken husband to sell his own vote and that of his wife and daughters.”156 The chairman of the Suffrage Committee lectured that using Wyoming as a precedent for New York State was inappropriate, since New York teemed with cities that were “seething caldrons of political heat and excitement, hotbeds of vice and corruption,” and home to “swarms of criminals.”157 One official from Manhattan felt so offended by such swipes that he used his time on the floor to defend his city and its “hundreds and thousands of women . . . whose loveliness and whose purity and virtue” were undeniable.158 The general convention agreed with the Suffrage Committee’s decision. Fifty-​eight delegates voted in favor of suffrage; ninety-​seven opposed it. Delegates provided a panoply of reasons defending their verdict: enfranchising women might lead to disputes in families and thereby increase the number of “separations, and [result in] the consequent destruction of home”; only those who could enforce the laws should vote; no benefits would result if women possessed the franchise.159 Just as suffragists were beginning to see the resources in Gotham mobilized for their cause, they were thwarted, in part, by the very perceptions of the city that they themselves had not only helped to spread, but that many believed. New York City’s first generation of suffragists began its work in the 1870s anxious about urban life and highly aware of the metropolis’s geography of respectability. The power of money and the sanctity of the contract provided one way they navigated through this geography. But, for a cause always desperate for funding, this could provide only a temporary salve. Meetings frequently retreated to the privacy of individual homes. The city drowned the crusade in its sea of frenetic energy. Organizers struggled to make a mark on the landscape, unable to consistently target Gotham’s various enclaves, read its social networks, or breach its elite fortresses. Instead of recognizing the various communities that made up Gotham, lobbyists saw one overwhelming, monolithic, and inaccessible behemoth. Still, a wave of firsts buoyed New York City suffragists in 1894. The opportunity created by the New  York State Constitutional Convention drew a new phalanx of elite women into the movement with a different relationship to urban space than the middle-​class suffrage establishment. They politicized the exclusive Sherry’s restaurant, turning it into a base for enfranchisement. The New York City Woman Suffrage League itself began to read the metropolis more strategically, establishing headquarters in the city’s consumer hub. As quickly as the crusade landed in newspapers, though, it disappeared. In the

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succeeding months, the Volunteer Committee morphed into the League for Political Education, an organization that prioritized civic education over political mobilization.160 Socialites’ actions seemed to fulfill journalists’ prophecies about elite suffrage. For many, suffrage was indeed a “fad.” Reporters’ interest waned as affluent women looked elsewhere for productive outlets following defeat. Monied women’s involvement did not have the desired effect on delegates. It also served to reinforce stereotypes about suffragists, as journalists drew distinctions between unladylike, stalwart activists and the elegant, wealthy newcomers. Yet, 1894 remained a milestone year in suffrage memory. Activists in Massachusetts distributed the New York State campaign report to educate citizens there the following year.161 California strategists used New York’s model of petitioning combined with mass meetings during that state’s unsuccessful 1896 suffrage bid.162 Even a decade later, the 1894 crusade remained a campaign highlight, with Carrie Chapman Catt referring to it as a “critical time” in a letter to Catherine Abbe.163 The city contained dangers for women, but it also had advantages. Before campaign leaders could learn to harness them, though, intra-​suffrage conflict threatened to destabilize the movement in its entirety as a separate metropolitan identity cohered and roiled the institutional landscape.

2 Becoming “A Lover of the Metropolis,” 1895–​1906

Elizabeth Cady Stanton had a lot to celebrate in November 1895. Women in Wyoming and Colorado could vote. Most states had suffrage organizations affiliated with her National American Woman Suffrage Association, and its reach was growing; it held its first annual convention below the Mason-​Dixon Line that winter.1 And, the previous year, New York came the closest it had ever been to enfranchising women. Suffrage had arrived onto the political scene. The fete for Stanton’s eightieth birthday would showcase these achievements, and party hosts needed to find the most fitting venue for the event. They ultimately selected the opulent Metropolitan Opera House, since, in Susan B. Anthony’s words, it provided a “handsome setting for our army of white haired pioneers [emphasis in original].”2 Organizers hoped this landmark—​“one of the great opera-​houses of the world,” a travel guide boasted—​would underscore Stanton’s importance.3 Three thousand women poured into the Metropolitan Opera House that November evening. Fashionable women who participated in the 1894 New York State Constitutional Convention drive left the quiet of their homes to navigate the urban thicket and attend the gala. Lillie Devereux Blake made the trip, presenting Stanton with an inscribed silver cup on behalf of her New York City Woman Suffrage League.4 Even Mariana Chapman, an active suffragist who would take charge of the state association the following year, traveled from her beloved Brooklyn into Manhattan for the event.5 The New  York Recorder could barely contain its excitement, crowing that the “Reunion of Pioneers” was the “Event of the Century.” The gathering, the newspaper reported, “was an event . . . the like of which will never be repeated.

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It brought together on one platform the pioneers of woman’s advancement in the arts, sciences, and politics.”6 The journalist extolled the fete’s historic nature but, in so doing, correctly sensed a generational shift on the horizon. No such reunion would be possible a decade later—​Stanton would pass away in 1902, Anthony in 1906, and Blake would largely withdraw from the movement by 1908.7 Historians have debated how to understand these transitional years, with some considering this period a nadir and others viewing it as a “renaissance” for the national movement.8 Neither of these national paradigms, though, captures the city campaign’s erratic nature as the nineteenth century slipped into the twentieth. Rather than grinding to a standstill following defeat at the 1894 New  York State Constitutional Convention, city work continued and new organizations emerged. The Manhattan suffrage movement broadened its agenda, reimagined women’s place in the metropolis, and mobilized elite spaces. But it was also far from relishing in a “renaissance.” Instead, a complicated and divided institutional landscape developed in Manhattan at century’s end, destabilizing suffrage networks that once had connected the city campaign with its state and national counterparts. The municipality’s haute geography provided urban advocates like Blake opportunities to advertise the movement’s respectability. At the same time, metropolitan suffragists promised to purify other parts of the urban landscape with the ballot, capitalizing on gendered notions of morality and revising perceptions of the city to make their case. Not everyone celebrated these developments, subtle and unintentional as they were. The redesigned city agenda confounded some in the state and national movements who did not have the same access or claim to it that those within the metropolis did. Consolidation and personal animus threw the growing divide between Manhattan insiders and state/​national outsiders into stark relief, severing links in the process. The harmony at Stanton’s 1895 gala hid the brewing conflict that was about to surface over New York City’s place in the state and national movements. The 1894 New  York State Constitutional Convention had enlivened the metropolitan women’s rights campaign. American aristocrats had rushed headlong into the drive, unprecedentedly politicking in their grand homes and luxurious retreats. They even created a parallel campaign to promote the ballot. As quickly as the elite world opened, though, its door slammed shut following the amendment’s defeat. The League for Political Education, with its more abstract commitment to civic literacy, immediately attracted the attention of socialites who campaigned for the vote in 1894. Many who spearheaded the work at Sherry’s would fade from the suffrage scene, as civic education became their primary focus.9 Nevertheless, mainstream lobbyists in Gotham seemed

Becoming “A Lover of the Metropolis”    35 to have absorbed an important lesson about organizing in the metropolis from these fashionable newcomers: luxurious spaces could be politicized to legitimize the cause. In 1894, those in Blake’s New York City Woman Suffrage League watched as the press reappraised the campaign for political equality through a lens colored by the prestige of Sherry’s restaurant. The subtle messages that a venue could convey were made abundantly clear. Manhattan campaign directors, of course, did not have the same resources as those within New York’s most elite orbit. Many suffrage gatherings continued to take place within supporters’ homes.10 But metropolitan leaders more consciously strove to capitalize on New York’s landmarks after 1894. The 1880s might have witnessed occasional meetings at the Park Avenue Hotel and Steinway Hall; the 1890s ushered in annual events at the Waldorf-​Astoria. Fortunately, the barriers to accessing these exclusive spaces began to buckle for reasons well beyond women’s rights at the same moment that suffragists in Manhattan began to regularly seek them out. By century’s end, budgetary burdens forced elite venues to welcome middle-​class consumers, as they needed their revenue to finance the extravagant environments.11 Women’s rights advocates could take advantage of this shift, but they also needed to balance a venue’s prestige with its cost. This was a difficult calculus, and Manhattan-​ based suffrage associations frequently decided on low-​ key establishments at the turn of the century. The Tuxedo proved a perennial favorite, with Blake’s association hosting at least nine meetings there in one year alone.12 The five-​story building itself might not have drawn much attention, but its prosaic nature undoubtedly translated into a smaller rental fee for what would have otherwise been a prime piece of real estate—​a bargain suffragists seemed happy to accept.13 At the corner of Madison Avenue and Fifty-​Ninth Street, the Tuxedo skirted the city’s elite enclave; Central Park, the Hotel Savoy, and the Metropolitan Club were close to the site.14 Small treasuries demanded compromise, and the Tuxedo fit the bill—​suffragists could benefit from the illustrious address without having to pay for an extravagant interior. Grander, more festive events altered the equation, weighting it toward opulence. Campaign stalwarts might not be able to establish regular headquarters at posh restaurants as the Sherry’s contingent did in 1894, but they could rent a room for an evening. No hotel better flaunted the age’s swank than the Waldorf-​Astoria. Originally built as two competing establishments, the Waldorf (completed in 1894) and the Astoria (finished in 1897) merged into one hotel at century’s end.15 Harper’s Bazaar lavished praise on the palace, dubbing the hotel “the Mecca of visitors.”16 The sounds of birthday and anniversary parties, fairs, and lectures echoed from its forty public rooms. Foreign dignitaries

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and America’s nobility resided there. Socialites thrilled at parading through Peacock Alley, which united the two establishments, for all to see.17 New York City suffragists could expect the highbrow landmark to provide their meetings with an air of respectability. The hotel’s Astor Gallery crowned the main stairway and drew singular admiration. One tour book lectured visitors that the Parisian-​inspired ballroom was “especially noteworthy.”18 Blake ranked it the “most beautiful banquet hall in the city.”19 Suffragists interrupted the normal rhythm of society dinners, dances, and benefits in the Astor Gallery to host their Pilgrim Mothers’ Dinner there in 1897. Blake began this annual tradition five years earlier to remedy the historical amnesia surrounding women’s role on the Mayflower; men celebrated the Pilgrim Fathers, not the Pilgrim Mothers.20 Organizers tried out three different venues until they finally relocated it to the Astor Gallery—​a move Blake promised would make the 1897 dinner one of “unusual brilliancy.”21 This decision was not without risks, especially in light of the economic despair that defined much of the 1890s. The 1893 depression had left twenty thousand New Yorkers homeless.22 The Waldorf-​Astoria itself had come under attack when Bradley and Cornelia Martin hosted an aristocratic-​inspired costume ball there in 1897. Seven hundred excessively wealthy individuals attended—​some as monarchs, others as knights and nobles. In the midst of nothing, this show of plenty enraged many New Yorkers. Nevertheless, Blake moved her suffrage dinners there less than a year after security threats and public condemnation marred the Martin ball.23 The possibility of alienating supporters did not seem to have registered for Blake. For a heavily middle-​class movement, the potential gains outweighed this risk: the venue would enhance the organization’s reputation, signaling that it had arrived politically and socially.24 Decorated with paintings, drapes, and mirrors, the Astor Gallery lived up to Blake’s expectations. Pink globes lit up the first dinner there; pink, yellow, and white flowers added to the air of refinement. A  few men attended the pageant, but organizers confined them to the balcony—​an ironic reversal of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s experience at the World Anti-​Slavery Convention in 1840. Politics intersected with humor, elegance, and adventure as speeches meandered from a tale about the wedding of Father Knickerbocker and “fair Miss Brooklyn” to the thrills of mountain climbing.25 Blake would decide to hold her annual celebration at the Waldorf-​Astoria for the next six years. In 1904, it relocated farther uptown to the equally prestigious new Astor Hotel.26 Other organizations followed a parallel course. At the turn of the century, the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association and the New England Woman Suffrage Association regularly held their annual May Festival at Faneuil Hall in Boston.27 Known as the “Cradle of Liberty” because it had hosted patriot

Becoming “A Lover of the Metropolis”    37 meetings in the days before the American Revolution, the hall was associated with democracy and liberty in the public’s imagination.28 At the 1907 gathering, the revered Julia Ward Howe explicitly tapped into this memory, connecting the space’s reputation with the campaign’s message. “We have come here this evening in the aid of a cause which has so many times called us together,” the aging leader told the audience of four hundred, “We have met in a hall so consecrated by the memory of the winged words uttered here by famous speakers, that we can almost hear them speak to us again in their old familiar tones.”29 In Boston, a city deeply proud of its history, suffragists chose to meet regularly at an emblem of that history; in Manhattan, a metropolis associated with wealth and commerce, local organizers selected a symbol of luxury and elegance.30 The Waldorf-​Astoria’s significance far exceeded that of indulging sup­ porters’ taste for style, though. It served to counter long-​standing stereotypes that painted suffragists as masculinized zealots.31 The balls held there honored elite gendered customs:  men escorted women; debutantes searched for husbands; women dripped diamonds and pearls to advertise their family’s wealth.32 Mobilizing a space associated with femininity and refinement could challenge a trope that had haunted the movement since it began. Not everyone appreciated this strategy. Following one early Pilgrim Mothers’ Dinner, Anthony urged Blake not to lose sight of working-​class women. These affairs might be nice, Anthony admonished, but organizing districts via house-​ to-​house canvassing was critical. The legendary leader clung to canvassing despite suffragists’ earlier difficulties applying it to the urban environment and Blake’s vocal resistance.33 New  York City—​the leisured class it attracted, the money that flowed along Wall Street and Fifth Avenue, and its trendsetting reputation—​fueled the Gilded Age luxury hotel and restaurant boom. Manhattan suffragists tried to benefit from this boom to legitimize their cause. As Gotham’s elite landscape glittered, charges of government malfeasance rocked its political world. The city’s haute landscape could help improve the movement’s image; at the same time, suffragists promised that with the ballot they would help reform the metropolis’s. An urban symbiosis haltingly emerged in the late 1890s—​one that outsiders would ultimately find difficult to access. Charges of municipal corruption and mismanagement were not new to the 1890s. The most infamous case occurred two decades earlier when New Yorkers realized the extent of Democrat boss William Tweed’s malfeasance—​thanks to financial kickbacks, it cost more for New York City to build one courthouse than for the United States to purchase Alaska.34 Suffragists themselves did not directly participate in the earlier, anti–​Tammany Hall, good government initiative

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that resulted. A  New  York suffrage publication at the time, the Revolution, hardly mentioned the political scandals stunning Manhattan.35 Suffragists’ own evolving relationship with the party system helps account for this silence. Some activists had temporarily placed their hopes in the Democratic Party in the 1860s, convinced that Republicans betrayed them when they decided to focus exclusively on the post-​bellum rights of African American men.36 By the early 1870s, New York–​based suffragists changed course and decided not to ally with either party. Still, the fleeting suffrage-​Democrat alliance was enough for women’s rights organizers to avoid becoming enmeshed in the 1870s Tweed corruption scandal.37 Tammany Hall would not always enjoy such a reprieve. Reform organizations once more jolted into action when the political machine again grabbed the Democratic Party’s reins in the 1880s and 1890s and regained relatively consistent control over the mayor’s office.38 This time some in the metropolitan women’s rights campaign decided to participate. Reverend Charles Parkhurst led the good government charge, condemning the Tammany-​led city government for condoning vice. He especially blamed the city’s police force for allowing its children to sink into depravity.39 His arguments spoke directly to reform-​minded women who quickly established the Woman’s Municipal League in 1894 with Parkhurst’s assistance.40 Some suffrage advocates joined, despite Parkhurst’s vocal anti-​ suffrage stance.41 Mary Putnam Jacobi attended at least one meeting. Catherine Abbe took on a more official position, joining the Woman’s Municipal League’s Committee on Public Meetings.42 Their contributions dulled in comparison to those of Margaret Chanler, who would take charge of the Woman’s Municipal League in 1903, underscoring her lifelong commitment to civic improvement. Other suffragists opposed involvement in the good government drive, convinced that the movement would gain nothing from women’s participation and fearful that the efforts might drain resources. Stanton fumed that Republicans readily exploited women to oust Tammany, but the party still refused to promote political equality.43 Blake insisted that her city league remain neutral, since it did not matter if Tammany or a reform mayor ran Gotham.44 Neither really cared about women.45 Anthony expected the good government reforms to illustrate how little women could do to improve electoral politics without the ballot.46 Whether suffragists aligned with the reform movement or deemed it a waste of women’s energies, the anti-​Tammany campaigns of the 1890s and early 1900s helped to shift the discursive environment for those in New York City. This had important consequences. If corrupt politicians caused the urban problems, as good government reformers believed, then moral women armed with the ballot might be able to solve them—​or at least city activists increasingly

Becoming “A Lover of the Metropolis”    39 argued that they would.47 Suffragists had something to offer the metropolis; voting women could save it from political turmoil. Blake’s response to the 1901 mayoral election, which pitted a reform candidate against a Tammany-​backed one, throws this into stark relief. Blake was far from a city booster in the 1870s and 1880s, even publishing a novel that painted a bleak picture of metropolitan living. Gotham endangered Blake’s female protagonist at every turn in the 1874 story. Her interpretation of urban life changed drastically by 1901, when the good government drive led to intense partisan bickering and assaults on her adopted hometown. Blake railed against both parties for depicting New York as the “most undesirable residence in the world.” The Republicans, she griped in The Woman’s Journal, focused on crime and vice under Tammany, painting the urban milieu as one of “wild disorder, hardly safe for the home of a decent person.” The Democrats countered by obsessing about the high taxes and poor schools under the Republican administration. Blake groaned, The worst aspect of this clamor is that many persons really believe that a horrible condition of affairs exists here, and it is not surprising to read in a foreign paper a description of this city which states that disorders constantly occur, that murderous riots often take place, that the streets are not fit for decent people even by broad daylight, and that women dare not go out even in the morning unless accompanied by some male protector. All cities had problems, Blake conceded, but in general Gotham was safe for women, young or old. Day or night, they could walk on the streets, travel in cars, or shop in department stores. The leader sighed, “It really grieves a lover of the metropolis to have it thus held up to the scorn of the world by these attacks, made, not by strangers, but by her own sons [emphasis added].”48 The good government efforts helped move Blake from condemning to defending her urban home, and she did so in a way that framed it as one large family. She went further than simply defending the city, though; Blake made promises. If instead of mud-​slinging, New Yorkers would turn their attention to promoting political equality, the leader guaranteed, “it would surely be the shortest way to end the abuses in our city administration.” Only women’s votes would achieve the “substantial reform” that the parties touted.49 Blake did not need to join the anti–​Tammany Hall, good government drive to be influenced by it and to take advantage of it. Other suffragists echoed similar points over the succeeding years.50 The Brooklyn suffrage organizer Mary H.  Loines put it simply in 1905:  with the ballot women would introduce a “strong moral element” into the electorate;

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female voters would protect the community’s “well being” and eradicate “greed and graft.”51 Another leader similarly demanded that women needed a political voice, since politics and the law affected the home. “Seat woman, the ‘Queen of the Home,’ upon the throne of the rulership beside man, the ‘King of Business,’ and let them govern together,” she announced, “This work of evolution needs YOU, wives and mothers.”52 Such arguments about women’s presumably innate morality had existed for decades, informing late eighteenth-​century republican motherhood and mid-​ nineteenth-​ century true womanhood. But late nineteenth-​ century city growth demanded government’s involvement in people’s lives to an unprecedented degree, giving rise to municipal housekeeping with its uniquely urban perspectives. The doctrine responded to the ways in which metropolitan problems seeped into people’s homes: the population density within cities turned isolated diseases into epidemics; the distance to farms endangered residents’ food supply; urban pleasures tempted children. With the boundaries between public and private so porous, women required the franchise to ensure that policies safeguarded their families. “May we not fairly say,” Jane Addams self-​assuredly concluded one suffrage tract, “that American women need this implement [the ballot] in order to preserve the home.”53 From California to Illinois, such ideas slowly crept into the suffrage movement. In New York City, the good government reforms added urgency to this language—​women needed to purify urban politics before they destroyed the metropolis and the home. Campaigners, like Blake, seized the opportunity to transform Gotham’s women from victims into potential heroines in their reimagined urban narrative. Historians have understudied urban politics when tracing these changes in suffrage rhetoric. Much of the scholarship has focused on the national campaign or state movements, and not scaled down to the city level.54 Concentrating on suffragists’ relationship to Gotham suggests how metropolitan developments informed movement discourse. As Blake’s comments indicate, urbanization and urban politics helped catalyze a shift (however halting it might have been) in New York City organizers’ rhetoric. They increasingly framed their argument in terms of women’s special skills. On one hand, then, the good government drive encouraged Manhattan suffragists to make arguments championing conservative assumptions about women’s unique nature; the city needed their ostensibly natural gifts. On the other, the political rupture turned metropolitan problems into fodder for women’s rights. In the future, municipal housekeeping would permit activists to physically shatter spheres in New York City, all while defending their public, political action via assumptions about women’s natural morality. But, for the present, this remained a discursive shift. Gotham’s streets continued to be off limits for

Becoming “A Lover of the Metropolis”    41 middle-​class activists. A female barker on Fourteenth Street was even a “sad” enough “sight” for Blake to lament it in a report to The Woman’s Journal: “The woman was tall, had a good face, and was respectably dressed; the banner she carried was quite high, and though she clasped it with both hands, the weight was evidently painful. People stared at her, and she seemed to feel keenly the humiliation of her position.”55 Urban streets’ chaos, anonymity, and spontaneity combined with the potential for ogling and sexualization demanded caution.56 Given the gendered geography mapped onto the city’s built environment and long-​standing questions about the movement’s radicalism, it seemed more effective to dine at the metropolis’s landmarks than to parade onto its streets. That women would improve the metropolis’s moral functioning with the ballot grew into a rhetorical refrain in suffrage propaganda. Meanwhile, haute venues enabled activists to cloak their cause in a veneer of propriety and éclat. In all, Manhattan activists were developing a city agenda, one that many outside of Gotham had difficulty accessing. Jean Brooks Greenleaf, the state president from Rochester, explicitly acknowledged this point in an 1895 letter to Blake. Overwhelmed with planning a gathering in Manhattan, she pleaded for help. “It is so different holding a Convention in a large city, where there is everything else going on,” she admitted. “In little Rochester, I should know what to do.”57 As Greenleaf’s letter indicates, personal relationships had once helped to transcend the boundaries dividing city, state, and national movements. The state president could turn to Manhattan’s leading activist for advice and assistance in 1895. The Rochester-​based Anthony could depend on Blake to carry out national policies in the 1880s and early 1890s. At one point, Blake even led both the state and the city league herself. Personal feuds and strategy differences severed these bonds in the late 1890s, further coalescing a distinct, city identity for Gotham activists. If those in the state and national organizations already felt as if they could not manage events in the Empire City, they increasingly believed that they also had no allies within Manhattan whom they could trust to do so either. By century’s end, the lines were clearly drawn between metropolitan insiders and skeptical outsiders, even as a Brooklyn resident gained control over the state association in 1896. Blake and Anthony’s deteriorating relationship set the chain of events in motion. Blake had first met Anthony in 1869.58 For nearly three decades, they worked together:  in the national organization, over which Anthony presided and in which Blake labored, and in the state association, which Blake chaired for more than a decade and Anthony advised. A  mentor and friend during Blake’s early career, Anthony gradually morphed into an adversary in Blake’s mind. Different strategies and goals bred this frustration. Blake prioritized electing suffrage-​ friendly legislators; Anthony emphasized canvassing and

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petitions. The Manhattan resident supported a sweeping agenda for women’s rights; the Rochester habitué insisted that the movement focus myopically on the vote.59 By 1888, Blake seethed over what she considered institutional affronts.60 “I had long laid aside any violent ambition for public place,” the graying leader later reflected in her unpublished autobiography. “I asked only that my colleagues should treat me with a little courtesey [sic], giveme [sic] the position to which my age and long services might seem to entitle me, but they had treated me many times with rudeness slighting me, as much as they dared.”61 Still, Blake managed to work with the national president into the mid-​ 1890s, even following Anthony’s instructions in 1894 when she was leading the New York City Woman Suffrage League during the Constitutional Convention drive. Metropolitan consolidation in 1898, though, provided her an opportunity to challenge Anthony’s directives and do so on her home turf. City planners had discussed combining Manhattan with its surrounding counties for decades. Dreams of creating a central administration to advance urban development and concerns that Manhattan might lose its status as the country’s largest city motivated the proposal. Opposition to the idea quickly materialized, however. Legislators upstate fretted that a merger would create “a monster metropolis”; others in Brooklyn worried that Manhattan’s vice and corruption would infiltrate their county once the cities combined. That could not stop the overpowering force of consolidation, however. When the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve 1897, the city’s population jumped from 2 million to 3.4 million as Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island consolidated into Greater New York. More than a slight alteration in boundary lines, the merger disrupted traditional political dynamics, required bureaucratic transformations, and demanded the birth of a new metropolitan ethos. New York was now the second-​largest city in the world, behind only London.62 It was truly a global city, and details about its happenings reverberated around the globe, increasing the pressure on suffragists to maintain a respectable image at the same time the megacity threatened to swallow up their campaign in its now even more complicated landscape. Where some saw dangers in consolidation, Blake saw an “admirable opportunity.”63 She obsessively worked to ensure that the new city’s governing charter would be more charitable toward women than the one it replaced. Her league sent a letter to the Greater New York Commission drafting the legislation requesting women be eligible for elected or appointed positions within Greater New  York, the police department hire police matrons, and women teachers’ wages equal those of their male colleagues. The letter concluded by urging the commission to grant women municipal suffrage within the “great metropolis of the future.” Blake refused to leave any stone unturned, “writing

Becoming “A Lover of the Metropolis”    43 letters till” her “arm ache[d]‌” in her drive to capitalize on the legislative opportunity consolidation offered.64 Her New York City Woman Suffrage League called a meeting with suffrage clubs and women’s organizations throughout Greater New  York and even promised to forgo participation at the national suffrage convention in order to devote itself to ensuring the new city charter recognize women’s rights—​undoubtedly a self-​serving sacrifice for Blake, who already felt that the national campaign was marginalizing her.65 She did not receive much in the way of support from the state association, which Brooklynite Mariana Chapman had led since 1896 and which Anthony oversaw.66 Despite her ties to Greater New  York, Chapman did not make amending the city charter a priority for the New York State Woman Suffrage Association.67 The state president seems to have had a cynical view of consolidation itself, describing January 1, 1898, the day Greater New York was officially created, in her diary as a “day of mourning.”68 Without state support, Blake and her co-​agitators failed to achieve their objectives in Albany. The legislative session concluded before passing any of their bills amending the charter.69 Even years later Blake viscerally raged against the loss. “Men did not want women in positions where they can aompete [sic] with them or even watch them,” she fumed, “and they do not wish them to have any money, life is so much better araigned [sic] for men as it is, they dread any change.”70 The urban transformation produced little in the way of legislative advances for women. Following the merger, Blake and her New  York City Woman Suffrage League helped establish the Civic and Political Equality Union to unite the enlarged metropolis’s myriad women’s rights organizations.71 The union’s goals extended well beyond suffrage, from increasing salaries for police matrons to guaranteeing women’s equal right to access commercial spaces like restaurants.72 In fact, despite the organization’s name and although it included various suffrage groups in Manhattan and the new boroughs, its constitution mentioned enfranchisement only in the vaguest language. Its work focused, instead, on improving women’s day-​to-​day lives in the city:  everything from safeguarding laborers’ well-​being to improving conditions on ferries.73 This was just the sort of work Anthony chafed against. For Blake, political advances necessitated broader cultural changes. For Anthony, the vote needed to be the central focus.74 Blake’s metropolitan-​based Civic and Political Equality Union provided her the space in which to defy Anthony’s leadership. Challenging gendered discrimination in restaurants became a top priority for the union, an unsurprising decision when one recognizes that Manhattan activists were mobilizing elite restaurants for large-​scale gatherings. Serving alcohol and food, restaurants were male terrain in the nineteenth century. Female-​only dining rooms and tearooms provided the only options for women

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wanting to respectably dine out alone. That such activities needed to take place during the daytime further limited their choices.75 Restaurant proprietors considered it their responsibility to police this gendered boundary, even as New York City suffragists thought it theirs to contest it. More was at stake than ensuring an individual woman could consume a meal. Restaurants had become part of the everyday landscape in New York City. And such gendered traditions caged in a woman, invited scrutiny of her reputation, and guaranteed her dependence on men. They marked her as a second-​ class citizen. Activists could expand the definition of citizenship for urban, female residents by contesting these customs. The Civic and Political Equality Union considered such access a “right,” not a luxury or convenience.76 It sent out women to “well-​known places of entertainment” to challenge such rules.77 The union declared success by century’s end—​individual women could dine without escorts at night.78 The Civic and Political Equality Union emphasized battling everyday gendered discriminations and discomforts in the city. These priorities downgraded the ballot, which seemed at best abstractly important, but not necessary to win more tangible improvements to women’s daily lives.79 In the long term, the suffrage campaign would benefit from such efforts to rewrite the urban gendered geography. In the short term, though, Blake’s decisions hurt the campaign more than they helped, as other objectives temporarily eclipsed enfranchisement. Her work also clearly did not align with the suffrage focus of Anthony and the National American Woman Suffrage Association.80 The tension between Anthony and Blake came to a head in 1899 when the National American Woman Suffrage Association removed Blake from its Committee on Legislative Advice. Though Blake had directed this committee since 1895, her effort to extend its mandate beyond the ballot galled Anthony. The national suffrage organization reorganized the committee without Blake, accusing her of “express[ing] antagonism to the whole trend of the work of the Association.”81 “Indignat[ion]” choked the Gothamite when she discovered that Anthony had orchestrated her dismissal.82 Anthony’s retirement as the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s director the following year provided Blake an opportunity to regain authority in the national movement. Her decision to run for president left colleagues at a crossroad: they could select a new crop of young leaders who might inject ingenuity into the floundering campaign, or they could choose Blake, a steadfast supporter with a wealth of experience upon which to draw. At least a few activists believed that Blake’s years of sacrifice earned her the national presidency. One mused, “There is time enough for the young women—​ they can wait[;]‌you have borne the burden in the heat of the day and I saw you

Becoming “A Lover of the Metropolis”    45 on the platform when we were young and it meant something to be for woman suffrage then! [emphasis in original].”83 Her most prominent endorsements came from Stanton and Olivia Sage, who even lent their names to a circular advertising their candidate’s “executive ability,” “high culture,” “fine presence,” and thirty years of experience.84 Still, Blake concluded that “everything” was “being done to secure” her “defeat.”85 Anthony backed the forty-​one-​year-​old Carrie Chapman Catt. Selecting a successor created an opportunity for Anthony to ensure that the next generation would carry out a suffrage-​focused agenda, something Blake (with her independent Gotham streak) might not do.86 Anthony’s support was not the only reason Catt won, even if Blake might believe it traitorously so. National campaign managers also hoped to appoint someone with experience in the South and West, the regions they planned to target in the early twentieth century. Catt’s roots in Iowa combined with her suffrage tours in Colorado and South Dakota fit the bill (even though she and her second husband had actually moved to New  York in the early 1890s).87 Western states seemed particularly fertile grounds for success, since, as Catt herself reported, they were freed “from tradition,” celebrated a “liberality of thought,” and embraced “new ideas.”88 That these regions lacked large urban centers dulled Blake’s metropolitan-​experience edge. She might know New York City well, but Catt was tuned into the West and Southwest.89 This along with Anthony’s support easily put her over the top in a controversial election detailed in the New York Times, Boston Daily Globe, and Chicago Daily Tribune.90 Blake’s defeat signaled that New  York City’s place in the national campaign would further shrink, as a former New York State Woman Suffrage Association president acknowledged. “Another thing,” she wrote in a letter to Blake, “while you are better acquainted with New York City, and its needs and work, Mrs. Catt doubtless understands Western and So. Western management better than anyone else, and all events show that . . . Equal Rights is destined to move from West to East.”91 Although the comment was meant as a salve, the Manhattan resident likely experienced it as salt in her still raw wounds. Blake did not gracefully accept this defeat. Rather, she rebelled. “Miserable,” she quit the mainstream suffrage organization to found her own National Legislative League.92 The disgruntled leader consistently claimed that her league would not compete with the National American Woman Suffrage Association, but it did unsuccessfully challenge the national organization’s hegemony over the women’s rights community. The presidential contest cemented Blake and Manhattan’s marginal place in the national campaign, at least for as long as she remained active. The editor of the prominent suffrage newspaper The Woman’s Journal asked her not to mention her National Legislative League in the publication so as to avoid muddying the institutional landscape.93 More startling, the

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National American Woman Suffrage Association decamped from Manhattan in 1903, moving its headquarters to rural Warren, Ohio.94 “Down in New York City,” the association explained in its national newsletter, “every growing thing is crowded, like a flower in a window box. In a middling small town of the (so-​ considered) middle West, the same plant is set in a flower pot all its own. It is more conspicuous. It seems more remarkable.”95 The national organization rationalized that suffrage would electrify quiet Warren, its treasurer’s home town, to a degree impossible in Manhattan’s already frenetic political landscape.96 Other reasons for the national campaign to depart New York lurked under the surface: leaving would distance it from a city movement that must have looked increasingly chaotic to leadership, and relocating to Ohio placed the campaign near the states it hoped to win. The conflict at the national level affected the relationship between the state and city campaigns as well, aggravating their already tenuous dynamic. Formally, the New York State Woman Suffrage Association affiliated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Informally, Anthony had clout within her home state’s association. She even took it upon herself to warn the state president in 1897 that Blake was trying to “usurp” power, decreeing that she needed “curb and bit.”97 The New York State Woman Suffrage Association was clearly aligned with the national organization, an alignment Blake rejected. Eight months after Catt’s election, Blake’s city organization withdrew from the state association, changing its name to the New York City Legislative League to identify with her National Legislative League.98 Meanwhile, Brooklyn’s importance in the state movement increased. Not only would a Brooklyn resident, Chapman, lead the state association until 1902, but several new organizations affiliated with the state organized in that borough.99 Even so, fighting for the rights of New York City women remained a low priority for the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, which instead focused on winning propertied women in villages and towns the right to vote on questions about taxation.100 For nearly a decade, Blake presided over the New  York City Legislative League.101 Local organizations throughout the metropolis regularly invited her to speak.102 Only during the last half of the decade did Blake begin to retire from the metropolitan suffrage movement. Blake’s personal rivalry with national leadership did not drastically change her status in the city. Rather, it made visible the growing schism between Manhattan and state/​national associations.103 That wedge would widen in the succeeding years. An upstate contingent came to dominate the state association’s leadership in the early twentieth century: the president was from Warsaw (after Chapman’s retirement in 1902), the vice president from Syracuse, the recording secretary from Geneseo, and corresponding secretary from Weedsport.104 Not only did its leadership composition

Becoming “A Lover of the Metropolis”    47 change, but its agenda shifted as well. In 1901, the state focused on achieving partial suffrage in “third class cities,” those with a population smaller than fifty thousand people. Clearly mobilizing Greater New York—​with its population exceeding three million people—​was not a high-​ranking objective.105 City leaders had developed their own identity, which alienated state managers who remained loyal to Anthony. Nevertheless, the state organization still expected the Manhattan movement to respect its authority. Even Catt could not escape this expectation once she began to organize a New York City club. Fatigue combined with her husband’s poor health convinced Catt to resign as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1904.106 The previous year, she had helped found the Interurban Woman Suffrage Council, an umbrella suffrage organization for Greater New York that would ultimately supplant Blake’s league.107 The Iowan–​turned–​New Yorker should have had an immense amount of credibility with the state association given the years she spent managing the national organization, but her work in New  York City made her suspect. Catt faced resistance when she approached the state seeking aid for this metropolitan effort. “If we pay the fiddler,” the state officer from Ithaca decreed, “let us order the tune.”108 Leery of “a discordant element in the south of state,” the corresponding secretary ordered the state president to “go down and find out the exact situation and know firsthand ‘what is up.’”109 Even inchoate involvement in New York City could raise questions about a respected leader’s trustworthiness in the state’s eyes. The grudge between Anthony and Blake illuminated the tension between city, state, and national campaigns. More was at stake than simply personal dislike. The seat of power within the Empire State was up for grabs, and those in the New York State Woman Suffrage Association feared it shifting toward Manhattan—​an especially alarming trend as New York City suffragists’ growing urban savvy exposed state leaders’ own outsider status.110 It would take a new generation of activists to resolve this conflict. Such geopolitical division does not seem to have existed in Illinois, the state that most resembled the Empire State in terms of urbanization. In 1902, Chicago residents began an unsuccessful decade-​long bid to rewrite the city charter to grant Chicago more power vis-​à-​vis the state government. Just as New York City activists used the disruption created by consolidation to insert their demands, Chicago suffragists attempted to reframe conversations about charter revision to include women’s rights.111 At its convention in 1905, the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association charged a group of women with charter work. It also sent a letter to other women’s organizations in Chicago encouraging their involvement, pressed city ministers to support municipal suffrage,

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and printed thousands of pamphlets urging municipal suffrage for the benefit not only of women but also for the city.112 Those in Gotham received no such assistance from the state association during their effort to have the newly expanded city recognize women’s rights. Unlike the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association, the New York State Woman Suffrage Association made no mention of the charter drive in its annual report to the National American Woman Suffrage Association either.113 Not all states experienced the divide that New York did. Some managed to pool resources, rather than dilute them. Blake and her peers certainly shared some experiences with contemporaries in other cities. Boston leaders, for instance, used symbolic urban spaces to lend authority to their message. Good government reforms also influenced suffrage work elsewhere; women in Los Angeles and San Francisco developed an especially beneficial connection with good government reformers in those cities.114 But there are indications of important differences as well. The Chicago charter campaign suggests that the hostility between those in Gotham and those in upstate New York was unusual. Studying New York underscores the ways in which overlapping scales of work—​local, state, and national—​cut both ways. At the same time they could create unity and a coherent plan, conflict on one level could quickly filter up or down with potentially destabilizing effects. An individual looking at the Manhattan movement in 1905 would have discovered a campaign in transition—​one contesting state and national oversight, while also fracturing into competing and sometimes fleeting associations. The Civic and Political Equality Union dissolved in 1900. Meanwhile, Blake’s New York City Legislative League failed to regain the vitality of its predecessor. And Carrie Chapman Catt’s Interurban Council worked to get off the ground. No suffrage society as dominant and active as Blake’s New York City Woman Suffrage League would appear again in Manhattan until Harriot Stanton Blatch established the Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women in 1907. By that point, the state association had lost authority within the city movement and Blake had unofficially retired from active suffrage management, opening the door for a new cohort of leaders to take the helm. In the end, the first generation of New York City suffragists left a mixed legacy. Blake and her peers began the process of reimagining the metropolis, developing a more strategic approach to the once-​overwhelming city. Good government reforms further helped, convincing many that corrupt political machines produced urban problems and that voting women could remedy them. Despite their progress, the suffrage map that Gilded Age lobbyists drew had definite boundaries. This generation rented spaces to avoid the need for street protests, circumscribing their activism in a manner that limited its reach. Fragile organizations wrestled for dominance during the pioneers’ last years.

Becoming “A Lover of the Metropolis”    49 And most New Yorkers continued to scoff at the idea of women voting—​or, perhaps worse, not consider it at all. At the national level, Anthony hand-​picked the leader who would replace her as the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s president in 1900. New  York witnessed no such ordered coronation. Instead, a power vacuum emerged in the nation’s largest metropolis, with a second generation gaining control later in the city movement than in the national campaign.115 The decade bracketing 1900 was, thus, a period of turmoil, possibilities, and change, as the pioneers clumsily passed on the baton. No longer subservient to the state organ­ization, primed with a new rationale for the vote, and willing to capitalize on Manhattan’s resources, this next wave of activists would push the city’s movement beyond anything that their predecessors could have imagined.

3 Ushering in a “New Era,” 1907–​1909

On May 12, 1908, Lillie Devereux Blake broke with her past to address a crowd in Union Square, a hub of political activism in lower Manhattan.1 Some second-​ generation suffragists had started to hold open-​air meetings just a few months before Blake ventured into this one. Many New  Yorkers, including those in the movement establishment, fiercely resisted the new tactic’s aggressiveness. Middle-​class white women’s appropriation of public space grated against the city’s gendered geography, even four decades after the New York City Woman Suffrage League’s founding. Blake, then nearly seventy-​ five, had initially planned to attend the street meeting only as an observer. But after witnessing the event’s orderliness, she spontaneously decided to speak. The crowd responded enthusiastically. “Glad I am to see you! I’ve heard of the good things you’ve done for many a year!” one person exclaimed.2 A personal milestone for Blake, the speech also had symbolic import. The pioneer suffragist had provided her imprimatur to radicals succeeding her. Between 1907 and 1909, three individuals filled the vacuum left by Blake’s generation: Harriot Stanton Blatch, Maud Malone, and Carrie Chapman Catt. Even during this transitional period, these activists more fully benefited from the city’s resources than their Gilded Age predecessors. Whereas Blake’s cohort only temporarily gained socialites’ interest, those in this Progressive Era generation enrolled influential members of New  York’s monied subculture in a more lasting fashion. Whereas the pioneer wave refused to use public spaces independent of larger civic celebrations, the new crop of emerging leaders claimed them as their own to broadcast their cause on a more regular basis. And whereas those in the Gilded Age proved unable to raise an army

Ushering in a “New Era”    51 of suffrage ambassadors, Progressive Era activists capitalized on professional disputes among teachers to begin to do just that. Not all Progressive Era leaders understood the metropolis in the same way, though. Individuals foregrounded different layers in their strategic maps. Many envisioned female networks, unfastened to physical boundaries, overlaying the city. Others zeroed in on political jurisdictions, splitting the metropolis up into assembly or senatorial districts in their minds. And some perceived an island dotted with public spaces ideal for protests. A few managed to hold two competing visions simultaneously. Combining these individual layers generated a textured, metropolitan map for the Progressive Era campaign—​ one richer than anything produced by Blake’s generation. At its center stood the offices of the national and state movements, transforming Manhattan into the country’s suffrage capital by 1910. This second generation’s ascendancy coincided with the British suffrage movement’s burgeoning militancy, a militancy characterized by property damage, violence, and hunger strikes.3 Such behavior earned those in Britain’s militant wing the moniker “suffragettes,” as newspapers sought a snide label to distinguish more radical activists from conservative counterparts.4 Their strategies influenced the Progressive Era generation in Gotham who adopted open-​air meetings, though rejected the violence that defined British militancy.5 The different political contexts produced these divergent approaches, according to movement thought. Violence was unnecessary in the United States because, unlike in Britain, women “would be received with deference and respect” “if they marched upon Congress,” one advocate rationalized.6 Nevertheless, the British model provided New  Yorkers with a loose taxonomy to categorize the reborn campaign in their midst. A binary emerged in public discourse: reporters branded advocates as either conservative suffragists or radical suffragettes. Violence could not serve as the barometer in Gotham as it did in London, so place did. An activist who led meetings in commercial halls would have safely earned the status of a “suffragist,” whereas one holding a street corner meeting would have gained the “suffragette” epithet. In New York’s case it was where the activity took place, not the nature of the event itself, that most determined how the public classified the leader involved. This distinction eroded in the early 1910s as once-​hesitant lobbyists adopted more aggressive stunts, blending suffragette tactics into the urban rhythm. Until then, however, the binary remained a heuristic many New Yorkers used to comprehend the movement around them. Maud Malone, a fierce Irish librarian, planted herself firmly on the suffragette end.7 This is not surprising given her family background: her father and uncle endorsed Henry George, and earlier ancestors committed themselves to

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abolition. Malone apparently inherited this potent mixture of civic concern and political efficacy, channeling it into suffrage in the early twentieth century.8 In 1904, she helped organize the Harlem Equal Rights League to combat the mainstream campaign’s languor; two years later she became its president.9 In 1905, the league staged an Election Day mock vote for women at the Harlem Casino. The New York Times reported that the event attracted a diverse crowd, undoubtedly a byproduct of Harlem’s rich blend of Italian and Jewish immigrants, middle-​class white New Yorkers, and African Americans.10 “From the blushing maiden to the white-​haired old women,” the journalist described, “there were pretty girls and homely girls, with Bostonese looks, dress, and manners, and middle-​aged women, deeply interested in affairs political, economic, and social.” More than five hundred women cast ballots on Election Day 1905 thanks to the stunt. The league enabled women to perform the rituals of a full citizen, even if the government refused to recognize them as such.11 Malone, aided by British militant Bettina Borrman Wells, further radicalized the campaign when she organized the first open-​air meeting in the city two years later.12 Such street meetings breached an unwritten rule of suffrage etiquette that traced back to the Gilded Age cohort—​campaign work remained inside unless a civic celebration allowed otherwise. Malone, however, cared little for tradition. She chose Madison Square and New Year’s Eve 1907 to host her unprecedented protest.13 This decision revealed a budding, urban awareness. Office buildings, hotels, and fine restaurants encircled the busy park, which people easily reached via a nearby subway station.14 Malone was certain to attract a crowd, a fact further guaranteed by media coverage leading up to it. Despite the buildup, the afternoon demonstration itself proved anticlimactic. One reporter considered it “as quiet and orderly as an afternoon tea”—​ in one phrase turning the political action into a safe, feminized ritual. But that did not temper people’s fascination. Journalists and cameramen “converged toward the same spot from all points of the compass,” and curious New Yorkers flooded the first gathering.15 One photograph of an early open-​air meeting in Madison Square hints at the scene:  in a sea of overcoats, bowler hats, and newsie caps, women’s picture hats stand out. A single woman atop a makeshift rostrum labors to maintain the attention of some one hundred men and newspaper boys as the city—​its horses, businesses, and routines—​whirls around them. More men peer out from the warmth of a real estate office, and a handful of other women provide support. Space mattered, and Malone brazenly chose a masculinized and public one.16 The firebrand and her peers left with two hundred signatures endorsing enfranchisement that first night.17 Blake might have moved suffrage into the Waldorf-​Astoria, but Malone moved the campaign onto the streets.

Ushering in a “New Era”    53

A suffragette works to maintain the attention of a crowd of men during an early open-​air meeting. The staging of these speeches was remarkably minimalist compared with the spectacular marches and pageants of the 1910s. Open Air Street Meeting, Madison Square Garden. Undated. PR 068, Subject File, 90123d, © New-​York Historical Society.

Malone and Wells decided to intensify their metropolitan politicking, spearheading the first suffrage parade two months later.18 Malone predicted four to six thousand marchers would attend the 1908 demonstration, which was scheduled for a Sunday afternoon to ensure that “all classes” could participate.19 Her democratic impulse, however, collided with municipal regulations that prohibited parades on Sundays.20 Though an official parade—​with banners, brigades, and bands—​risked legal action, police could not prevent supporters from walking together through the streets. Upwards of six thousand people, including Harriot Stanton Blatch and Lillie Devereux Blake, reportedly followed the procession. Photographers tracked their movement as they made their way from Union Square to the Manhattan Trade School in the country’s first suffrage march.21 Congested intersections, bustling parks, and neighborhood street corners stood out on Malone’s metropolitan map. She criticized the self-​selectivity bred by meetings in commercial halls:  the men who attended either already supported the cause or did so to pacify a woman. The suffragette regularly held open-​air meetings in the Lower East Side and Harlem to compensate. Public

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space enabled Malone to reach more people but also exposed her to cutting barbs. Crowds responded to her arguments with a chorus of “woman’s place is at home.” Opponents scrambled onto their own soapboxes to challenge her. Malone persisted and declared her “right to speak in the streets” at the beginning of each meeting, warning the crowd to “respect” that “right.”22 In doing so, the radical claimed a physical prerogative to Manhattan, contesting urban etiquette that required feminine demureness. This freedom quickly ran afoul of city regulations. Twice, police arrested Malone in 1909 for leading a meeting at Thirty-​Fifth Street and Broadway, in the shadow of Macy’s department store and the New  York Herald building.23 The first meeting drew a thousand individuals. Some fifteen hundred followed when the police collared Malone for failing to have a permit and brought her to the station house.24 That did not stop the agitator. The same scene unfolded one week later.25 This time the judge threatened Malone with time on Blackwell’s Island, home of an infamous penitentiary, if she repeated her protest.26 She did not. By the end of that year, the New York Times dubbed Malone the “commander of the Flying Squad of Street Suffragettes.”27 Malone’s arguments generally echoed those of her more conservative peers—​for equality to exist, women needed the vote; women had the intellect to understand politics; working women could improve their laboring conditions with the ballot.28 But, because she violated metropolitan gender etiquette, Malone stood on the movement’s militant edge. Some of her peers glowered at her brazenness. One wealthy activist—​in gender-​coded language—​described the street speeches as “shriek[ing]” and considered them gratuitous.29 Carrie Chapman Catt’s Interurban Woman Suffrage Council announced that it did not support such methods.30 Even The Woman’s Journal only half-​heartedly defended the open-​air meetings against sensationalist, “yellow journalism,” noting that the outdoor protests were neither “illegal nor per se unladylike [emphasis added].”31 More conservative leaders, however, owed Malone a debt of gratitude. The suffragette adroitly mobilized new spaces to reach more constituents, changing activists’ relationship to the metropolis. Like her British counterparts, she knew how to manage the press:  writing letters to the New  York Times, reminding journalists to announce future demonstrations, and agreeing to interviews in order to advertise the cause. She even stationed her street meetings on a major newspaper’s doorstep. Her urban shrewdness made other suffragists’ once unconventional behavior seem conservative by comparison. Some organizers quickly adopted open-​air meetings. Three successful street meetings in Queens in 1908, for instance, convinced leaders there to recommend the strategy to others.32 One particularly influential beneficiary of Malone’s ideas was Harriot Stanton Blatch, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter.

Ushering in a “New Era”    55 Born eight years after her mother spearheaded the first women’s rights meeting at Seneca Falls, Blatch grew up with the cause—​and in her mother’s shadow. Time abroad brought her a degree of freedom and independence. Blatch married an Englishman and moved to Basingstoke, outside of London, in 1882. In England, she developed an understanding of how socioeconomic class and women’s rights intersected. Upon resettling in New  York in 1902, Blatch participated in good government reforms and the Women’s Trade Union League. Her interest in the American suffrage movement seems only to have increased as the years progressed, and her name briefly appears as president of the New York Equal Suffrage League in 1902.33 Blatch gained more prominence in the campaign in 1907 when she established the Manhattan-​based Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women, an association intended to ally professionals and industrial laborers.34 By 1909, the Equality League boasted twenty-​two thousand members, ranging from doctors and lawyers to shirt makers.35 Gotham provided an ideal laboratory for this cross-​class experiment: it claimed the most “female breadwinners” of any city in the nation.36 Manhattan’s compact nature also ensured that working-​class women lived cheek by jowl with those graduating from prestigious universities and colleges.37 The league, which morphed into the Women’s Political Union in 1910, would play a critical role in New  York’s enfranchisement drive. Blatch’s work initially remained sheltered in commercial spaces like Cooper Union and Carnegie Hall, despite her inclination to democratize the base.38 She even fought the Hoffman House’s refusal to serve her and a friend a meal one hot summer evening in 1907. This battle for unlimited access to the Hoffman House, which was part elite sports bar, part hotel, and part Democratic haunt, would not have registered for working-​class women with little disposable income to spare for a restaurant meal.39 But it consumed Blatch, who unsuccessfully sued.40 She personally and then legally attempted to contest a long-​standing, gendered tradition in dining that discriminated against unescorted women. This, however, did not make Blatch a “suffragette,” at least not in the press’s rendering.41 That some restaurant managers supported her indicates that mores surrounding dining were already in flux.42 Suffragists themselves had previously challenged these norms. Blake insisted that unescorted women had the right to eat in respectable restaurants after sunset before the turn of the century. Blatch did intensify the battle by suing the Hoffman House, but appropriating commercial venues still paled in comparison to Malone’s reterritorialization of street corners. Blatch’s approach evolved further when she collaborated on a joint venture with Malone in spring 1908. Their statewide “trolley tour,” a tour during

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which the two women made stops across upstate New York to deliver speeches, turned into a primer for Blatch on open-​air meetings. She was an eager student, convinced that street gatherings could aid causes with thin checkbooks.43 The budding suffragette quickly learned important geopolitical lessons. “The purveyor of quiet nooks [in parks] always fails to mention that there will be no ears to hear your eloquence,” Blatch reflected. “Seek, on the contrary, a perch in the gutter on the main business street. With back to the noisy highway, and facing the building which will act as a refector [sic], a sort of amplifier of your voice across the sidewalk, the few hearers at the start of a meeting rapidly grows to many.”44 She would implement this strategy when she returned to the city. One of her boldest actions took place outside the Madison Square Presbyterian Church more than a year later. This was not any house of worship; Reverend Charles Parkhurst, who had for years belittled suffragists, ministered it. Blatch threatened, “We are going to keep on meeting here until we have converted Dr. Parkhurst.” Her league physically claimed the space, even adding its name to the church’s bulletin along with its headquarters’ address. Her choice of location, then, worked on two levels. Geographically, the protest site stood in the center of Manhattan and across from Madison Square. Personally, it sent a direct message to a long-​standing foe. The curbside protest lacked the violence of British suffragettes’ demonstrations, and the content was relatively benign: Blatch’s speech dealt with corruption at the polls and improving ferry travel for women. But its street setting was enough for the New York Times to label it a “suffragette” gathering.45 That Blatch befriended British suffragettes reinforced the perception of her as a developing rebel. In fall 1909, she flaunted these relationships by organizing a Carnegie Hall meeting for Emmeline Pankhurst, a leader of the militant British Women’s Social and Political Union known for a threatening radicalism that had previously landed her in prison. Pankhurst captured the attention of the three-​thousand-​person audience by celebrating the union’s militant tactics and detailing British suffragettes’ imprisonment. “You have heard much of our methods; you have condemned them,” she preached. “But whether they are right or wrong, objectionable or not, they have certainly accomplished our object of bringing the question before the British public.” Keenly aware of her audience, she mobilized American lore to defend violence. “Where would this republic be,” she rhetorically asked, “if your fathers had not thrown the tea into Boston harbor?”46 More conservative activists balked. One declined to appear on the stage, even if refusing to do so “placed” her “in the category of the ‘moral snobs.’”47 Blatch, however, did not seem to regret her decision. She might not pioneer the suffragette tactics, but she certainly embraced them.

Ushering in a “New Era”    57 The Pankhurst meeting concerned the Iowan–​turned–​New Yorker Carrie Chapman Catt enough that she refused to provide the welcoming address, fearful that it would unleash a “deluge of suffrage anarchy.”48 The reaction by Catt, a skillful and careful manager more than an impulsive trailblazer, would not have surprised her peers. She positioned herself firmly on the New York movement’s “conservative” or “orthodox” wing.49 A product of the movement’s establishment, Catt had earned Anthony’s trust over the preceding decade, leading campaigns and undertaking organizational work for the national movement. In 1900, she succeeded the pioneer when the latter retired from her position as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.50 Catt ran the national organization for four years, until she too resigned to care for her ailing husband. Though the International Woman Suffrage Alliance occupied much of Catt’s time in the following years, she also returned to local work and chaired a new city association, the Interurban Woman Suffrage Council.51 Thus, Catt left a distinct imprint on both the global and local campaigns. The strategies Catt employed during this time reveal her conservative leanings. Malone led rallies on busy street corners, which Blatch replicated; Catt clung to the tactics that the pioneer generation initiated:  meetings in Carnegie Hall, the Hotel Astor, and Cooper Union.52 She selected the Martha Washington Hotel for headquarters. A “woman’s hotel,” it protected attendees from the sidewalk’s sometimes unseemly spontaneity.53 Her association even displayed a “twentieth century kitchen” at its 1908 bazaar, extolling modern conveniences and reinforcing gendered (and class) notions of domesticity.54 Traveling to Europe in 1909 and seeing militant tactics firsthand shifted Catt’s philosophy ever so slightly. Although she disapproved of suffragettes’ violence, Catt cast a longing eye on the publicity their stunts yielded.55 She continued to insist that the “militant” label should never be applied to her.56 Yet, she started “preach[ing] elasticity of method,” urging more collaboration between radicals and conservatives.57 She remained concerned with punctilios but began to consider “open air meetings” so long as “everything [would be] done in the most decorous manner,” a journalist reported.58 Malone demanded an inherent right to the streets; Catt planned to use gender niceties as her permission slip. The “orthodox” leader’s city work entered a new, more strategic phase in 1909 when her Interurban Woman Suffrage Council became the Woman Suffrage Party. The name change barely hinted at the historic institutional transformation afoot—​one that demanded organizers decode a metropolis that frequently baffled them. Eight hundred delegates and two hundred alternates crowded into Carnegie Hall for the October 1909 citywide convention intended to officially establish the Woman Suffrage Party. Largely procedural in nature,

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it lacked the buzz that energized Malone’s and Blatch’s stunts. “Yet it was in itself, in its constitution and makeup, quiet and matter of fact as these were,” The Woman’s Journal explained, “the most sensational event in the history of the woman suffrage movement since the pioneers first promulgated the theory of woman’s rights.”59 This was no exaggeration. The Woman Suffrage Party revolutionized suffragists’ mental map of the metropolis. Like Tammany Hall, the party revolved around political jurisdictions.60 Assembly districts and the even smaller election districts served as its key institutional units.61 The planners of the October 1909 citywide convention used their program to convey this revolutionary change to those in attendance. They purposefully left Carnegie Hall’s pit empty, except for signs indicating different assembly districts. Partway through the meeting, organizers asked the women crowded in the gallery to move to the empty seats in the pit. Rather than sitting with their clubs, they should sit with others who lived in their assembly district. Party members then chose the district leaders, who would later select delegates for city meetings. At these meetings, delegates elected the city and borough officers who would lead the organization. Supporters selected Catt as the first chair.62 Organizing around political districts relied on sometimes-​ artificial borders:  jurisdictions did not always seamlessly align with individual neighborhoods, discrete concerns, or demographics. But it was politically gen­ ius. Politicians understood the city in terms of these districts; they needed to in order to ensure their election. The Woman Suffrage Party recognized this and invented a structure to capitalize on it. The association would force a representative to take enfranchisement seriously by showing him that constituents did. A political geography replaced a geography of affinity and sociability.63 Though the schema was slow to take hold in the rest of New York State (the state president blamed “scattered residents” and the need for “time and money”), it was adopted in other parts of the nation.64 After hearing of the plan at the 1910 national convention, California, for instance, organized itself around district lines, as did suffragists in Massachusetts and Baltimore.65 In 1914, the National American Woman Suffrage Association even published a handbook detailing the plan so that others could follow it.66 The new Woman Suffrage Party complemented its grass-​roots labor with top-​down image management. Catt’s league ingeniously inflated its membership numbers by counting any person who pledged support, unlike other associations that required dues for members.67 It would claim twenty thousand members in less than a year of activity.68 Individual districts might fail to produce a viable suffrage constituency, despite organizing efforts, but the party could mask that reality with swollen citywide numbers.

Ushering in a “New Era”    59 The new association also enhanced its image by strategic use of landmarks. For $1,900 per year, the party secured four rooms on the twenty-​ first floor of the Metropolitan Tower.69 This was not any edifice. It was “one of the most beautiful of the city’s great buildings,” one tour guide bragged. “It is of carved white marble, most elegantly finished, and one of the most valuable buildings in the world.” Elevators shuttled people up and down the tower. Sightseers could gaze at the New  York skyline from the forty-​ fifth floor’s observation deck. Outside, Madison Square awaited.70 Image mattered as much as local grunt work, and this space conveyed strength and thoughtfulness. Organizers used the landmark to advertise their campaign. One postcard featured the tower, with Madison Square barely in the foreground. Designers placed the edifice’s name at the center of the image. The only other text announced “HEADQUARTERS WOMAN SUFFRAGE PARTY” above an arrow.71 The postcard advertised a physical location for those seeking to visit the campaign and learn more about suffrage. More important, it highlighted the campaign’s standing, even to those who might have no intention of visiting. Perhaps no site better highlighted the difference between Malone’s, Blatch’s, and Catt’s tactics than Madison Square. Malone led her first open-​ air meeting there. Blatch eventually followed suit when she reappropriated the space outside Parkhurst’s church and across from the park for a protest. Meanwhile, Catt’s association stationed itself twenty-​one floors above these street actions, installing headquarters in a renowned office building. Despite their different strategies, these three leaders set the template for success in the Empire State. This is even more remarkable since all three would leave the New  York City campaign before 1917:  Blatch would break ties with the Gotham movement in 1915/​1916, Malone would become less visible in the early 1910s, and Catt would give up control over the Woman Suffrage Party in 1911—​although she remained active in the Empire City in other capacities through 1915. At the national level, the campaign’s second generation prioritized transforming the National American Woman Suffrage Association into an institution more palatable to the general public.72 Advocates in New  York City had a different agenda. They first needed to come to terms with the dynamic metropolis in which they found themselves. Some did so by combining political craft with gendered etiquette. Others aggressively pushed against the city’s gendered geography, destabilizing such etiquette in the process. They all jockeyed for center stage, anxious to have their ideas and strategies succeed Blake and the pioneers.

A postcard announces the location of the Woman Suffrage Party’s headquarters. Notably, it does not actually provide a street address, suggesting that the landmark’s symbolic value was more important than ensuring that allies could actually access the movement’s offices. Schwimmer-​Lloyd Collection, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Ushering in a “New Era”    61 Neither Catt nor Blatch could lead the metropolis’s militant vanguard. A large number of individuals looked to the pair for direction, and they could not risk offending them. Devotion to democratic principles plus a narrower constituency enabled Malone to set important precedents. Streets did not need to remain off limits; she showed that the movement could claim them to demand enfranchisement, and challenge gendered, class-​based urban norms in the process. That Malone’s presence faded in newspaper coverage by 1913 indicates how much mainstream leaders had come to adopt her strategies. This (albeit sometimes begrudging) acceptance helped ensure that the suffrage drive would do more than grant women the ballot; it would change their position in the metropolis. For the time being, though, Malone’s radicalism and independ­ ence made Catt and even Blatch seem more restrained, a perception that they desperately needed to cultivate as they tried to expand their base and competed with one another for supremacy. Both eagerly zeroed in on New York’s constellation of socialites. Socialites lived within a tightly knit community in New York, one accustomed to wielding influence and having demands quickly met. Whether walking through the Waldorf-​Astoria’s Peacock Alley or dining at Delmonico’s, these women drew attention. The benefits of recruiting those in the monied world must have seemed endless to movement brass like Catt and Blatch. Fashionable women’s involvement would pique journalists’ curiosity. Details about the campaign would sweep across the nation, flooding newspaper columns. Celebrity and glamour would mix with politics, and a desire to hobnob might recruit more people into the movement. The Colony Club marked the epicenter of socialites’ universe and an entry point into it for the suffrage movement. Wealthy women established the organization in 1903 to compete with the numerous clubs catering to their male relatives. The Madison Avenue clubhouse boasted a swimming pool, library, ballroom, gym, and dining facilities. Hundreds of elite women joined, including Anne Morgan, Jeannette Gilder, and Ethel Barrymore.73 The club served as a place for both socializing and edification, hosting lectures on everything from the wrongs of child labor to the need for educational reform in the South.74 The Collegiate Equal Suffrage League hosted a benefit to support suffrage research there in 1907.75 The ever-​tony club organized a debate on women’s rights the following year. Catt and Blatch agreed to participate, eager to convert New York’s aristocrats.76 Socialites peppered the April 1908 debate. Attendees’ last names literally spanned the elite alphabet, from Astor to Vanderbilt. Margaret Aldrich (née Margaret Chanler) joined Catt and Blatch to speak on suffrage’s behalf. A scion of the Astor family, Aldrich suggested that taxpaying earned her the

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ballot—​undoubtedly a popular argument given the crowd. Its benign nature did nothing to quell the tension brewing in the room. Alida B.  Hazard, an anti-​suffragist, “stirred things up,” a New York Times reporter delighted, when she boldly accused suffragists of allying with socialists.77 As evidence, she pointed to the fact that they allowed a socialist to speak on their behalf before the legislature.78 The accusation was charged, especially in light of the fact that revolutionaries like Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, and Alexander Berkman did make Gotham their home, and their stage.79 Hazard intended the association to discredit a campaign fighting to prove its seriousness and purpose. Someone leaked this exchange to the press, and by the following morning, New  York newspapers were gleefully broadcasting its details. Horrified, the Colony Club demanded privacy and imposed a stricter guest protocol. It had hosted a closed-​door meeting, a special notice informed, so “that the subject might be thoroughly discussed among the members, without any notoriety.”80 But that did not shield the proceedings from a nosy public anxious for society gossip. The fact that Malone had started holding street demonstrations weeks before would merely have kindled readers’ interest and contributed to the Colony’s discomfort. Members wanted information about suffrage. As the arbiters of social grace, however, many would have shuddered at the thought of being associated with “unladylike” behavior. Throwing accusations of socialism into the mix during a moment when that ideology seemed especially disruptive could have destroyed suffragists’ still-​fragile relationship with these socialites. After all, millionaires benefited immensely from capitalism. The record does not indicate Blatch’s and Catt’s reactions, but nerves must have racked them in the succeeding days as they awaited wealthy women’s response. Fortunately, members of the upper-​ class were accustomed to rumors swirling around them. Journalists had filled columns with gossip about them since the late nineteenth century.81 The accusations of radicalism did not seem to fluster the few socialites who could trace their connection back to the New York State Constitutional Convention drive in 1894, including Olivia Sage and Aldrich. Both remained active:  Aldrich took on a leadership role; Sage more quietly bankrolled the campaign.82 Similarly, they did not seem to deter new converts such as Alva Belmont and Katherine Mackay, who would participate more visibly in the following years. These new recruits did not shy away from the spotlight; they demanded to direct it. Mackay, who was married to the president of the Postal Telegraph and Commercial Cable Company, was in a unique position: she was a socialite who also had elected experience. Neighbors voted her onto the Roslyn, New York, school board in 1905.83 Several years later, she joined the suffrage movement,

Ushering in a “New Era”    63 confident that her “news value” could benefit the cause.84 Though a friend urged Mackay to join an established association, she decided to found her own. Blatch rightly discerned that the millionaire “wanted to be on the top, running a show herself.”85 After all, Mackay lived in an elite stratosphere where would-​ be leaders often discreetly jockeyed for social supremacy. Mackay founded her Equal Franchise Society in December 1908. The socialite understood her ilk, and she introduced her peers to the association through a familiar medium. The organization “gorgeously” designed its invitations to imitate “smart wedding cards.”86 Mackay’s “palatial home” on Madison Avenue provided the perfect backdrop for the inaugural meeting; the Colony Club occasionally hosted subsequent ones.87 Unlike competing associations, Mackay’s was invitation-​only. Established members nominated new members. Dues initially cost a steep five dollars (compared with the Woman Suffrage Party’s no-​dues policy).88 Mackay assumed that exclusivity would make her league seem prestigious and therefore desirable, a lesson her years as a society queen would have engrained. But she was also proactive, holding luncheons to, as Blatch put it, “catch important people in the suffrage net.”89 She certainly did:  a Morgan, an Astor, a Gould, and a Whitney all attended one early meeting.90 Such women increased the campaign’s social cachet, a scarce commodity for a movement more accustomed to scorn than respect. Significantly, unlike in 1894, campaign stalwarts also joined the socialite-​led organization, including Blatch and Catt, who both served on the Equal Franchise Society’s Board of Directors.91 Social cachet, however, could not fund the campaign, so Mackay lavished money on it as well. She paraded into one suffrage bazaar, bought a laundry bag, and bounded from booth to booth filling it up, buying items at ten times the asking price.92 In 1909, she gave her association a more permanent home on the celebrated Metropolitan Tower’s twenty-​ninth floor, then the world’s tallest building.93 The New York Times predicted that the plush settings, which featured a rich blue rug, mahogany furniture, and gold-​ framed mirrors, 94 would have astonished previous campaigners. Rent reportedly cost $1,000.95 Suffrage managers recognized that place conveyed meaning in the early twentieth century, and social leaders like Mackay had the power and money to support suffragists as they turned that recognition into a reality. The Woman Suffrage Party, thanks in part to Olivia Sage’s largesse, would join Mackay’s organization in the Metropolitan Tower a few months later, opening offices eight floors below those of the Equal Franchise Society.96 Diverse reasons drove elite women into suffrage work. The fact that the government taxed them while refusing to recognize their voices enraged some.97 The catalyst lay elsewhere for Mackay; gendered notions of morality,

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not taxation, convinced her to demand change.98 Women were “the moral, the ethical half of the human race” and therefore needed a vote to ensure a better world, she contended.99 Her Equal Franchise Society also pushed for the ballot to help working-​class women. In compact New York City, socialites had a difficult time ignoring industrial laborers’ plight. If proximity alone did not awaken them, certainly the era’s investigative journalism raised awareness. The organization published a piece summarizing its approach—​wealthy women needed to support enfranchisement because the ballot would benefit their “working sisters.”100 A tinge of “noblesse oblige” colored their plea.101 Working women’s need for the ballot grew into a central theme within Mackay’s Equal Franchise Society, even if working women themselves participated only on its margins. Mackay joined the campaign just as suffragettes like Malone began to challenge its staid strategies. In fact, she opened her office twenty-​nine floors above where Malone held the first street meeting two years earlier. The socialite recoiled at such demonstrations. She found most men willing to consider her argument, a courtesy that her class and race privileges undoubtedly bought. Not only were open-​air meetings unnecessary, in her mind, they were also improper. People needed to understand that “the strongest suffragists are those women who devote their best energies toward the development of their children.” Standing on street corners proselytizing to anonymous, random passersby certainly did not convey that maternal commitment to Mackay.102 By the time that such public tactics became commonplace in the early 1910s, Mackay had largely left the campaign, engulfed by the fallout from her own marital affair.103 New York’s monied world had a small circumference. Habitués called on one another, attended balls together, and participated in voluntary and cultural associations with each other. The intimacy fueled jealousy and judgment, which in turn bred competition. A  gossip network damaged relationships at the same time that shared concerns and interests fostered genuine friendships. When a few socialites began to support the vote in 1894, debate about it rapidly permeated this community. That another elite denizen, Alva Belmont, converted to suffrage just as Mackay did fanned a new society rivalry in 1909, one the press detailed.104 Where Mackay obsessed about etiquette, Belmont tolerated notoriety. In 1895, she divorced William K.  Vanderbilt, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s grandson, after two decades of marriage. She would not countenance his marital infidelities, no matter the scandal that might result.105 Her ilk did not take such action lightly. Marital respectability served as the cornerstone of its stability. She regained some clout in 1896 when she married Oliver H. P. Belmont, son of the excessively wealthy August Belmont. This power increased again when

Ushering in a “New Era”    65 Oliver suddenly died twelve years later, bequeathing her a million-​dollar-​plus inheritance.106 Independence combined with the fortune and a high threshold for scorn to create a valuable, although equally volatile, suffragist. A rumor had it that spite drove Belmont into the fight. According to one peer’s recollection, she had enlisted after her ex-​husband forbade their daughter from aiding the British movement.107 Even if initially vengeance-​driven, the socialite seemed to also genuinely believe in the cause. That Belmont did not join forces with Mackay’s organization lends credence to the rumors of a society tug of war over suffrage. She, too, would need her own association over which to wield authority. The former Vanderbilt established the Political Equality Association in 1909, just months after Mackay organized the Equal Franchise Society.108 At one moment aristocratic, at another democratic and even militant, Belmont’s philosophy remains frustratingly difficult to pin down. She understood her allure and used it to fundraise for the movement. She even opened up Marble House, her elaborate, waterfront home in Newport, Rhode Island, to suffrage lectures.109 For five dollars, a person could also tour the house for an hour. The New  York Suffrage Newsletter, the state association’s short-​lived publication, exclaimed, “It is the first time that this marvelous palace full of art treasures has ever been opened to the public. None but Mrs. Belmont’s personal friends have been admitted to the grounds even.”110 Belmont clearly understood how to exploit the public’s obsession with her set. But aristocratic privilege coexisted with militancy for Belmont, who hired Malone as a personal employee and applauded street meetings. One historian has even speculated that Belmont tried to goad an activist into bombing the state capitol.111 The association she created was an organizational amalgam, appropriating the techniques of competing groups. It included professionally defined branches (the Women Physicians’ and Surgeons’ League, the Trained Nurses’ League, the Artists’ and Musicians’ League), geographically rooted ones (the Harlem Club and the Bronx branch, for instance), a demographically based one (the Negro Men’s and Women’s League), and one assembly district affiliate (the Fourteenth District).112 Although the Woman Suffrage Party would organize around assembly districts and the Equal Franchise Society remained exclusively invitation-​only, Belmont chose a more haphazard schema. The association kept members’ names secret to prevent current or future employers from blacklisting supporters, indicating a class consciousness that Mackay’s association lacked.113 In addition, the philanthropist prioritized the recruitment of black New Yorkers and established the Negro Men’s and Women’s League; but she accepted segregation. She even excluded people of color from a Political Equality Association ball.114

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Belmont’s largesse enabled state and national standard-​bearers to finally harness Manhattan’s geopolitical power in 1909. Predecessors had recognized this power but never managed to fully exploit it. According to her biographer and suffrage co-​worker, Susan B.  Anthony believed the metropolis was the “center from which news of all kinds was sent to the four quarters of the globe. She realized the vast numbers of people who could be reached and the great prestige which would be given to the movement” if the campaign opened headquarters there, but a meager budget prevented Anthony from permanently achieving this dream.115 The national organization instead settled in Warren, Ohio, from 1903 to 1909, a town of 20,000 where the national association’s treasurer made her home.116 Leaders remained spread out across the nation: the corresponding secretary in New Orleans; the president in Philadelphia; and others in New York, Kentucky, and Boston.117 Meanwhile, the state association clung to Syracuse, a city of 125,000, where it floundered without permanent offices or a secretarial force.118 Belmont took matters into her own hands when she learned of the state’s dire situation and the national organization’s wish for a Manhattan post.119 She brought both to Midtown in 1909, pledging to provide them with space for two years. Combined with the Woman Suffrage Party’s establishment, Belmont’s decision turned 1909 into a milestone year for the suffrage campaign. It was the year that Manhattan became the capital of the city, state, and national movements.120 Belmont could have opened her offices anywhere in Gotham—​from the Lower East Side to Harlem. But she thought strategically. The socialite rented the entire seventeenth floor, which included nine rooms, in a new office building at 505 Fifth Avenue. “Much of the rushing life of New York centres around this corner,” the state association reported without hyperbole.121 The imposing and soon-​to-​be-​open New York Public Library dominated the intersection at Forty-​Second Street and Fifth Avenue, and Grand Central Terminal, which welcomed some twenty million passengers in 1910 alone, stood two blocks away.122 Location mattered in New York’s hectic landscape, and this one provided practical convenience. It was also laden with meaning. Encircled by landmarks like Sherry’s (relocated in 1898), the Century Club, Delmonico’s, and the Union League Club, it indicated purposefulness, permanence, and professionalism—​attributes a storefront in Little Italy or a residence in the Bronx could not convey. Aesthetics mattered as much as location. Belmont allocated two rooms for the state organization, claimed an office for her Political Equality Association, and provided space for the national association and its press bureau.123 She installed a library dressed in dull green fabrics and punctuated by walnut

Ushering in a “New Era”    67 furniture in the largest and most “sumptuous” room. Suffrage imagery imbued the space. Pictures of pioneers hung on the walls along with messages from international suffrage organizations.124 A 1910 photograph of a suffrage headquarters in Gotham, likely Belmont’s or Mackay’s, hints at the careful visual curating. Detailed wallpaper crowns one room, which also features a couch, table, and secretary desk. Curtains frame the window, and an ornate chandelier adds ambience to the pristine scene. Work could be completed, correspondence returned, and interviews held without sacrificing feminine refinement.125 Belmont, a journalist reported, had pulled the national and state associations from their “rural localities where they struggled under disadvantages” and brought them to the “centre of the Nation.”126 Staring at the undulating skyline from headquarter windows that provided “sweeping views of the city” must have filled activists with pride.127 They had carved out a space within the nation’s largest metropolis for suffrage. But the move also heightened expectations. Some hoped it would bring the campaign’s scattered branches into closer working order. That Manhattan was the “financial metropolis of the United States” led others to anticipate substantial monetary returns.128 State leaders stressed the publicity potential of having headquarters in the nation’s newspaper capital.129 The shift engendered some resistance. The state association at the turn of the century distrusted the Gotham campaign, and the national league ignored it to focus on the South and West. Now, power and decision-​making centered in New York. The Woman’s Journal found itself reassuring readers that the move would not affect the state and national associations’ daily operations. The national league, it promised, would continue to push for suffrage across the country. The state organization, meanwhile, would not privilege Manhattan over other localities.130 Harriet May Mills, a state vice president from Syracuse, initially questioned the move. Later, she felt compelled to publicly share her change of heart in the association’s annual report. “Headquarters have meant heretofore a place for quiet and necessary work,” she reflected. “They now mean constant intercourse with workers who have never before been able to reach us, as well as with those who have already joined us.” For those who still doubted the move, Mills invited them to stop by and see for themselves. Gotham had “ushered” in a “new era of work.” “There should be no east or west, north or south in this great movement, which is all one [emphasis in original]!” Mills continued. “From the metropolis as a center all points can be reached and all sectional lines erased.”131 Manhattan became the national suffrage capital at a price, of course. The New  York headquarters cost four times as much as the one in Ohio ($2,145 compared with $500). It also required an enlarged staff (from ten to twelve

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Suffrage headquarters seamlessly blended luxury, refinement, and political activity. Through their design decisions, activists combated stereotypes about the campaign’s masculinizing effect on women. Women’s Suffrage Headquarters in New York, c. 1910, PR 068, Subject File, 90689d, © New-​York Historical Society.

individuals) and payroll ($12,400 compared with $10,300). Still, the benefits out­weighed the costs.132 A  Gotham post enabled activists to broadcast their message and raise funds. Supporters benefited from New  York’s centrifugal force as information about the movement spun out across the nation, and could capitalize on its centripetal pull as individuals moved to Gotham for jobs, education, and leisure. Thanks to Belmont’s funding, headquarters took on symbolic value. More than a simple space from which to send correspondence, it developed into a tool for advertising the movement’s legitimacy, professionalism, and power. Even those who might have resisted the New York City relocation could not deny the advantages. There is no evidence that Catt, Malone, or Blatch interpreted the national and state associations’ moves as potential threats to their authority. This is surprising considering that both associations had tried to control the city campaign in the nineteenth century. In retrospect, Catt’s stature along with Malone’s provocative tactics, Blatch’s lineage, and the state and national movements’ previous desertions ensured that city leaders would maintain their command

Ushering in a “New Era”    69 within this shifting institutional environment. National and state managers could no longer dictate metropolitan strategies, as Anthony had once tried to do with Blake. The balance of power had shifted.133 Blatch and Catt rebuilt their movement, in part, by collaborating with those in Gotham’s monied subculture. Such women had an outsized influence: they conferred status on a cause seeking rebirth, enriched its paltry coffers, and ensured persistent media attention. Their generosity enabled the national and state associations to relocate to the country’s largest metropolis and marshal its resources. Leaders massaged egos and catered to fashionable women’s demands. Blatch did not try to dissuade Mackay or Belmont from creating their own organizations, even if they might compete with her league. Lobbyists, instead, tolerated their eccentricities for the campaign’s larger good.134 But doing so aggravated the latent class tension within the movement. In a world where upper-​class families advanced from the sweat of working-​class men and women, the campaign’s elevation of socialites raised concerns about an alignment with corporate interests. The 1909 Shirtwaist Strike is a case in point. Suffrage leaders supported the forty thousand female industrial laborers who went on strike in lower Manhattan to increase their wages and receive recognition for their union.135 Some in Blatch’s Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women joined the picket lines.136 Belmont and her Political Equality Association hosted a rally at the Hippodrome Theatre.137 Mackay used the Colony Club to host demonstrators and collect funds for them.138 At least some strikers, however, felt skeptical.139 Their fight was, after all, not about the vote but about working conditions and pay. Few attended when Belmont arranged an outdoor protest in Rutgers Square.140 The campaign’s affiliation with elite women drove the cynicism. Emma Goldman called out the movement’s class privilege. “The latest fetich [sic] of women is the vote,” she said mockingly to a crowd of five hundred during the strike. “Just as she used to believe in some supernatural being who would accomplish all good things so she now believes that the universal panacea for all ills lies in the ballot.”141 She contended that wealthy women could never appreciate industrial laborers’ hardships. “There could be no sympathy and no efficient cooperation,” the Sun paraphrased, “between people who worked all the time and had nothing and people who didn’t work at all and had everything.” Goldman singled out Mackay and Belmont as examples.142 For the anarchist, the solution lay in abolishing, not expanding, government.143 A week later female socialists made clear their opposition to the national suffrage association, rejecting an offer to cooperate and dubbing it the “bourgeois suffrage movement.” Although they fully supported the vote, they believed that movement

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directors came from the “capitalistic class” and that they would never find common ground.144 Opponents hurled questions about capitalism and class from all sides. Some suspected a relationship between socialism and suffrage, triggering a panicked Colony Club to lock down its visitors protocol. Others attacked the movement for aligning with capitalism, a belief that elite women’s position in the cause did little to challenge. These socialites donated immense sums and drew unprecedented attention to the campaign, but their privilege did not sit well with all New Yorkers. The movement was trapped within a pressure cooker of economic tensions. The teaching profession provided a radically different and seemingly less fraught field for recruitment. Although far less wealthy than socialites, educators constituted a significantly larger pool of potential allies. Fifteen thousand women taught in New York City public schools, constituting 87 percent of its instructional force.145 It is no surprise, then, that suffragists targeted this cohort: teachers’ employment conditions primed them with an awareness of gender injustices; their community-​based positions enabled them to act as amplifiers, spreading suffrage to the neighborhoods that they served; and their career demanded a forward-​looking orientation, one preoccupied with creating a better world. There were also precedents for allying with teachers. Susan B. Anthony, a former teacher herself, attended a New York State Teachers’ Association meeting to demand a more visible role for women as early as 1853.146 In Brooklyn, Sarah Garnet, a teacher and the metropolis’s first female principal of color, formed the Equal Suffrage League in the 1880s.147 Elsewhere in Massachusetts, suffragists targeted teachers in 1894—​the same year that the Constitutional Convention absorbed Empire State activists—​distributing literature to more than a thousand public school instructors in an effort to conscript them.148 In the late nineteenth century, Gotham suffragists fought to increase instructors’ salaries and to protect married teachers’ rights.149 They turned the city’s 1899 failure to pay educators the higher salaries the state had promised into a lesson about disfranchisement.150 Blake rationalized that the state’s failure would call “attention to the fact that their [teachers’] disfranchised condition is directly responsible for the cruel outrage that has been inflicted upon them, as the women teachers, the only non-​voters in the employment of the city, are the only employees who have not been paid.”151 Simultaneously, activists successfully fought the removal of married women from their teaching positions.152 Their actions had minimal effect, though. “After all of my fighting for the women teachers,” Anthony unloaded to a reporter in 1898, “they do not seem to have the ambition to sustain their rights.”153 Charlotte Chapman, an officer

Ushering in a “New Era”    71 in the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Association, agreed. She sighed, “[If ] the thirty-​five thousand women teachers of New York State could realize the power they would exert with a vote upon educational questions, they would be woman suffragists.”154 Circumstances changed in the early twentieth century. The growth of other professional opportunities for women empowered female teachers in New York City to more vigorously contest discrimination, especially in terms of pay. Female instructors received 30 to 40 percent less than male colleagues performing the same jobs. A female elementary school teacher, for example, started at $600; a male educator received $900.155 Though some other cities had already equalized their salary schedules, New  York City persisted in determining wages, in part, by gender.156 Instructors founded the Interborough Association of Women Teachers in 1906 to formalize their demand for pay parity. Grace Strachan, a district superintendent in Brooklyn, led the charge.157 She faced an uphill battle. Her association entangled itself in the home rule controversy when it asked the state, rather than the municipal government, to increase salaries.158 Offended, some fumed that the city, not the state, should make those determinations. Governmental checks and balances next got in the way, as the governor vetoed the state legislature’s equal pay bill.159 Even teachers’ freedom of speech came under attack. The Board of Education unsuccessfully tried to pass a “gag law” in 1908 that would have prevented instructors from campaigning for or against candidates based on their position on teachers’ salaries.160 One board member explained his support, declaring that “the spectacle of teachers electioneering has gotten to be a public scandal.”161 These questions about federalism, checks and balances, and constitutional rights, however, dulled in comparison to the controversy over gender that the pay parity campaign unleashed. The Association of Men Teachers and Principals of the City, in particular, assailed female colleagues for demanding equal pay. The roughly six hundred men it represented (reportedly one-​third of the city’s male teachers) wrung their hands over the “feminization” of boys in schools, a result of female teachers instructing them and a real concern in an urban environment that trapped men in office buildings with little opportunity for traditional displays of masculinity.162 This was a fight over gender and schooling as much as it was a struggle over income. Suffragists rushed to publicly support the city’s female teachers. Blatch, Catt, and Belmont all served as honorary vice presidents of the Interborough Association of Women Teachers.163 Blatch’s Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women passed a resolution endorsing equal pay. The state association protested the governor’s veto of the salary bill.164 And suffragists spoke at teachers’ events.

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Blatch addressed the Interborough Association’s mass meeting in early January 1908 in the midst of the equal pay crusade.165 Her argument centered on the fact that women had achieved wage parity in other professions and that teaching should be no different.166 Catt’s speech a few months later revolved less around professional equity and depended more on teachers’ responsibilities. Female schoolteachers deserved equal pay because of their work’s significance: instilling “patriotism” and instructing the next generation in how to combat “graft” and corruption.167 Their speeches foregrounded the symbolism of pay equality, rather than the financial breathing room higher incomes might provide struggling teachers. The former must have seemed a nobler cause; it enabled organizers to celebrate teachers as professionals, not as laborers. Catt and Blatch could have explicitly made the connection between political and professional discrimination in their speeches. They let it linger under the surface, however, focusing on teachers’ top priority, not theirs. They also did not depend on municipal housekeeping rhetoric, a rhetoric that had grown popular in Gotham in the late nineteenth century. Because it underscored women’s moral nature, municipal housekeeping might have had the additional benefit of calming fears about city life disrupting gender norms. But this rhetoric also assumed that women’s interests stemmed from their place in middle-​ class family units. This framing would not necessarily resonate with teachers searching for professional respect, many of whom remained single. Blatch and Catt acknowledged that teachers might reform the city. They suggested, however, that instructors would do so because of their jobs, not because of their gender. The leaders spoke in a language that they thought female educators would appreciate, even if it marginalized suffrage.168 Activists more directly connected the vote to pay parity outside teachers’ mass meetings, indicating a strategic awareness of audience. The Woman’s Journal ran a column predicting that female instructors would fail to achieve wage increases. Rather than mourn the failure, though, the author zeroed in on how it would teach educators a lesson. “It certainly ought to lead to that [conversion to suffrage],” the editor commented. “Not only the teachers, but many women whose interests are not directly involved, have read with indignation the flippant newspaper comments upon the affair.”169 One city organization seemed to take this prediction to heart, establishing a committee tasked with converting embittered teachers.170 From circulating a petition for equal pay to holding a reception for instructors to publishing a leaflet rhetorically entitled “Do Teachers Need the Ballot?,” suffragists quickened their pace in targeting teachers over the next few years.171

Ushering in a “New Era”    73 Educators served as a conduit to new constituencies across the city’s patchwork quilt of neighborhoods. They could allow for a discussion of enfranchisement in the classroom, as happened at the Washington Irving High School.172 They could also convert parents to the cause. And as respected members of a neighborhood, they could make political equality seem less threatening to those they encountered on a daily basis. Organizers aimed to bolster their power through numbers. Their efforts did bear some fruit. One activist in 1908 considered the Interborough Association “alive” with interest in the vote. Another noted that Brooklyn’s Bedford Political Equality League was attracting teachers.173 Several educators spoke before suffrage organizations the following year. Strachan ranked as suffragists’ most valuable teacher-​ convert. The Interborough Association’s president addressed their meetings as early as 1907. However, she spoke about pedagogy, not the relationship between her cause and enfranchisement.174 That changed in 1909. Strachan publicly endorsed the vote at a gathering hosted by Blatch’s Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women—​ an organization whose very name indicates its potential appeal to teachers.175 Strachan would move even further within a few years’ time, joining street protests to promote the ballot. Her Interborough Association never formally took a pro-​suffrage stance, though.176 Some in the organization rejected enfranchisement, and Strachan could not risk alienating them. Even if all members supported the ballot, it might not have been enough to shift the Interborough Association’s official position. Its goal was professional and economic equality, not political rights. Blurring political and professional empowerment would have validated the fears of those who already felt browbeaten by women in public education. Gotham suffragists’ local efforts dovetailed with the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s new initiatives around education. Its Committee on Education, formed in 1907, worked to ensure that school textbooks paid homage to women’s history and contributions; to guarantee that schools had access to suffrage literature; to create suffrage-​affiliated parents’, primarily mothers’, organizations; and to promote a pedagogy committed to critical thought, reflection, and “self-​ government.”177 Simultaneously, the National College Equal Suffrage League, composed of college students and alumni, affiliated with the national suffrage organization, further incentivizing suffrage organizers to consider how to inject equal rights into the educational landscape. At both the national and the city level, leaders were in agreement:  through teachers specifically and schools more generally, activists could ease people into supporting enfranchisement.178

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Converting teachers required a different choreography than recruiting socialites, though. Mackay and Belmont demanded authority in return for the money and prestige they contributed to the suffrage campaign. Teachers had other priorities: enhancing their financial well-​being and improving their professional standing. Their position as public employees combined with the backlash over the “feminization” of schools left them in a perilous position. Suffrage activists tried to cultivate an awareness that their difficulties stemmed from gender discrimination. Sheer numbers alone suggested teachers’ worth to suffragists: some fifteen thousand potential recruits. Where society queens could generate publicity, donate immense sums, and add glamour, these teachers might expand the campaign on a more local level. They might influence students and their families. The seed campaign leaders planted in this subculture would bloom in the succeeding years. The leaders who took the helm of the New York City campaign in the early twentieth century prioritized different parts of the urban landscape. Catt built her association around political districts. At the same time, Catt along with Blatch understood that professional and class networks crisscrossed these districts. Meanwhile, Malone zeroed in on the city’s public spaces. Unique to each organizer, these different foci converged to create a rich, strategic map for women’s rights activists. In the middle of this map beamed national and state headquarters. The shift from Ohio and Syracuse to Midtown Manhattan promised greater press coverage, a more unified campaign, closer proximity to the fashionable world, and a vast number of potential converts. It also signaled the campaign’s gravitas that it could maintain opulent headquarters at the corner of Forty-​Second Street and Fifth Avenue (thanks to Belmont) and in the Metropolitan Tower (thanks to Mackay and Sage). Socialites’ largesse transformed Gotham from the suffrage backcountry to the capital of the state and national movements. By 1910, Manhattan alone contained more than a dozen organizations devoted to winning suffrage: from the state association and the Woman Suffrage Party to the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage and the New York Collegiate League to lesser known associations like the East Side League and the Jean d’Arc League.179 As the years progressed, organizers harnessed New  York’s resources to broadcast their message in even more innovative and ambitious ways. Outside the metropolis, they sought alliances with the Grange; held parlor meetings and sometimes street meetings; canvassed; opened booths to promote suffrage at county fairs; and encouraged women to use their vote in school elections to prove that women valued the franchise (a right New  York City residents did not have).180 Inside the city, nurses brought the message of political equality to

Ushering in a “New Era”    75 Gotham’s immigrant population. Actresses created publicity for the campaign, added a new dash of celebrity and glamour, and instructed members on public speaking. Advocates of the ballot even began to broach traditionally masculine spaces and “dangerous” districts in the city to underscore their commitment to enfranchisement. The Progressive Era generation would politicize urban routines and mobilize residents’ talents, all for the campaign’s benefit.

4 Geographies of Suffrage, 1910–​1913

In May 1912, ten thousand men and women descended onto Fifth Avenue to march for political equality. For nearly two hours, they slowed down the nation’s busiest city, as people from all over the metropolis came to witness the event. The crowd became so dense at points it spilled from the sidewalk onto the street. Students celebrated as they watched their teachers march by. The parade’s dramatic section committee shone with stars like Ethel Barrymore, Gertrude Elliot, and Mary Shaw. Two hundred nurses rallied behind a banner celebrating Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton, flanked by a contingent of lawyers, musicians, secretaries, civil servants, industrial workers, and domestic servants. And one of the city’s leading society queens, Alva Belmont, walked up Fifth Avenue with the “appearance of a brave soldier facing fire.” As the New York Times described the demonstration, “There were women who work with their heads and women who work with their hands and women who never work at all. And they all marched for suffrage.”1 Leaders obsessed over everything from supporters’ attire to the crowd’s behavior for their third large-​scale parade since 1910. “We wished to make the processions a great emotional appeal,” Harriot Stanton Blatch explained, to “convert” bystanders through their “eyes.” Parades provided visual evidence that organizers had forged a unified army from New  York’s varied subcultures.2 This was a far cry from Maud Malone’s first unofficial parade in 1908. Movement officials had appropriated her once taboo tactics by the 1910s after witnessing their ability to attract attention. Cross-​organization pollination, a result of recruits enlisting in more than one association, as well as growing frustration with a strategy limited to parlor meetings and education also helped acclimate leaders to the idea of women politicking on streets.3 Their embrace of eye-​catching spectacles dovetailed seamlessly with Manhattan’s burgeoning

Geographies of Suffrage    77 movie industry. Films captured the stunts, leaving a more visceral record than newspapers, and allowing groups across the city, state, and nation to see how the suffrage alliance had blossomed into a broad, urban coalition.4 Progressive Era activists regularly used Gotham’s philanthropic, commercial, and professional geographies to transcend New  York’s seemingly entrenched ethnic, race, and class boundaries from 1910 to 1913. Murray Hill landlords, already accustomed to women visiting nearby department stores, willingly accepted suffrage rent as strategists created a veritable women’s rights district in the area in the early 1910s. Simultaneously, public health nurses sensitively spread the message of political equality to immigrant communities on the Lower East Side, as actresses and filmmakers drew New Yorkers into Broadway theaters and neighborhood movie houses to proselytize through entertainment. But not everyone welcomed movement activities.5 Boys and men in Hell’s Kitchen and the financial district harassed open-​air speakers, defending their neighborhoods against suffragists’ invasions. Despite these difficulties, the not-​so-​distant days when spatial tactics differentiated conserv­ ative suffragists from militant suffragettes had largely passed as a consensus emerged around the need for a strategic, urban presence. The distinction could no longer hold as more conservative leaders like Catt and organizations like the state association began advocating once-​radical tactics. Harriot Stanton Blatch and Carrie Chapman Catt might have their personal differences, but Blatch’s Women’s Political Union and Catt’s Woman Suffrage Party studied parallel urban playbooks in the early 1910s. By then, New York City spanned five boroughs and counted more than four million residents of innumerable races and ethnicities.6 This dynamic environment generated obstacles for suffragists. In some Manhattan districts, newly arrived working-​class families and wealthy individuals who traced their roots to New York’s old money brushed shoulders, complicating organizers’ efforts to tailor messages to specific interests.7 In a city of renters with a pronounced “nomadic tendency,” keeping track of supporters in Gotham also required a Herculean effort.8 In addition, leaders, predominantly white, native-​ born, middle-​class women, assumed that immigrants entering Manhattan carried with them “old time traditions,” biasing them against enfranchisement.9 Corruption and machine politics only exacerbated managers’ frustrations with the city.10 The 1911 results from California confirmed their misgivings.11 Sixty-​one percent of San Francisco men voted against the state amendment in that year; campaigners did not fare much better in Oakland, where 56 percent of voters opposed suffrage. The amendment barely carried in Los Angeles—​15,700 men approved it, 13,900 rejected it. Since organizers myopically focused on these

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urban defeats, days passed before they discovered that California lobbyists had actually converted enough rural men to win. The way in which those on the East Coast received the results dramatically cast the city as antagonist and the countryside as hero.12 The 1898 consolidation further muddied suffragists’ work. New York City might have absorbed Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, but these boroughs remained strikingly different from Manhattan. Suffragists considered Queens “the borough of magnificent distances,” including everything from farms to sprawling country estates. They thought Staten Island housed villages whose residents until recently had never set foot in Manhattan, passing “their days in a monotonous round of farming and of chores.”13 The Bronx produced its own set of organizational headaches, containing both “densely populated” neighborhoods and quasi-​ rural areas akin to “distant suburbs, and even farms.”14 Interborough organizational rivalries surfaced as well. Brooklyn suffragists’ fierce resistance to the Manhattan-​based Woman Suffrage Party’s oversight is a case in point. This conflict came into clear focus in 1911 when district leaders elected Bertha Elder the Brooklyn borough chair under questionable circumstances: Elder’s allies silenced foes, a sergeant-​at-​arms proved unable to maintain decorum, and lawyers were called during the election proceedings. Characterizations of the affair as “disorderly” seem like understatements.15 Seething, rivals in Brooklyn brought the matter to the Woman Suffrage Party’s City Committee. Elder refused to recognize the party’s power to adjudicate, though, proclaiming that “Brooklyn intends to act independently of Manhattan and without interference.” She and her allies pledged to start a new organization to prevent “absentee landlorism in Brooklyn,” a pointed claim accusing the Woman Suffrage Party of ruling over, but not collaborating with, Brooklyn activists.16 The Woman Suffrage Party, the Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women (renamed the Women’s Political Union in November 1910), the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and the state organization increasingly centralized their work in Manhattan by the early 1910s, and some Brooklynites resisted their control. These hurdles did not prevent lobbyists from recognizing Gotham’s rich resources. The density of newspapers in Manhattan ensured that campaign details would flood the nation. The proximity to millionaires promised a rich financial return. Publicity and fundraising opportunities marked only the beginning. The symbolic and political importance of winning New  York could not be overstated. With twenty-​four of the state’s forty-​three congressional representatives serving parts of New York City and the state controlling forty-​ five Electoral College votes, no other jurisdiction matched the Empire State’s

Geographies of Suffrage    79 political might and Gotham’s outsized influence within it.17 Progressive Era activists might have felt frustrated when campaigning in New  York, but the urban environment did not overwhelm them as it had Lillie Devereux Blake and her contemporaries. They increasingly claimed a “right to the city,” strategically reading its landscape to publicize their demands, recruit new supporters, and enhance their prestige. This becomes especially clear when analyzing their decisions to open headquarters in Murray Hill. Just as it does today, location spoke volumes about an organization’s access to capital and how it wanted to define itself. With millions of people clamoring for limited space, perhaps nowhere was this truer than New York City, where artificial districts and ever-​shifting boundaries conveyed powerful meanings. A Fifth Avenue office provided more than simply shelter in the late nineteenth century; it signaled grace, cultural capital, and immense wealth. An Orchard Street address, by contrast, immediately invoked images of a ramshackle tenement. Murray Hill claimed a particularly illustrious lineage. Once lined with the homes of New York’s most elite families, the Midtown neighborhood evolved into a high-​class commercial district in the early twentieth century as retailers moved uptown.18 The neighborhood’s streetscape promoted a refined air, supporting consumerism while reining in more lurid forms of commercialism. The epitome of New York’s grid plan, streets ran either north-​south or east-​west in Murray Hill. Broadway never slashed through the district, and therefore the choked three-​way intersections of Herald Square and Times Square did not wreak havoc in this highly feminized area. The department stores there courted shoppers by anticipating their desires, and the elaborately decorated shop windows encouraged women to linger on its ordered streets—​a once taboo practice for “respectable ladies.”19 Discussions about where to locate suffrage headquarters were laced with strategic importance. Setting up shop on Henry Street would have facilitated dialogue with Lower East Side immigrants. An Upper West Side suite would have put lobbyists near apartment buildings, hotels, and important cultural sites like the Museum of Natural History. A central headquarters in Brooklyn might have sweetened the bitterness that Elder and her peers tasted. For a movement desperate to throw off its radical reputation, Murray Hill addresses carried a symbolic weight that eclipsed these other options and that suffragists willingly paid for in hard cash.20 Intentionally or not, leaders of various ideological stripes created a veritable suffrage district by placing their central offices within a thirteen-​block span and near New York’s most celebrated department stores in the early 1910s; many also moved their campaign from the skyline to the streetscape in the process.

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In opening Murray Hill headquarters, New  York suffragists were fine-​ tuning a strategy that had existed for years. In 1894, the New  York City Woman Suffrage League placed its offices in the retail district. Two years later, California activists opened their headquarters in a building shared with a department store.21 Massachusetts suffragists happily accepted headquarters in a “fashionable” part of Boston thanks to the generosity of a “friend” in the early twentieth century.22 In 1909, Alva Belmont decided on Fifth Avenue for the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Clearly, suffragists across the nation were thinking strategically about how to use their office locations to improve their cause’s status. These were isolated headquarters, however. In Manhattan in the early 1910s, such spaces combined to create a women’s rights neighborhood. Blatch’s Women’s Political Union (named the Equality League of Self-​ Supporting Women between 1907 and 1910)  marked the southernmost boundary of this neighborhood. In 1910, after moving farther and farther uptown, organizers opened a new headquarters in the basement of 46 East Twenty-​Ninth Street, on Murray Hill’s periphery.23 As Blatch explained, “We had come down to street level to advertise suffrage.” This was a radical move; she had earlier failed to convince socialite Katherine Mackay to establish a suffrage office in Albany in a shop “opening boldly on the side-​walk.” Mackay refused such “brazen” action and decided to rent space high in a hotel, a more protected and respectable environment.24 Blatch ignored Mackay’s cautious approach when it came to her own headquarters, placing it at street level. Others followed suit. A few blocks north of the Women’s Political Union and past hotels, churches, and the posh Colony Club sat the New York State Woman Suffrage Association on Madison Avenue. The state association left Belmont’s offices in 1911 and began renting ground-​floor space in a large house just below Thirty-​Fourth Street, near the Waldorf-​Astoria and B. Altman and Company.25 The Woman Suffrage Party opened offices at the same intersection. It, too, preferred street-​level space (in either a basement or first-​floor suite), after high rents and limited room ousted it from its initial headquarters in the Metropolitan Life Building across from Madison Square. But location in the city ultimately trumped location within a building: unable to find a suitable ground-​floor space, the party settled on the third floor of an “old mansion” in 1912, thanks to Olivia Sage’s largesse.26 Both organizations descended from tall office buildings that underscored their professional stature to converted residences that facilitated greater access. Suffrage was becoming part of the streetscape in Murray Hill.

Suffrage headquarters dotted the landscape from Twenty-​Ninth Street to Forty-​ Second Street along Fifth and Madison Avenues in the summer of 1912. In the early twentieth century, activists of various backgrounds and beliefs all politicized Murray Hill in order to champion the ballot. Locations mapped onto Plates 14 and 20 in George W. and Walter S. Bromley’s Atlas of the City of New York, Borough of Manhattan. From actual surveys and official plans (1911), Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, New York Public Library.

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Money must not have been the only motivation for leaders to quit the Metropolitan Life Building, since the elite Equal Franchise Society also decided to leave. The professional imprimatur lent by the Metropolitan Life Building seemed no longer necessary for suffragists whose letterheads, newspapers, and annual reports showcased their organizational prowess. Three blocks north of the state association and the Woman Suffrage Party, past J. P. Morgan’s elaborate home, the Equal Franchise Society created new headquarters in a former mansion on Thirty-​Seventh Street in 1912. This was prime real estate, right off Fifth Avenue and next to Tiffany and Company jewelers.27 Where the Woman Suffrage Party, the Women’s Political Union, and the state association had to finely balance costs with benefits when selecting a new location, the Equal Franchise Society doubtlessly required no such cautious accounting. Neither did the Alva Belmont–​bankrolled Political Equality Association. Prior to 1911, Belmont scattered the branches of her association across Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn along with maintaining headquarters at 505 Fifth Avenue. She decided to consolidate operations in the fall of 1911, opening her “Suffrage White House,” in the New York Times’ language, on Forty-​ First Street, right off Fifth Avenue and four blocks north of the Equal Franchise Society.28 Rather than renting the space, Belmont purchased two houses for an estimated $320,000. Never one to do things by halves, she planned a massive Suffrage Victory monument for the entrance, with wings spanning the whole facade.29 Though headquarters often served a variety of functions, Belmont’s “White House” proved remarkably ambitious. Offices regularly included a library brimming with suffrage-​related research.30 Both the Woman Suffrage Party (by 1913) and the Collegiate League for Equal Suffrage headquarters included a shop. Visitors could purchase banners, buttons, sashes, toiletries, and even baked goods at the Woman Suffrage Party store.31 But this paled in comparison with Belmont’s operation, which buzzed with a popular lunchroom, apartments, classrooms, and offices along with a “beauty repair shop,” where women could buy soaps, powders, and ointments.32 She even hoped to install a bank there. Not everyone was pleased with Belmont’s ambition. One employee quit after watching suffrage leaders pressure “shopgirls” into purchasing unnecessary cosmetics and, in the process, sideline serious conversations about suffrage.33 The National American Woman Suffrage Association’s headquarters was more conventional in its offerings and remained on the seventeenth floor of an office building at Forty-​Second Street, marking the northern boundary of this suffrage district. The benefits of this location only increased as the years passed. The New York Public Library, one of the country’s greatest educational

Geographies of Suffrage    83 facilities, opened across the street in 1911. Theaters and restaurants continued to dominate Times Square.34 Grand Central Terminal began a substantial redesign in 1903 to accommodate growing traffic and capitalize on technological advances. In 1910, the number of passengers traveling through Grand Central topped twenty million.35 With local organizations spearheading street-​ level work, the national association could remain comfortably nestled high in New  York’s skyline, at the nexus of amusement, education, and transportation. A constituent would have to deliberately seek out the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s office, not stumble upon it as she might the offices of the Women’s Political Union or the Equal Franchise Society. Landlords considered a variety of factors when they decided to lease a property. Besides money and ability to pay rent, they worried about tenants’ behavior—​ whether they might disrupt other renters, damage property, or hurt a block’s reputation. By the early 1910s, building owners overwhelmingly trusted that suffrage leaders would act appropriately (a trust also undoubtedly informed by racial and class biases). One exception throws this into stark relief. Those in the Woman Suffrage Party’s Fifteenth Assembly District struggled to find rental space. Owners and agents on the Upper West Side feared “riots, window breaking and losing other tenants” if suffragists moved in. Ultimately, they found an amenable landlord on Eighty-​First Street who leased them a fourteen-​room house where they opened a particularly elaborate headquarters in 1911—​one that the party ultimately adopted as its “social headquarters”—​ with everything from bedrooms and bathrooms featuring “Votes for Women” towels to a library, restaurant, and tearoom.36 No records exist of such difficulty in Murray Hill, where landlords were already accustomed to seeing women on the streets.37 That anti-​suffragists also opened Murray Hill headquarters indicates that money, not a commitment to women’s rights, motivated owners to tolerate political organizing.38 The concentration of headquarters in this relatively small area did not go unnoticed. When Belmont decided to centralize her operations and launch headquarters on Forty-​First Street, one journalist speculated that the socialite had wished to move “uptown with the rest of the vote-​for-​women clubs.”39 Associations undoubtedly benefited from this proximity, allowing leaders to cooperate more easily on legislation or parades. Suffragist workers, many of whom supported more than one society, could frequent several offices daily. Reporters looking for information simply would need to walk a few blocks up or down Fifth and Madison Avenues. Murray Hill’s reputation as a safe and respectable neighborhood, a place where women could maneuver independently of men, made it an especially attractive district from which to demand women’s rights.

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Headquarters provided stability to a movement in flux, fastening associations to specific addresses. They also increased organizations’ visibility, and those in Murray Hill lent an air of prestige. They served as refined and serious spaces in which to discuss sometimes silly, publicity-​seeking tactics. Organizers festooned their windows with banners and signs demanding the ballot, safe in the knowledge that their glass panes and brick walls ensured a degree of protection from the “masses.” Open-​air meetings, in contrast, brought suffrage onto the streets, allowing arguments to reach New Yorkers otherwise uninterested in women’s rights. With no overhead, all that they required was an activist’s own tenacity. Beginning with Maud Malone in 1907, the strategy grew in popularity. In New York City, street meetings popped up from Columbus Circle to Tremont Avenue in the Bronx in the early 1910s.40 Carrie Chapman Catt’s Woman Suffrage Party held ninety such demonstrations in the summer of 1910 alone.41 The state organization coordinated more than one hundred meetings across the Empire State in 1912.42 California strategists also embraced street meetings and reported success with them in the days leading up to the 1911 state referendum. More than 85  percent of Illinois counties hosted open-​air meetings in 1911 as well. One meeting in Philadelphia’s Independence Square drew two thousand listeners.43 There were exceptions, of course. Outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania leaders resisted the strategy and prioritized “indoor meetings” to organize the state’s female population in advance of the 1915 referendum there.44 But, overall, the once-​unconventional tactic became commonplace in New York and beyond in the early 1910s. It drew attention in a way that parlor meetings could not. Some open-​air meetings proved more memorable than others. Speeches in Columbus Circle or Herald Square were one thing—​middle-​class white women frequently visited these sites. Claiming street corners in Hell’s Kitchen, Wall Street, or Chinatown was entirely different, and often hotly contested. Campaigners might have justified avoiding these neighborhoods. Gang violence in Hell’s Kitchen, rumors of sex trafficking in Chinatown, and the male-​dominated rush of Wall Street provided ready excuses. Instead, they colonized them, temporarily at least. Suffrage leaders, mainly white, middle-​ class women, knew that their gender, race, and class marked them as outsiders in these neighborhoods. In fact, they exploited precisely this outsider status to gain attention and underscore their commitment to the ballot. What they did not anticipate was the depth of hostility they would confront. They wanted to seem brave; they did not intend to appear vulnerable.45 The first impasse unfolded on Wall Street in 1911. Not much had changed since Blake described downtown New York as “very full of men. . . . Among

Geographies of Suffrage    85 all these strong, pushing, busy men, there seemed no place, and no hope for a woman to expect justice or mercy.”46 Certainly, more female clerks and stenographers worked in the district in 1911 than in 1874, but overall Wall Street, at the heart of New York’s financial world, remained resoundingly male turf. Activists understood this intimately. In 1908, militant suffragettes dodged the flying apples, ticker tape, and bags filled with water coming from a menacing crowd.47 Three years later, Harriot Stanton Blatch’s Women’s Political Union, along with the radical British suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst and the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s president, Anna Howard Shaw, staged another foray into this decidedly male terrain. Their 1911 protest drew three thousand people. Chaos quickly erupted when messengers (the union called them “unruly boys” and, even the anti-​suffrage New York Times referred to them as “[h]‌oodlums”) began jeering. Businessmen in the crowd futilely attempted to silence their younger peers as Blatch and Pankhurst raised their voices over the bedlam.48 Utterly exasperated, Pankhurst announced that she would rent a hall if businessmen wanted to learn more, falling back on older strategies that relied on sheltered spaces. The young men chanted back, “Hire a hall! Hire a hall,” as the suffragists fled.49 Men clearly controlled these streets. Enraged, activists went directly to police headquarters, where the captain flippantly deflected any responsibility.50 The union had badly misjudged the nature of the financial district when organizing this protest. Visiting Wall Street automatically placed activists on male turf, and standing on a street corner emboldened young men who might accept women’s clerical services, but rejected their claims to equality. Suffragists dug in their heels, vowing “to go on holding open-​air meetings in Wall street [sic] until we compel the city to give us protection. We shall begin our Wall street [sic] campaigns at once.”51 They held their next protest a week later. The increased police presence at this second meeting helped to ensure a more orderly atmosphere.52 Organizers’ gender might have marked them as outsiders in this district, but their class and race provided them access to police resources not always available to more marginalized groups.53 The audience’s docility must have relieved the speakers. More important, the women had returned to the scene where just a week before men had so badly heckled them. As one reporter noted, the crowd listened “to the women who had the courage to ‘come back’ [emphasis added].”54 Strategists demanded respect even when men refused to give it. Wall Street proved hostile for organizers because their gender made them interlopers, but class-​based assumptions branded other metropolitan areas as dangerous for middle-​class advocates. Hell’s Kitchen was a working-​class community sandwiched in an industrial district between Thirtieth and Fifty-​Ninth

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Streets on Manhattan’s West Side.55 Rumors of gang violence colored popular perceptions of the district, and tour books listed it under neighborhoods where thrill seekers could experience New York’s underworld.56 Even if they did not run into gangsters there, tourists could at least attend a venue frequented by them.57 “Respectable” middle-​class women had few incentives to enter such a purportedly treacherous landscape—​except for suffragists who sought to woo male voters to win the franchise. The Woman Suffrage Party vowed to hold a meeting in Hell’s Kitchen in the summer of 1912. Two years earlier, police had arrested suffragists serving as poll watchers in the district for allegedly violating election laws.58 The arrests paled in comparison to the violence at the 1912 street meeting: “[r]‌oughs” pelted speakers with garbage, “chas[ing] them up the street in terror of their lives.” Some thought that Tammany Hall sent these “thugs” to spearhead the attack, a class-​and ethnicity-​biased accusation that overlooked the Wall Street  altercation. In the financial district, youth was blamed; in Hell’s Kitchen, political corruption was held responsible. After five calls to the police, who organizers deemed “indifferent to the disturbance,” two officers arrived. When the precinct captain later warned that that street corner was dangerous, plucky advocates demanded greater police protection for the meeting they planned to hold there the following weekend. Here, too, suffragists reterritorialized hostile space by combining persistence with race and class privileges. The Woman Voter boasted, “The gospel of suffrage was carried into Hell’s Kitchen. And thus the women of the Woman Suffrage Party upheld their principle that they will not be shut out of any part of New York where women and children are living. No districts, however dangerous, shall be closed to us.”59 As with their Wall Street protest, planners failed to fully anticipate the hostility their presence would generate. Once it exploded, speakers refused to surrender. Such decisions might demonstrate their courage, but it is not clear that they converted men who might consider the strategies unfeminine and brazen. Not only did suffragists threaten men by demanding one of the badges of masculinity, the right to vote, they challenged men’s claim to space to do so. Activists experienced similar trepidations about Chinatown, a district with a reputation for violence, gambling, drugs, and prostitution. Police, reformers, and government leaders in the early twentieth century agonized over the safety of young white women who traveled to the neighborhood, ostensibly exposing themselves to drugging and entrapment. Many associated the sensational 1909 murder of a white missionary by a Chinese man with the perils of Chinatown, even though it took place elsewhere in the metropolis.60 Race along with class prejudices shaped perceptions of this district as one too unseemly for “respectable,” middle-​class white women. Organizers disregarded warnings

Geographies of Suffrage    87 about holding demonstrations in Chinatown. “We refuse,” one lectured, “to allow that there shall be any section or spot in this city of our residence where, as suffragists, citizens and social workers, we are not to go.”61 In this case, male crowds did not harass them as they had in the financial district and Hell’s Kitchen. Instead, the order that prevailed during the meeting pleased suffragists.62 In the late nineteenth century, leaders depended on money to access the city’s commercial spaces. They would even more aggressively appropriate consumerism in the early twentieth century. Macy’s, for instance, sold suffrage goods; activists, as we saw, placed headquarters in the retail district; and supporters analogized voting to buying consumer goods. They argued that women-​as-​consumers could use their purchasing know-​how to discern the best options for government.63 In doing so, their strategies reflected a broader cultural shift toward the “citizen consumer,” an identity that blurred the lines between consumption and democracy.64 With their open-​air meetings, though, suffragists bucked this trend. Rather than relying on the safety of consumer spaces and money, leaders sought out “dangerous” public areas to broadcast their ideas. They relied on their status as citizens (and on help from the police), not money, to do so. On at least two occasions, however, they underestimated the hostility that their street politicking would provoke. Instead of retreating to the safety of parlor meetings, suffragists demanded police protection and returned to preach the gospel of enfranchisement in Hell’s Kitchen and the financial district. Their race, class, and gender marked them as outsiders in these districts—​making them appear simultaneously vulnerable and courageous—​ and empowered them to call on the state for assistance.65 What organizers did not seem to understand, however, is that by misreading Hell’s Kitchen and Wall Street, they might have made it more difficult to convert male voters. Gaining publicity through such seemingly aggressive tactics proved easy enough; converting listeners was an entirely different affair. Fortunately, at least some public health nurses showed more sensitivity when approaching immigrant, working-​class districts. Nursing cemented itself as a female profession in the years following the Civil War when hospital programs opened to educate students. The number of schools in New York (twenty-​nine in Brooklyn and Manhattan alone) combined with their prestige to draw women from across the state, the country, and even the continent to the metropolis.66 By century’s end, a trained nurse in Gotham could find employment with affluent families wishing to avoid crude hospitals, as a supervisor of a training program, or as a visiting nurse providing care to the needy.67

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Suffragists targeted these professionals—​strategically remembering Clara Barton’s and Florence Nightingale’s support of political equality in The Woman’s Journal, celebrating the American Nurses’ Association endorsement of enfranchisement, and holding meetings specifically for healthcare workers.68 But gender discrimination did not serve as a catalyst for organizing in nursing as it did in teaching.69 Several nurses even took to the New York Times to proclaim their opposition to the ballot. One explained that nurses had won professional recognition without the franchise and that they could command fair pay while remaining disfranchised because they did not compete with men for positions. A deferential attitude also pervaded the field, one that traced itself back to the Civil War, when leaders instructed nurses to obey male doctors.70 Pay parity, a weapon suffragists brandished to convert teachers, failed to strike a responsive chord with nurses whose professional identities depended on their subordination to male physicians and who had few male colleagues earning more than them. Divisions within this profession further complicated lobbyists’ task. Leaders, generally superintendents of the nation’s most respected nursing schools, sought to institutionalize licensing requirements for the largely unregulated profession in the early twentieth century.71 This fight helped to convert several to suffrage, as they realized how difficult it was to enact political change without the ballot.72 Many nurses, though, resisted licensing, concerned that they might not be able to meet new requirements.73 Suffragists tripped over these fault lines, focusing attention on the profession’s upper echelons—​ trained nurses from top schools and these institutions’ managers—​rather than the rank and file. The socialite suffrage champion Alva Belmont even created a Trained Nurses’ Branch of her Political Equality Association; its very name drew a distinction between licensed and unlicensed women.74 In teaching, gender divided the field; in nursing, professional credentials did so. Public health nurses proved more receptive to lobbyists’ appeals than many of their colleagues. Unlike those who remained in hospitals or in well-​to-​do patients’ homes, these nurses navigated crammed tenements to educate, assess, and care for community members. A middle and upper class convinced that immigrants bred diseases tolerated nurses’ otherwise “unwomanly” behavior, since it promised to stop contagion from seeping into their own neighborhoods. The Henry Street Settlement served as the institutional heart of public health nursing in Progressive Era New York City. Organized by Lillian Wald in the 1890s and located on the Lower East Side, it employed fifty-​ four nurses by 1910 who visited some 143,000 homes and treated more than fifteen thousand patients.75 Henry Street’s services spanned the whole island of Manhattan and its northern borough in the early twentieth century, with

Geographies of Suffrage    89 nine centers outside the original on the Lower East Side, including one in the Bronx and one on Sixtieth Street for “Colored People.”76 Indigent New Yorkers accepted nurses’ help—​sometimes begrudgingly, sometimes gladly. Already deeply concerned about public welfare and immersed in a vibrant reform environment, visiting nurses at Henry Street were suffragists-​in-​the-​making. Such women seemed primed to act as goodwill missionaries if they brought political equality into a neighborhood, not militant colonizers searching for a spot to sink their flag.77 Movement brass worked for years to convince Wald to join their campaign, knowing the outsized influence her conversion would have. Already stretched for time, Wald was initially reluctant to accept a prominent role. That changed by the early 1910s.78 Henry Street Settlement’s founder agreed to serve as an honorary vice chair at the second Woman Suffrage Party’s convention in 1910 and planned to march in the suffrage parade the following year.79 She published an article in The Woman’s Journal that merged municipal housekeeping and natural rights discourse to explain her support:  the state required women’s talents, and both men and women had an “inherent right” to vote.80 Growing more vocal, a year later she penned a letter for the British suffragette newspaper Votes for Women at Sylvia Pankhurst’s request and refused to preside over the National Women’s Organization of the Democratic National Committee because the party failed to include a suffrage plank in its 1912 platform.81 Her support cemented Henry Street as a friendly space for organizing. At the settlement, neighbors screened an early women’s rights slideshow in 1911.82 Stillman House, the African American branch on Sixtieth Street, similarly held a discussion on political equality.83 Later, Henry Street Settlement clubs proactively developed their own suffrage programming.84 And, in 1915, the organization hosted its own dedicated club.85 By then, Wald seemed more concerned about promoting enfranchisement than about offending potential donors skittish about political equality. She was far from the only public health nurse at Henry Street who identified as a suffragist. Jane E. Hitchcock, the supervisor of nurses, also supported the vote, as did Yssabella Waters and Lavinia Dock, Henry Street’s most visible proponent.86 Dock came to Henry Street in 1896, after stints at Bellevue, Johns Hopkins Training School for Nurses, and Chicago’s Illinois Training School. From a middle-​class family in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, “Docky,” as friends called her, joined the ranks of “New Woman” entering college and professions at the fin de siècle. Dedicated, clever, and smart, she quickly connected suffrage to urban reform at Henry Street, castigating Tammany Hall for epitomizing the “deep-​rooted corruption of men.”87 “I am convinced there will be no salvation for municipal politics until the women get their own votes,” she told Wald.88

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By the early 1910s, Dock had joined Blatch’s Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women and chaired the Woman Suffrage Party’s Eleventh Senatorial District, retiring from various nursing positions in order to promote the ballot.89 She also served as a poll watcher in Hell’s Kitchen and helped plaster the city with posters announcing Sylvia Pankhurst’s arrival in 1911.90 The increasingly radicalized nurse achieved the dubious distinction of suffrage prisoner after police arrested her for picketing the White House in 1917.91 Dock’s conversion rippled through the Lower East Side as she capitalized on her familiarity with the district to promote the ballot. In one case, she settled on green for the banners she lugged through the narrow streets surrounding the Henry Street Settlement, concerned that the large Irish Catholic population there might conflate suffrage yellow with Protestant “Orangemen.” The Woman Voter reported that the change in color made a difference, and that “men often show their respect for them [suffragists] by taking off their hats as they pass,” a much friendlier reaction than street speakers received in Hell’s Kitchen and Wall Street.92 The mutual respect that existed between Lower East Siders and visiting nurses benefited the campaign. In another instance, Dock reached Jewish mothers via lantern slides, confident that Jewish residents on the East Side wanted to learn about women’s rights.93 The nurse embodied the crusade to the larger public. When asked to enroll in the Woman Suffrage Party, one young man thought that unnecessary—​he knew Lavinia Dock and, as his companion remarked, “That means a whole lot.”94 Many suffragists, including Harriot Stanton Blatch, saw immigrants and African Americans as obstacles to achieving the vote.95 For Dock, they were potential recruits.96 Strategists appreciated nurses’ skills and resources. Public health workers and settlements could link the movement to the working class, and trained nurses in private employment could convert better-​off New  Yorkers.97 While campaign directors struggled to conscript a large number of these women, settlement house nurses like Dock and Wald did bring the message of political equality to their working-​class clients. Thanks to their community-​oriented serv­ice, people seemed to trust their insights and arguments, even when they took a political form. Actresses, theater owners, and filmmakers extended the movement’s reach even further. Both nurses and performers might sway heterogeneous crowds that suffrage leadership frequently overlooked and sometimes offended. But where public health nurses’ power sprang from its centrifugal quality—​they spread arguments out to the rest of the city—​the entertainment profession’s influence proved more centripetal—​drawing a wide range of individuals into theaters and movie houses to hear about women’s rights. Campaigners had

Geographies of Suffrage    91 explained why women needed the vote for years; the stage and the silver screen allowed them to create a visual storyboard to illustrate these points, persuading watchers by tugging on their emotions rather than their intellect. Once associated with prostitution, duplicity, and general disrepute, performers saw their reputation improve, albeit haltingly, as the nineteenth century progressed. By the early twentieth century, the society world, long closed to actresses, slowly opened its doors to them. A person could join the dramatic profession without necessarily staining her reputation. A select few managed to carve out places within the cultural zeitgeist; their fashions set national standards.98 These women’s skills had the potential to energize a stereotypically dour campaign. Their glamour and beauty defied the grotesque-​ suffragist trope, while their celebrity status and gift for public speaking could enliven the campaign’s message.99 That New  York’s stages had long served as the scene for reform work—​from temperance to abolition—​would have suggested to suffragists that performers might also be amenable to promoting political equality.100 Like nurses, however, actresses proved difficult to recruit. Some imagined that participation would derail their burgeoning careers; professional demands distracted others.101 Busy schedules bursting with rehearsals and tours made it difficult to commit to suffrage events. These challenges came into focus for one leader when she scheduled actresses to speak at the Hotel Astor. None appeared at the event’s start. Instead, notes trickled in explaining why the women could not attend. Four were away from New York; one had a meeting, and others rehearsals. The title of the New York Tribune’s article about the gathering is revealing—​“Actresses Send Regrets:  Interest in Suffrage Doesn’t Go beyond Publicity Stage.”102 Some saw participation in the campaign as simply another way to raise their profile, rather than an opportunity to act on political principles. Henrietta Crossman and Trixie Friganza were among the first prominent actresses to enroll. Friganza donated money and joined a group of suffragettes demanding to meet New  York’s mayor in 1908.103 Several months later, Crossman, perhaps the most militant suffragist-​actress, prodded advocates to pull together “an army of working women” to “storm the doors of the Capitol.”104 Alert to the stage’s political possibilities, she urged organizers to produce a “good suffrage play,” since the “theatre is better than the Church for preaching sermons.”105 The movement’s leadership agreed about the stage’s hypnotic powers, as did Crossman’s more famous colleagues.106 Stars such as Ethel Barrymore, Lillian Russell, Mary Shaw, and Maxine Elliott addressed meetings, performed in plays supporting political equality, and exploited their celebrity to collect signatures for petitions.107

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For less successful actresses, the campaign could provide paid work. Fola La Follette’s career is a case in point. La Follette came from a venerable line of activists. Her father was Wisconsin’s Progressive senator, Robert La Follette, and her mother was an active reformer.108 Since La Follette never became a star, speaking about women’s rights served as both a principled act and an employment opportunity.109 These priorities sometimes collided, leaving La Follette jealous of other actresses. In one case, she railed against her agent for promoting someone else’s reading of How the Vote Was Won, a popular political equality play, accusing him of reducing her “earning capacity by utilizing this vehicle with another reader.” Near the end of her letter, La Follette backhandedly acknowledged that the performance “may help the cause of woman suffrage,” but she nevertheless objected to her manager promoting someone else.110 In a profession where work could be irregular, suffrage plays provided an outlet for struggling actresses, one that La Follette fiercely guarded. Besides housing a substantial number of performers, Manhattan also contained hundreds of dramatic venues, all potential spaces for campaign work. One study counted 275 theaters, ranging from elite playhouses to gritty vaudeville stages.111 Suffragists capitalized on this diversity, designing programs for high-​class theaters and injecting their arguments into existing vaudeville playbills. The latter allowed them to reach a broader audience than those that attended elite theaters, but upscale stages provided more freedom for experimentation. Whereas Lillie Devereux Blake’s generation depended on commercial halls, this Progressive Era cohort added theaters along with street corners, tenements, and retail districts to its geographies of activism.112 From the Broadway to the Belasco, lobbyists frequently took advantage of Manhattan’s first-​class venues. Sometimes owners of these theaters presented a play and then donated the profits to a suffrage association; other times, they provided the stage and activists developed their own programming. Maxine Elliott’s Theatre proved especially hospitable. The actress Maxine Elliott (along with the renowned Shuberts) managed the marble-​ fronted Thirty-​ Ninth Street venue, making it the rare female-​run, New York theater. This fact alone might have signaled a progressive establishment, but Elliott also made it clear that she planned to use her stage to showcase women’s work.113 Suffragists benefited from the theater’s unique focus. In one case, several organizations choreographed tableaux for its stage. Society women threw off their gowns and dressed up as famous heroines for the event.114 Seats cost upwards of $50. The tableaux ultimately brought in $3,000, a boon for a movement always searching for funding.115 These tableaux paled in comparison to Lysistrata, which Elliott’s theater also hosted and the Women’s Political Union managed. In the play, the

Geographies of Suffrage    93 titular character persuaded women in ancient Greece to abstain from sex in order to pressure men into accepting peace. The 1913 performance was not Aristophanes’s original production, which one reporter predicted Anthony Comstock would have “severely censored.”116 Still, some suffragists harbored concerns about the adaptation’s lasciviousness.117 The drama’s most “daring” scene saw a group of young females, played by society women, celebrating war’s end. As they rejoiced, a shepherd, acted by a man said to be a perfect replica of a Greek god and wearing only a small leopard skin, leapt across the stage.118 One commentator ribbed that if the tailor for the shepherd “cut the garment according to the skin, that must have been a mighty small leopard.” The audience audibly gasped when the shepherd appeared. Seeming to enjoy the thrill, “matronly suffragists,” teased a journalist, “cran[ed] their necks” to determine his identity. “Well, well, isn’t he a Bacchus! My, my,” some smacked their lips.119 Maxine Elliott’s support empowered organizers to take risks, and her venue’s respectability gave their provocative performance a veneer of propriety. The Women’s Political Union sold more than $1,400 worth of tickets for the play.120 At least twenty articles covered its production, and both the World and the Evening Post featured photographs of the shepherd.121 With headlines ranging from “Shepherd in Leopard Skin to Dance for Suffragists” to “Poor Young Shepherd a Lamb before Society Shepherdesses,” the coverage condescendingly framed the activists as predators and the shepherd as their sexual prey.122 Where other parts of the metropolis sold female bodies, suffragists used Maxine Elliott’s stage to turn their gaze on the male body.123 Still, commentators found the gawking more humorous than threatening. The high-​class theater provided their rollicking play with a cloak of respectability unknown to vaudeville. The scandal that a church-​sanctioned strategy created at the Victoria Theatre, a Times Square vaudeville house, lays this bare. Of the sixty-​six low-​priced theaters in Manhattan, more than half featured vaudeville.124 Such houses offered a host of short sketches, sold cheaper tickets than traditional theaters, and proved extremely popular with working-​ and middle-​class Americans. Sometimes stretching the boundaries of traditional decorum with their acts, managers strove to improve their reputation by drawing in women and constructing more elegant atmospheres at the turn of the century.125 Suffragists could help. They tapped into owners’ dual goals of attracting female audiences to increase their respectability, and sensational, newsworthy stories to entertain their ticketholders. In return, strategists could expect to reach a much more diverse audience than at Maxine Elliott’s or other haute venues.126 The Victoria Theatre stood as one of the city’s most famous vaudeville houses, proud of its reputation for attracting “freak act[s]‌.” That reputation

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did not deter suffragists when manager William Hammerstein offered them a week-​ long opportunity to address his audience for twenty minutes between sketches.127 Lobbyists would join a puerile playbill, speaking alongside a “European Dancing Novelty,” the “World’s Only Deaf-​ Mute Performer,” 128 “Singing Comedians,” and a “Chatterbox.” Organizers risked becoming just another “freak” show at the Victoria Theatre in order to bring their message to its varied clientele. When the curtain rose the first day, two hundred activists directed by the Woman Suffrage Party occupied the stage and marched into the audience.129 The Men’s League, National American Woman Suffrage Association, Women’s Political Union, Collegiate Equal Suffrage League, state association, Brooklyn organization, and Wage Earners’ Suffrage League took over the playhouse in the succeeding days.130 Their performances ranged from a street meeting re-​enactment to a commencement reproduction.131 Although it was not their first appearance on the vaudeville stage, “Suffrage Week” in 1912 proved the most controversial.132 The crowd’s reaction initially pleased activists. Those coming for “acrobatic performers” and “cabaret” seemed to accept their evangelizing.133 This rapidly changed after the Women’s Political Union began selling “Votes for Women” cigarettes in the lobby. These cigarettes became a lightning rod, illuminating the shallow depth of many people’s tolerance. The New  York Times, a notoriously anti-​suffrage paper, blamed the decision to hawk cigarettes on the women’s entrance into vaudeville, “which led them to other wicked things.”134 The theater’s owner refused to allow organizers to sell anything for the remainder of the week. Adding insult to injury, he went on to proclaim that vaudeville stood “beneath the dignity” of the campaigners and suggested they return to Carnegie Hall. Simply stepping onto a vaudeville stage tainted women.135 Ironically, the “Votes for Women” cigarettes originated at a church fair, where the Women’s Political Union treasurer first saw them sold. She purchased the surplus, optimistic that they would serve as a good fundraiser at the Victoria Theatre.136 A tactic lifted from a church fair mutated into controversy once it reached vaudeville, where suffragists came under heightened scrutiny. The more diverse their theater audience, the more they needed to police their behavior—​or someone else would. Organizers’ increasing dependence on drama and actresses and their growing reliance on visual spectacles like parades dovetailed with the film industry’s growth in the early twentieth century. Gotham’s buzzing streets drew moviemakers, who used them for sets. As they did with the stage, strategists capitalized on their proximity to film companies, developing suffrage movies that featured their stunts, offices, and growing coalition.137

Geographies of Suffrage    95 According to one count, New York City housed fifty motion picture theaters in 1900; eight years later that number exceeded five hundred.138 Reformers agonized over early films’ lecherousness and violence, as well as the storefront nickelodeons in which New Yorkers viewed them. The mayor even temporarily shut all motion picture theaters in 1908. In an effort to ensure the morality of films while avoiding future government censorship, the industry-​backed National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures began reviewing new motion pictures in 1909. Film companies acquiesced to the National Board’s oversight, considering it a stopgap to prevent state regulation.139 From 1909 to 1914, the board’s power peaked as it worked to ensure wholesome entertainment for the masses who flocked to new moving picture houses.140 This provided a potential boon for suffrage films. Anxiety over censorship pushed the industry toward reform themes. At the same time, movie companies battled the stigma associated with the new pastime to draw in respectable, middle-​ class women by, for instance, holding matinee performances.141 Strategists seized the opportunity this confluence of factors created. As with vaudeville, they could reach a diverse audience via movie houses. But they would not be dependent on theater owners’ agendas. If one movie house refused to screen their film, they could still show it elsewhere. Plays were more fleeting and less transferable. And movie audiences had an insatiable hunger for new material. Two suffrage films premiered in June 1912. The Women’s Political Union worked with the Éclair Film Company to develop Suffrage and the Man, a comedy about a fiancé’s misadventures coming to terms with his future wife’s support of enfranchisement.142 The National American Woman Suffrage Association collaborated with Reliance to release a second, more serious movie a few weeks later.143 Votes for Women marketed itself as an “educational photo play,” like those the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Association of the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis produced. In it, activists try to gain a senator’s support for their suffrage bill by converting his fiancée. An organizer reveals to her the ways in which her future husband and father perpetuate urban suffering—​the senator owns a tenement, while her father protects men who harass female employees in his department store. She realizes she needs the vote to effect change, but quickly falls ill from scarlet fever. The protagonist contracted the illness from her bridal gown, a gown made by a girl in a disease-​ infested tenement and sold from her father’s store. Guilt-​ridden, the father and fiancé join the movement.144 Activists in New  York continued to churn out films the following year. Blatch’s Women’s Political Union (along with the Unique Film Company)

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released its second movie, the hour-​long, Eighty Million Women Want—​? in fall 1913.145 The Unique Film Company advertised it as “A Great Political Drama of Love, Intrigue and Detective Work.”146 The story centered on a young lawyer and his suffragist girlfriend. The “intrigue” and “detective work” revolve around the lawyer’s conflicted relationship with the boss of a political machine and an anti-​suffragist, Boss Kelly. Falsely arrested for attempting to assassinate the Boss, the young lawyer is exonerated by his girlfriend’s detective work. Once freed, he works with movement officials to expose the machine’s corruption. The film ends victoriously with activists giddy over their enfranchisement and the lawyer and his girlfriend celebrating their engagement.147 Despite their plot differences, the films shared important similarities. Notably, all three included office scenes. Eighty Million Women Want—​ ? challenged the stereotype of activists as irrational scolds in these scenes. The shots juxtaposed the disciplined headquarters of the Women’s Political Union against the anarchy of the political machine’s clubhouse. In one scene, viewers saw women neatly attired and attentive at the suffrage office; in the next, they watched raucous men smoking and laughing in the clubhouse.148 Votes for Women and Suffrage and the Man also included office views, which newspapers reprinted. The scenes provided a way for individuals to feel as if they were surveying the campaign’s inner workings, even if they never made it to Murray Hill.149 Where headquarters provided the setting for fictional scenes, the parade shots featured in Eighty Million Women Want—​? and Votes for Women required no such additional dramatization.150 Filmmakers did not stage procession re-​ enactments; they used actual footage. Radical advocates of the ballot organized the first unofficial parade in 1908, and increasingly elaborate spectacles followed in 1910, 1911, and 1912. They quickly developed into a form of street art with leaders trying to convert New Yorkers through their “eyes,” as Blatch hoped.151 One nighttime parade required five thousand lanterns in addition to miners’ lamps, batons topped with electric light bulbs, and searchlights for automobiles as organizers created “one long blaze of glory” in support of the vote.152 In all, the marches provided tangible evidence of activists’ new relationship to the metropolis and showed off the diversity of women that they were fashioning into a broad, urban coalition. They loom large in our imagery of the movement. Newspapers could describe these street theatrics and regularly ran a few photographs of them, but films showed them to individuals across the nation.153 Lobbyists keenly understood this and turned the parade footage into a promotional device. It “offer[ed] a chance for suffragists all over the country

Geographies of Suffrage    97 not only to see a good suffrage play,” leaders urged supporters to tell movie theater owners, “but to witness a remarkable moving picture of the great woman suffrage parade in New York.”154 Votes for Women hit its mark at a Wisconsin showing, where one woman reportedly barely contained her excitement. The Woman’s Journal teased, “Only occupied theatre seats refrained her from taking immediate part in the production.”155 The films’ intended audience seems to have been diverse. Suffrage and the Man premiered at a high-​priced theater in Manhattan, but at least one newspaper advertised it as a dime movie, suggesting it reached beyond the middle and upper classes.156 Exhibitors would have expected the longer Votes for Women and Eighty Million Women Want—​? to attract middle-​class customers who had more time to watch a plot unfold.157 But the latter’s premiere at a vaudeville/​movie house on Forty-​Second Street complicates that assumption and suggests a mixed working-​and middle-​class viewership.158 These two films also appealed to immigrants and the working class, making the case that only the ballot would provide justice and better working conditions.159 Movies spoke to a more heterogeneous audience than plays. In the 1870s and 1880s, Gilded Age activists in New York City wrote fictional stories, authored newspaper columns, and toured the country to spread their message. By the 1910s, Progressive Era leaders had movies, print, and the stage at their disposal. Moviegoers watched as women marched along Fifth Avenue, strategized at headquarters, battled slumlords, and defeated corrupt political machines in the early 1910s. Off-​screen organizers took advantage of Gotham’s professional, philanthropic, and commercial geographies. In Murray Hill, landlords long accustomed to a female presence willingly accepted their political organizing as leaders consolidated their headquarters and moved their work from the skyline to the streetscape. Not all neighborhoods proved so receptive. In Hell’s Kitchen and the financial district, some men pounced when activists invaded, defending their neighborhoods against suffrage incursions. Strategists pushed back by demanding state protection during the ensuing pandemonium. Public health nurses from Henry Street did not require such protection, using the goodwill they had earned with immigrants to smooth the way for campaign work on the Lower East Side. Actresses added panache to the campaign, and theater owners provided venues in which suffragists combined entertainment with education to draw in a varied audience. By 1913, lobbyists had etched their campaign onto the cityscape. In January of that year, leaders in New York celebrated their first real legislative achievement—​representatives in Albany accepted a suffrage amendment. Though the legislature had to pass the bill again before New Yorkers

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would have an opportunity to vote on it, victory suddenly seemed within reach. The milestone marked “the beginning of the end” in suffragists’ appraisal.160 But activists still had to convince apathetic and antagonistic male voters to back their cause, including the men who chased them from Wall Street and Hell’s Kitchen.

5 “Suffrage ‘Owns’ City,” 1913–​1915

On five separate occasions before 1914, activists transformed Fifth Avenue into a dazzling showcase for suffrage—​each parade trumping the one before in size and in flair. Such demonstrations competed with Broadway shows, Coney Island amusement parks, and world-​renowned restaurants to capture the attention of New Yorkers whose everyday environment already burst with spectacles. In 1914, organizers worried that their success might have plateaued. Parades, once extraordinary, had grown ordinary in Gotham, a striking development in little more than a half-​decade. Participating in national Suffrage Day seemed an effective alternative.1 Rather than trying to draw people to Fifth Avenue, associations fanned out across the metropolis. The College League dashed to universities, the Equal Franchise Society to Madison Square, the Political Equality Association to Riverside Park, and the Woman Suffrage Party popped up everywhere from the Plaza Hotel to Rutgers Square. The Women’s Political Union fought for permission to hold an unprecedented meeting in Central Park, which two thousand individuals reportedly attended. The young, newly elected mayor, John Purroy Mitchel, planned to conclude the festivities at Carnegie Hall by giving women the “keys of the city”—​a symbolic gesture underscoring how drastically campaigners’ relationship to New York had changed since 1870.2 The Evening Sun pithily announced: “Suffrage ‘Owns’ City.”3 Suffrage Day hints at the grueling pace leaders set in their effort to amend the state constitution. The legislature initially approved their proposed amendment in January 1913 and then reapproved it two years later, as required by the state constitution. This meant that New  York men would have the final say on the measure in November 1915, the first suffrage referendum in the Empire State’s history. Much was at stake. The Woman Voter, the Woman

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Suffrage Party’s monthly publication, promised that success would break “the traditions of the conservative East and hasten . . . the day of equal suffrage for the women of the entire world.”4 Carrie Chapman Catt echoed this sentiment, writing in a 1914 report that “when New York is won the United States is won; when the United States is won, the civilized world will soon follow.”5 It would create a critical precedent, and women’s decision-​making power in presidential elections would skyrocket thanks to New York’s forty-​five Electoral College votes.6 But, victory would not be easy to achieve. Residents’ mobility and diversity, the metropolis’s presumed conservatism and its size, and the male-​ controlled corporations and political machines based in Gotham all haunted strategists’ dreams about success. Expecting to lose Manhattan, lobbyists hoped at least to win Brooklyn, where the “independent vote controls,” and use that borough to reduce the margin of defeat in Greater New York.7 Organizational rivalries also threatened to destabilize the campaign. Tension had been simmering between Harriot Stanton Blatch and Carrie Chapman Catt for years. Both committed their lives to the cause, but Blatch prized boldness, whereas Catt prioritized order.8 In the fall of 1913, New York City leaders agreed to coordinate their efforts under a new, statewide association, the Empire State Campaign Committee. The Woman Suffrage Party, the Equal Franchise Society, the College League, the Men’s League, and the state association all joined the new committee, which Catt directed.9 Blatch stood as the outlier. Concerned about the independence of the Women’s Political Union, she rejected the offer at cooperation, creating a serious problem for Catt, who desperately wanted to access the union’s deep pockets.10 Blatch and Catt, nevertheless, managed to contain their personal animus for one another in order to work together effectively in New  York City.11 They spent 1913, 1914, and 1915 focused on retaining the support and enthusiasm of the city’s residents who had already been converted, as well as expanding beyond their white, middle-​class, native-​born female base. The metropolis buzzed with discussions of the vote. In their homes, at the boxing ring, and even at the polling place, men could not escape conversations about enfranchisement as suffragists invoked their “right to the city” to challenge geographies of gender and of state. When the media reported that activists were taking Gotham “by storm,” it did not exaggerate. The drive for the ballot was benefiting from and contributing to the redefinition of middle-​class women’s place within the urban landscape. Catt and Blatch revolutionized the movement that Lillie Devereux Blake and her contemporaries established. In the 1880s, Blake and the New  York City Woman Suffrage League haphazardly approached New York’s various female subcultures, gladly enrolling any woman who might stumble across a convention meeting. In the Progressive Era, strategists systematically targeted

“Suffrage ‘Owns’ City”    101 Gotham’s different cohorts of women via the educational programs, professional organizations, and social clubs that united female residents. In this way, lobbyists could approach groups of women with tailored arguments germane to their shared aspirations, rather than disparate individuals with random, unpredictable concerns. Leaders tapped into the webs of aspiration that laced these groups together in the early 1910s. Teachers found ready partners in their drive for pay parity, actresses gained publicity and earned additional income by participating in the campaign, public health nurses could push forward their reform agenda via enfranchisement, socialites might hope to increase their already outsized influence with the ballot, and industrial laborers discovered allies promising to end economic exploitation. With the 1915 referendum on the horizon, organizers worked to further strengthen recruits’ commitment as well as draft their peers. The tightly packed metropolis intimately exposed campaign managers to industrial laborers’ plight, even if some wished to ignore it. Concern about the “other half” initially fueled Blatch’s approach to suffrage, but she alienated her working-​class sisters when she prioritized elite women’s solutions over strikers’ requests during the 1909 Shirtwaist Strike. The Woman Suffrage Party gradually filled the void.12 A remarkable three issues of its monthly publication, The Woman Voter, targeted working-​class women. Some of the essays featured in the publication spoke past industrial laborers—​suggesting that middle-​and upper-​class women would “gift” the ballot to their lesser-​off sisters; others zeroed in on the protection working-​class women would gain with the vote. Columnists floated child labor laws, minimum wages, and maximum hours as real possibilities. Strategists told working-​class readers that only once enfranchised could they effectively organize into politically powerful trade unions.13 Beyond the printed page, leaders created suffrage associations for industrial laborers. In 1911, two years after its founding, the party helped start the Wage Earners’ League for Woman Suffrage.14 Working-​class socialists managed the league, whose membership they limited to “wage earners” in an effort to circumvent class tensions and thereby promote “the greatest possible freedom of discussion.”15 Overall, though, working-​class women remained on the margins of suffrage leadership even as that leadership increasingly felt it necessary to protect and promote their voices. Movement brass also continued to work to enroll the city’s entertainers.16 Actress Louise Closser Hale believed the stage’s routines and demands left individuals in the dramatic profession uniquely primed for the vote. “Any woman who goes home from work at midnight,” Hale explained, must defend the propriety of doing so, leaving her acutely aware of gender injustices. The “actress is a suffragist even if she doesn’t know it,” the performer concluded.17

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In the “Dramatic Number,” The Woman Voter’s sole professionally themed issue, authors praised such actress-​converts. “There are few groups in the community,” the introductory column flattered, “who have helped us more in the past and to whom we look for even greater assistance in the future.”18 In the pages that followed, editors provided space for several thespians to condemn their profession’s sexism. Criticisms of women’s powerlessness on the stage created a refrain in the “Dramatic Number,” with one performer advocating for a “Woman’s National Theatre.”19 Leaders expected these emissaries to creatively spread the movement’s message, provide public speaking pointers, and use their celebrity to attract interest.20 On one exceptional occasion (“Theatrical Day”), Sarah Bernhardt visited the Woman Suffrage Party’s headquarters. Fans packed the house; others stood outside pleading for admission, and police officers scrambled to control the mob. The crowd grew so thick that one organizer worried the floors would buckle.21 In 1915, the state association even created a Bureau of Laughter supervised by comedian May Irwin.22 Perhaps to show its gratitude to performers, or perhaps to try to attract more to the cause, the state association opened an emergency fund for unemployed actresses that same year.23 As it had with Fola La Follette, the campaign spoke directly to entertainers’ difficulties finding regular work by providing them financial support. Meanwhile, a few wealthy women who first participated during the 1894 New  York State Constitutional Convention remained active. Olivia Sage continued to provide generous financial assistance to the Woman Suffrage Party, donating more than $2,000 to help it pay for headquarters.24 Margaret Chanler Aldrich’s passion for the cause escalated to the point of near violence. A neighbor reported that Aldrich almost “tackl[ed]” a prominent anti-​suffragist when visiting her cousin, Madeleine Astor, in Bar Harbor.25 A more recent recruit was Louisine Havemeyer, wife of the late sugar magnate Henry O.  Havemeyer. Penning a column for a suffrage publication, she explained that she wanted the ballot “politically, legally, civically, and naturally.” Havemeyer rested her final argument on the fact that women paid taxes, echoing the position of her peers who believed their economic might should bring about political rights.26 More than once, she exhibited her art collection, ranging from El Grecos and Goyas to Rembrandts and Rubens, to raise money for the campaign.27 Several affluent women even allowed organizers to place posters on their doors while they vacationed in summer 1915. Lobbyists rightly expected that yellow suffrage flyers adorning the city’s most sumptuous residences would attract attention.28 Socialites did not need to sacrifice pleasure for politics; their lavish belongings and property could still aid the campaign, even as they relaxed far away from Gotham’s sizzling summer heat.29

“Suffrage ‘Owns’ City”    103 But at least one leader censured her elite sisters for not doing more. At a 1914 meeting, Vira Boarman Whitehouse, a wealthy suffragist who would become chair of the state organization in 1915, excoriated her affluent peers for not being “rabid enough,” protesting that “women of wealth, who could give lavishly, leave it to struggling girls in the shops and factories to go without their Easter hats that we may send out organizers.”30 Although lobbyists long believed socialites apathetic (even after some assisted in the 1894 crusade), they had welcomed their generosity and obeyed their wishes when they did engage in the campaign. Blatch even tiptoed around Katherine Mackay’s resistance to propaganda to guarantee her support.31 That dynamic had shifted by 1915. Elite women had an outsized influence in the urban milieu, and Whitehouse demanded that her peers exploit it fully for suffrage. On the Lower East Side, Henry Street remained a stronghold for enfranchisement. Nursing leader Lavinia Dock kept an eye on foreign newspapers to measure their level of sympathy, lugged a suffrage map around the Second Assembly District, and tabulated support among the Jewish electorate.32 One organizer in the Manhattan movement described her, without much exaggeration, as “a human dynamo,” claiming that “few people whom she really seeks to convert can escape.”33 Lillian Wald, herself an advocate for immigrants within the movement, singled out Dock for gaining the support of “all the nationalities of our cosmopolitan community.”34 Nurses outside of Henry Street awoke to the crusade as well. In late 1912 and 1913, Bellevue Training School’s superintendent and the nurses at the Bronx Nurses’ Settlement organized suffrage meetings. At Bellevue, The Woman Voter reported that all fifty nurses sympathized with the cause.35 Six hospitals sent representatives to a gathering at the Friends’ Seminary, and the nurses of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary donated twenty-​five dollars to the campaign.36 Despite continuing to rely on the profession’s leadership, at least the Women’s Political Union began to acknowledge divisions in the medical community. In one article outlining the tension between nurses and physicians, an organizer concluded, “So long as nurses and midwives are largely women and the doctors for the most part men the question of woman’s rights will enter subtly in.”37 Some trained nurses might have taken to the pages of the New York Times in 1909 to contend that the nature of their female-​dominated profession made the vote unnecessary. But the larger medical profession’s hierarchy certainly depended on female nurses’ subordination to male doctors, a status that the Women’s Political Union highlighted—​and even puckishly celebrated. A 1915 newspaper poll suggested such strategies reaped benefits:  87  percent of this group (the poll lumped together “nurses, midwives, manicurists, hairdressers etc.”) in Greater New York believed women should have the franchise.38

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Supporting teachers’ struggles required activists to devise a more delicate approach, especially in the wake of a battle over mother-​teachers and maternity leave.39 Bridget Peixotto provided the battle with its heroine. The Board of Education dismissed the Bronx teacher for “neglect of duty” after she unsuccessfully tried to conceal her maternity leave by claiming to be ill with an infection.40 The board’s report alleged that pregnancy and motherhood led to professional lapses and absences.41 Prominent New Yorkers took notice. John Dewey, a distinguished academic and suffrage supporter, and Stephen Wise, a celebrated rabbi who also endorsed enfranchisement, promised to fight Peixotto’s dismissal.42 As they did during the equal pay struggle, suffragists came to teachers’ defense. However, this time they did so with a degree of division and reserve. The “symposium” held within the pages of The Woman Voter lays bare leaders’ caution. In it, author Charlotte Perkins Gilman accused the board of mandating celibacy, a Columbia professor claimed that allowing teachers to marry but dismissing them for having children was tantamount to endorsing prostitution, and Fola La Follette branded the board’s policy “un-​American, unprogressive, [and] unenlightened.” Opponents responded. A  Board of Education member countered that the “more progressive a nation the more insistent is it that the employment of mothers in industry shall be restricted.” Grace Strachan, the leading figure in the pay equality battle and an increasingly active participant in the campaign, listed seventeen reasons why women should not receive maternity leaves—​from arguments that a mother’s duty was at home to statements about teachers’ absences “damag[ing]” students—​and went so far as to suggest that female educators should resign their positions upon marriage.43 The Woman Suffrage Party provided space for the full spectrum of opinions in its publication. An outspoken champion of pay equality for teachers, even Blatch demonstrated restraint in this new dispute. Her defense of educators rested on the board’s limited power, rather than on a more substantive notion of equal rights. School officials could not mandate whether teachers had children even if some might consider it professionally negligent to do so, she reasoned in one editorial.44 No evidence explains why some suffragists embraced more conservative arguments. A few, like Strachan, undoubtedly believed that teachers should not have children. Others, like Blatch, probably did so because they feared losing support. By recognizing the fractures on this issue and taking a moderate approach, The Woman Voter and Blatch could stand by teachers without alienating other New Yorkers, a subtler move than their earlier, vocal demands for pay equality.

“Suffrage ‘Owns’ City”    105 The moderation does not seem to have offended instructors. In 1914, the National Education Association passed a resolution in support of the vote. A few months later, Strachan, along with the Interborough Teachers’ Association, donated money to the enfranchisement battle.45 Hundreds of teachers agreed to devote their summer to organizational work in 1915.46 Katherine Devereux Blake, Lillie Devereux Blake’s daughter, created an important professional bridge. Blake took a leave of absence from her position as a New York City school principal in 1915 to serve as the chief architect of the Empire State Campaign Committee’s Teachers’ Branch; the branch ultimately claimed a membership of twelve thousand New York City public school educators.47 By the beginning of 1915, a newspaper reported that 94 percent of teachers in Greater New York hoped women would win the franchise.48 Organizers celebrated these poll results, reprinting them in their own journal. They needed New Yorkers to understand the numbers as more than mere abstract statistics, though; officials needed Gothamites to appreciate the extent of suffrage support in a visceral way. Parades might showcase their army’s size, but state officer Vira Boarman Whitehouse hit on a more inventive idea in 1915. Just weeks before the referendum, she proposed a Women’s Strike. Female New Yorkers could prove how few actually remained at home, how many wanted the ballot, and how much the city’s daily functioning depended on their contributions by refusing to work for one day. Suffragists quickly realized that the strike’s risks outweighed any potential gains: it would “crippl[e]‌the world’s work to an irreparable extent.” A threatened strike, however, could still churn up publicity.49 The “effect was instantaneous and amazing” when they began inviting women’s clubs to review the idea, recalled a state association president. “Everywhere men were appalled at the suggestion,” she gloated. “Merchants, hospitals, captains of industry, schools, telephone exchanges—​they saw the entire business of the city at a standstill.” Many considered it the campaign’s most “effective stunt,” even though the strike never actually took place.50 The outrage that the Women’s Strike provoked suggests how successfully suffragists had mobilized Gotham’s female social geography. Designing their parades, in part, around occupational units had served the campaign well. New  Yorkers understood that groups ranging from nurses to artists to industrial laborers supported women’s rights. They clearly believed that the movement had garnered enough strength to shut down the nation’s largest metropolis with a boycott. Unlike Gilded Age campaigners, the Progressive Era generation succeeded in building a mass movement of female activists. Leaders combined one-​ on-​ one conversations with group outreach to New  York’s various ethnic and racial communities in order to spread the

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message of political equality even farther. From descending into “subway trenches” to traversing the African American neighborhood of San Juan Hill, working for the vote regularly provided white, middle-​class suffragists with reasons to access landscapes far afield from their everyday environments. Other times organizers took a more grassroots approach, leaving it to local residents to speak with neighbors and friends about the importance of women’s rights. Sensitivity and awareness existed alongside voyeurism and cultural appropriation, generating a maelstrom of strategies for a crusade trying to reach Greater New York’s diverse constituencies. The Woman Suffrage Party and the Empire State Campaign Committee prioritized canvassing.51 It was not a novel solution—​lobbyists had canvassed Manhattan since the late nineteenth century. Lillie Devereux Blake and Susan B. Anthony even found themselves at loggerheads over whether or not to employ this strategy in 1894. Gotham’s diversity combined with urban mores—​ residents recoiled at opening their doors to strangers—​made it a grueling and largely fruitless task for Blake. The new generation of activists who emerged by the 1910s, though, had a different relationship to the metropolis than their predecessors—​one more empowered and attuned to street-​level work thanks to the Woman Suffrage Party’s assembly district model. An electoral geography had superseded a geography of affinity and enabled activists to, in their own words, “[make] the pressure of constituency a fact instead of a theory.”52 That Anthony, who supported door-​to-​door canvassing of the metropolis, groomed Catt also doubtlessly contributed to her organizations’ endorsement of house visits. Catt and her peers believed that only through the one-​on-​one conversations that house visits facilitated could supporters battle confusion about the ballot, humanize the cause, and stress its significance to New York’s citizenry. Leaders rebranded the tactic a “science” in order to convince canvassers—​both paid and volunteer—​to participate.53 Supporters from across the nation came to learn from the Woman Suffrage Party. Members’ “calm, businesslike” manner astonished the visitors, who cooed that organizers labored without “fuss or excitement, as if it [canvassing New  York’s population] was the easiest thing possible.”54 Routinizing the process, however, could not overcome the lingering discomfort many in the rank and file experienced when approaching strangers.55 Although leaders recognized that some might consider these movements around tenements, alleys, and roofs unladylike, they fiercely defended the method, believing it vital to converting New York voters. Campaign managers cast canvassers as “missionar[ies], carrying the gospel,” part of a “great Salvation Army for Suffrage.”56 To maintain this critical, albeit daunting, mission, they

“Suffrage ‘Owns’ City”    107 also framed door-​to-​door visits as exciting and educational. One article’s title in The Woman Voter gave this away—​“A Canvassing Night’s Entertainment.” Organizers hailed the tactic as a way for recruits to learn about all parts of the metropolis, “the ugly and the sordid, the mean and miserable” and “the beautiful, the generous, the noble.”57 Stories of what canvassers saw crowded suffrage publications: from an African American resident chopping wood in a tenement to a homeless woman devouring crumbs at a bar to an apartment dweller sporting “Turkish towels.”58 Voyeurism seeped into the columns as leaders painted the strategy as a way for middle-​class white women to justifiably visit parts of the metropolis long inaccessible to them. Nonetheless, complications persisted. Staten Island’s “small towns” and “scattered villages” made moving quickly through its citizenry taxing. In one enrollment drive, suffragists reported gaining only one signature.59 Residents in the “marble palace[s]‌” around Central Park and Fifth Avenue proved particularly difficult to reach, since they required advance appointments.60 The Bowery presented unique challenges. Before advocates could even talk to the men there, they had to track them down, a difficult task in a largely transient population.61 One obstacle compounded another and ultimately, Mary Garrett Hay, the Woman Suffrage Party’s chair since 1912, admitted that the work was not “perfectly done,” estimating that activists canvassed only 60  percent of voters—​a far cry from their original (and unrealistic) goal of speaking to every single one.62 Though strategists emphasized the importance of meeting residents one-​ on-​one, they also adroitly recognized that the city was more than a series of disconnected, individual voters. Interlocking cultural, social, and professional grids connected men just as they did women; concentrating on them could allow campaigners to reach a greater number of people much more efficiently than house-​to-​house visits. Organizers waylaid everyone from firemen to elevated railroad ticket sellers at work. Driving around in cars bedecked with barber poles, activists felt particularly optimistic about their relationship with barbers, who, they jokingly hoped, would spread notions of political equality to customers when they were “helpless under lather and blade.”63 Suffragists focused in on San Juan Hill, a West Side neighborhood between Fifty-​Seventh and Sixty-​Fourth Streets where many of Manhattan’s sixty thousand residents of color lived, in their drive to convert voters in New York’s burgeoning African American community.64 In one case, they convinced abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison’s daughter to help canvass the district, hoping residents would link emancipation with women’s enfranchisement.65 When the Woman Suffrage Party decided to open headquarters “for colored people,” it did so on Sixty-​Third Street.66 The party tapped Lyda Newman, an African

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American hairdresser living on the street, to run its new offices.67 That Newman had gained recognition for designing a more effective hairbrush also meant that she was a central figure in the black women’s community.68 Though the setting was less posh than Murray Hill, where central headquarters remained, a San Juan Hill outpost under Newman’s charge represented an effort to build a grass-​roots bridge into the city’s African American community. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) helped extend the campaign’s reach beyond this one neighborhood. Founded in 1909, the nation’s largest civil rights organization opened offices near City Hall the following year. Personal connections linked the NAACP to the suffrage movement. Frances Garrison Villard and her son, Oswald, acted as leaders in both crusades; Oswald even donated the space for the NAACP’s headquarters and also helped to start the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage.69 The Men’s League found a receptive ally a few years later when it asked the NAACP for a list of “colored speakers” or “speakers who talk well to colored people” who might discuss enfranchisement. The NAACP secretary responded with a list of individuals divided by race—​educator Maritcha R. Lyons among the black speakers and reformer Florence Kelley among the white ones. But the administrator provided additional advice. Finely attuned to the notions of “racial uplift” that permeated middle-​class African American communities, she suggested that churches might prove more effective conduits through which to reach black New Yorkers who likely would not believe suffrage “refined.” Although it was not necessarily news to the campaign—​Irene Moorman helped the Political Equality Association recruit black residents at the Mount Olivet Baptist Church in 1910—​the Men’s League accepted the advice, working to win the attention of New York’s growing African American population through religious institutions.70 More publicly, the Crisis, the NAACP’s official organ, devoted its August 1915 issue to the enfranchisement crusade. Politicians, reverends, authors, and reformers from across the nation joined the chorus supporting the ballot in the issue’s symposium. Strikingly, only half of the twenty-​six writers explicitly connected woman suffrage to African Americans’ civil rights. And most did so briefly and delicately, giving the potentially radical edition a moderate tone—​one that largely failed to combine attacks on racism and sexism to contest institutionalized injustices.71 Despite (or perhaps because of) its tempered rhetoric, campaign leaders celebrated the issue, which splashed an illustration of Abraham Lincoln hovering over Sojourner Truth on its cover. The Woman Suffrage Party ordered five hundred copies.72 In retrospect, collaborating with the nation’s largest civil rights organization seems like a natural fit for the women’s rights movement. They both

“Suffrage ‘Owns’ City”    109 demanded inclusion in the American political system. Their tactics to reach these goals aligned—​in 1917, the NAACP even curated a massive, silent march on Fifth Avenue to protest racial violence throughout the country.73 Logistically, both the suffrage movement and the civil rights movement headquartered themselves in Manhattan, with leaders frequently traveling in the same social circles. But the alliance—​minimal as it was—​bucked a national trend. The National American Woman Suffrage Association at best condoned white supremacist positions and at worst echoed them, with some members even advocating the vote for white women only.74 New  York’s political context demanded a different, although never completely inclusive, approach. Below the Mason-​Dixon Line, grandfather clauses, poll taxes, and literacy tests left African American men disenfranchised, as states rejected the promises of the Fifteenth Amendment. In New  York, African American men had a political voice that suffragists alienated at their peril. Parades make this clear. The 1911 Manhattan parade integrated African American women. A black woman led the real estate contingent.75 In 1913, thirty women of color marched as part of the Twenty-​First Assembly District/​Harlem contingent.76 In striking contrast, organizers of the 1913 march in Washington, DC, purposefully tried to marginalize women of color, pressuring them to remain in the back of the parade line.77 With 279,000 German, 483,000 Russian, 340,000 Italian, and 252,000 Irish immigrants living in the city and more arriving each day, reaching Gotham’s diverse ethnic minorities required its own intricate calculus.78 Public health nurses/​settlement house workers like Lillian Wald could do only so much. That the Woman Suffrage Party organized itself around assembly districts helped to provide a built-​in, geographically oriented structure that campaigners could rely on to reach particular constituents—​even if districts did not always align perfectly with communities. In the Eighteenth Assembly District, for instance, local advocates focused on the Czech population that settled within jurisdictional boundaries.79 Lobbyists valued speakers who could identify with a specific immigrant group and sought out canvassers fluent in languages other than English.80 Jewish workers Zelda Rosen and Lottie Levine frequently addressed Jewish trade unions on the Lower East Side, and Sicilian-​ born Raimondo Canudo, Fiorello La Guardia’s law partner, brought the message to Italians.81 In one newsworthy case, Lavinia Dock along with the Irish Margaret Hinchey climbed down into “subway trenches” to dole out suffrage literature to Greek, Italian, and Irish laborers constructing Gotham’s subterranean world during their lunch breaks.82 Such thoughtfulness coexisted with moments of cultural appropriation. The 1914 Cosmopolitan Fete is a case in point. Organized by the Woman

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Suffrage Party, the four-​day fair featured national “villas,” essentially booths designed to represent different ethnicities: Chinese, Swiss, Japanese, Turkish, Russian, French, German, and Italian. Assembly districts and borough organizations took charge of each “villa,” with workers donning their assigned nation’s “costumes.” Leaders expended little effort to determine which assembly district might best represent which nationality. The Midtown Twenty-​ Seventh Assembly District controlled the Russian booth, and the Twenty-​Ninth Assembly District on the Upper East Side maintained the Chinese one. A visitor strolled around “the world” to savor each country’s cuisine, a tactic successfully used to contest the stereotype of suffragists as terrible cooks, but one that also dramatically oversimplified cultures: crullers from the German villa, tea at the Chinese and Japanese ones, chocolates at the French booth, and “Romany punch” at the “Gypsy” station.83 Where strategists regularly turned to local activists who could relate to a given immigrant community for conversion work, in this case they simply appropriated and caricatured the many nationalities that made New York City their home. With fundraising and publicity their primary objectives, fete managers paid scant attention to facilitating intercultural education.84 Twentieth-​ century lobbyists also failed to jettison the anti-​ immigrant rationales that animated their predecessors’ rhetoric. The short-​lived publication of the Women’s Political Union even featured statistics mirroring those from the 1894 New York State Constitutional Convention campaign. Women’s enfranchisement, an author preached, would increase the percentage of the “native-​born white vote,” making the electorate “more American.”85 The same argument appeared in the pages of the Woman Suffrage Party’s monthly newspaper: “native born white voters will outnumber the foreign born 8 to 1” if the state amended its constitution, a writer promised.86 Activists had to strike a precarious balance between courting the political power of immigrant men and maintaining the loyalty of nativist New Yorkers whose support they also desperately required. Like many seasoned politicians, they learned to approach different constituencies in often markedly different ways—​sensitively recruiting individual voters when working in immigrant neighborhoods, appropriating and making safe cultural differences for fundraising purposes, and rehashing nativist positions to soften the radical ways in which suffrage might redefine the citizenry. Trying to reach every single New Yorker and carefully tailoring arguments to specific groups left lobbyists in a frenzied state. Canvassers slogged up dark staircases to reach those on the Lower East Side, white male suffragists worked with black religious leaders, and strategists connected their campaign to New York women’s professional aspirations. Officials threatened to use their

“Suffrage ‘Owns’ City”    111 army to shut down Gotham with a Women’s Strike and collaborated with established leaders in communities to further facilitate outreach. Never before had they spent so much energy converting their neighbors, friends, colleagues, and strangers in Greater New York. The more organizers relied on these strategies, however, the faster they became background noise to New  York City residents whose ears had long acclimated to street politics.87 Leaders leapt on any “novel” tactic that crossed their desk in order to inject pizzazz into the campaign.88 From a “roving shop” in a repurposed lunch wagon to straphanger protests on subway lines, lobbyists unleashed a spectacle-​laden blitz.89 Sometimes those in the rank and file did not even have to leave home to contribute. Supporters used their own telephones to poll New York residents on the upcoming referendum during “hello” day, creatively undermining opponents who carped that politics pulled women away from their families.90 Other times the search for novelty pushed women in the opposite direction, as they further breached gendered boundaries outside the home to make the case for the ballot. Sites of commercial leisure grew particularly attractive to tacticians in their pre-​referendum mania. Such sites drew both men and women, a seismic shift from the nineteenth-​ century leisure landscape. Prior to the Gilded Age, men and women socialized in vastly different settings:  saloons, poolrooms, gymnasiums, and barbershops catered to a male clientele; middle-​ class women’s recreation activities centered on the home. By century’s end, entrepreneurs had opened lavish dance halls, thrilling amusement parks, and cheap nickelodeons, encouraging both men and women to attend.91 And they did so in overwhelming numbers. Suffragists in New  York embraced these changes, taking advantage of heterosocial entertainment spaces to promote the ballot. They added another film, The Ruling Power, to their silver screen credits in 1915.92 That same year they included suffrage arguments in a midway game, the Hopperie, at Coney Island.93 At movie theaters or amusement parks, they could promote political equality to those seeking respite from their everyday lives without competing with the factory clock or the daily grind of household chores. Some men, though, resisted women’s expanding presence, convinced that society was growing too feminized. At the turn of the century, worried individuals found a salve in everything from western novels to “dude ranches” to red meat. Sports provided a particularly vital arena in which these men tried to restore their masculinity after the city, the workplace, and the home drained it.94 Suffrage organizers might have respected these gendered boundaries and avoided injecting women’s rights into sites dedicated to male leisure. But the desire to enliven their message with stunts and the lure of speaking before a

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large audience of New York men, precisely the demographic they had to conscript for the referendum, proved too tempting. On a partly cloudy and rainy spring day in 1915, activists held “Suffrage Day” at the Polo Grounds during a baseball game between the New York Giants and the Chicago Cubs.95 Yellow banners bedecked the stadium boxes, suffrage advertisements slipped into scorecards, ushers donned dandelions to incorporate yellow into their uniforms, and campaign paraphernalia sold out.96 The governor’s wife agreed to throw out the first pitch.97 With gambling, yelling, spitting, and alcohol consumption permitted at such games, men usually crowded the stands.98 “Suffrage Day” skewed that gender ratio. Three thousand women, including Madeleine Astor (Mrs. John Jacob Astor), attended.99 The weather led to low attendance, and the Giants lost in a zero-​to-​one game. That did not dampen suffrage spirits, however.100 Being at the Polo Grounds ensured that organizers could broadcast their message to more than those disappointed fans at the stadium. Although leaders sent out just four articles about this “stunt,” journalists wrote ninety-​five pieces on it.101 The New York Tribune even published a large photograph of a woman on Wall Street peddling tickets to the game.102 The image captures a significant shift in the campaign: women were occupying this male-​dominated street to promote the vote but also to act as gatekeepers to a sporting event, selling men tickets to access a traditionally masculinized space that they temporarily feminized. Not everyone was pleased. The New  York Times depicted the women as naïfs, poking fun at them for comparing the dugouts to trenches, for discussing weight loss strategies during the game, and for wanting players to wear sandwich boards to make them more easily identifiable.103 Another journalist teased that he could finally “write some baseball” once “Suffrage Day” ended. A headline in the New  York Press sarcastically pinned the blame for the Giants’ defeat on campaigners: “With Suffragettes Gone, Giants Find It Much Easier to Cross the Home Plate.”104 Even strategists admitted that they needed to instruct women on the sport’s nuances to help them fit in with male fans, an exhausting and apparently futile endeavor.105 Women were clearly out of place at the baseball stadium. That did not stop lobbyists from advocating enfranchisement at other sporting events. In July, a Staten Island suffragist parted the ropes and climbed into the boxing ring before a fight between Charley White and Kid Lewis at the St. Nicholas Rink, an even more decidedly masculine space than the Polo Grounds. It went so poorly that the New York Times, deploying racist imagery, likened the woman to “a missionary making his first speech to a band of Hottentots.” The crowd hissed, whistled, and catcalled her, making it impossible to hear the speech. The reporter from the Times continued his string of

“Suffrage ‘Owns’ City”    113 analogies: the audience acted “about as interested in ‘Votes for Women’ as an Eskimo is in straw hats.” The crowd wanted the fight to begin, and individuals stomped their feet to drown out the campaigner. Ultimately, the announcer pressured her to surrender. The speaker did, and she and a few colleagues awkwardly sat through the match. They left after squirming through eight of ten rounds, pledging that it would be their first and last foray into boxing.106 The message was clear. In the early 1910s, suffragists faced harassment and even violence when they invaded masculinized public spaces like Wall Street. By 1915, open-​air meetings had blended into the cityscape’s quotidian rhythm. Wall Street men had even grown tolerant.107 But sporting venues were different. The prizefight’s raw brutality made the boxing ring a place for testosterone to rebound in a city that many agreed sapped it from male residents.108 Suffragists not only attended the fight; they occupied the ring, disrupted the proceedings, and demanded equality. By doing so, they challenged the established gendered geography of the city in ways that many men in the audience found intolerable and that newspapers caricatured.109 Scholars have noted the blurring of citizenship, politics, and consumerism in the early twentieth century.110 In the case of boxing rings and baseball stadiums, we clearly see suffragists’ growing comfort with and politicization of consumer leisure activities. But the crowds’ responses and some journalists’ coverage also remind us that a “citizen-​consumer’s” gender (as well as race and class) influenced how others reacted to that politicization.111 The consumer

A cartoonist captures suffragists’ futile effort to get men’s attention during a boxing match. Men in the crowd berate the speaker, yelling, “TROW [sic] HER OUT,” “BOO-​OO-​OO,” and “WHAT’S HER WEIGHT?,” using boxing language to scrutinize her and indicate how out of place she was at the sporting venue. National American Woman Suffrage Association Records, Reel 2, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

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landscape was as diverse as the city itself, and masculinized enclaves remained. With women politicking on the streets, a ticket to a baseball game or boxing match must have seemed particularly precious to a man already feeling emasculated. In their stunt-​driven mania and quest for novelty, organizers willingly accepted the risk of alienating such men in order to enliven the campaign, ensure its visibility, and broadcast their message. Notably, discussion of the international conflict roiling the world order remained marginal in a campaign defined by such spectacles. In 1914, following Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, Austria-​Hungary declared war on Serbia, ushering in the Great War. Quickly, the conflict embroiled most of Europe. New  York suffragists had no coherent ideology when it came to this international crisis. Prior to the United States’ involvement in 1917, they wavered between celebrating women’s unique contribution to peace and championing their wartime labor. Activists, for instance, described members traveling to the suffrage state convention in 1915 as part of a “large army”—​ but not one trained in “campaign[s]‌of destruction.” Instead, these women “represent[ed] the greatest potential force for peace.”112 At the same time, they praised European women’s wartime self-​sacrifice—​and did so without taking sides. In one issue of The Woman Voter, editors ran a column about German women’s contributions to the war effort, in another, English women’s work.113 This coexistence of pacifism and militarism was possible for the campaign so long as the United States remained at peace and the movement prioritized local stunts over international affairs. Whether successful or not, all of these tactics and spectacles—​canvassing, creating an amusement park game, venturing into a boxing ring—​led lobbyists into the heart of the metropolis. Activists claimed their space and insisted that people respect it. Demanding this recognition, however, put them on a collision course with the police and city leaders. Suffragists were not alone. More radical agitators, like anarchists and socialists, clashed with the state and experienced much greater repression than these women who were asking the government to include them, not working to overthrow it. Nevertheless, state regulations hobbled campaigners in the years and months leading up to the 1915 referendum—​something their Gilded Age predecessors rarely experienced.114 Such an innocuous stunt as the Voiceless Speech provides evidence of this collision. Inaugurated by the Women’s Political Union in winter 1912/​ 1913, a successful Voiceless Speech resulted in men and women clogging the streets to watch an activist silently flip suffrage-​inspired display cards from a store window.115 Though it was relatively straightforward and even conservative in nature compared with bounding into a boxing ring, the strategy also required patience and “discipline,” since the invisible weight of staring eyes

“Suffrage ‘Owns’ City”    115 tempted organizers to rush through the cards.116 That “discipline” did not impress the police, who presented one “speaker” with a summons for obstructing traffic.117 A  judge ultimately dismissed the charge, and organizers continued holding the voiceless speeches despite the kerfuffle. But they seethed that the police had tried to violate their freedom of speech and added a sign to their demonstrations impishly requesting that pedestrians “Please keep the sidewalk reasonably clear, or we may be arrested.”118 Other tussles followed. The police tried to prevent activists from scaling the Maine Monument at Columbus Circle for a speech in 1914.119 That same year, they had to abruptly end a meeting in front of the Sub-​Treasury Building after leaders learned that occupying the space required permission from the secretary of the Treasury.120 Merchants’ campaign for an ordinance to shut down Fifth Avenue parades because they brought their businesses to a “complete standstill” especially enraged activists.121 Lobbyists might be able to boycott Fifth Avenue department stores to express their disdain for the proposal, but they had little recourse should the government sanction the merchants’ position with a new city order. In the past, mainstream strategists regularly fretted over the absence of state protection during parades and gatherings; now their use of the city sometimes brushed up against police and official regulations. Advocates chafed under such restrictions. Sometimes they threatened to challenge policies they found unfair. Other times they accepted the law’s legitimacy. Frequently, they publicized their confrontations with police and the city’s bureaucracy in their newspapers. But activists usually acquiesced to the state’s orders in the end. Violating the law would have damaged the movement’s reputation. Such acts of resistance would come to define the tactics of the National Woman’s Party in Washington, DC, but they remained marginal in New York City.122 Leaders did not want to distract supporters by introducing additional skirmishes. Attending polling places proved one of the few exceptions. Suffragists fought for access to balloting locations—​if only to watch—​as they continued their larger battle for the right to vote within them. It was a curiosity of the American democratic system that elections transformed commercial venues, mainly male-​dominated ones, into public spaces where voters registered their views—​ their most important duty 123 as citizens—​ on Election Day. Tailor, pickle, and plumbing stores, even undertakers’ establishments, all morphed into ostensibly democratic spaces for one day. Barbershops, long sites of male cultural exchange, dominated the list of polling locations.124 The Empire State detailed requirements to ensure these spaces were suitable for elections: a guardrail should separate the voting booths from the remainder of the venue; four walls should enclose the

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three-​square-​foot booths; only voters, clerks, inspectors, watchers, and when necessary the police should pass through the guardrail.125 That did not sanitize polling sites of violence and corruption in the public’s mind, though. And, their setting in shops catering to men reinforced the belief that casting a ballot was an exclusively male activity. One rendering from a 1914 suffrage publication visually captured popular perceptions: smoke fills the room, a policeman beats the one citizen coded as respectable, a voter is bribed to cast his vote a certain way, as another (perhaps an election official) nefariously alters a ballot.126 Suffragists faced a dilemma. They needed to access these spaces to prove women’s capacity as voters, but their disfranchised position combined with the sites’ disreputability barred them from crossing the guardrail. In 1909, Blatch and her Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women struck upon a solution. They convinced a handful of women to serve as poll watchers, marking leaders’ first systematic effort to pull back the “veil” from the voting booth to look inside.127 Backed by third-​party support, they joined a male cadre

An illustration published in a suffrage newspaper reinforces perceptions of the polls as unseemly spaces, inappropriate for “respectable” women. Suffragists had to strike a precarious balance between condemning these sites in order to suggest that women’s participation would improve them, and not depicting them as too dangerous for women to visit. Morris Hall Pancoast, “The Kind of Politics We Must Face in 1915,” Women’s Political World, June 1, 1914, New York Public Library.

“Suffrage ‘Owns’ City”    117 to ensure a clean count.128 Their experiences ran the gamut. At one hospitable site, men created a protective circle free of tobacco smoke around a suffragist.129 At another, women stared down a challenge from Tammany Hall.130 The hostility to female watchers actually increased, and the following year the police arrested four for “interfering with the election.” Though the city’s magistrate quickly ruled that women could serve as observers, the episode underscored disfranchised women’s marginalized status within purportedly democratic space.131 The law did not guarantee their right to pass through the guardrail. Organizers fired back by invoking their right to both use urban space and reimagine the cityscape to include women as active political players.132 “This is my city,” Blatch thundered. “I was born here and have lived here half my life, and it is to my interest that competent watchers be stationed at the polls.” She did not stop there, using her experience to challenge the whole voting infrastructure that was anchored by masculinized spaces. Voting at “third rate cigar stores” and “bootblack shops” and near “saloons” did not grant citizenship the respect it deserved, Blatch professed. Instead, churches, schools, and “better shops” should serve as polling places—​notably all respectable and feminized spaces within a city that some already thought too feminized.133 Suffragists laced together their demands for access with municipal housekeeping. Such arguments stressed that women’s feminine qualities would improve the city. One watcher reassured the men at the polls that she was “just going to be a mother” to them, and Blatch suggested that since women were more “patient” and “self-​sacrificing” than men, they were better suited for poll watching.134 Scholars have largely interpreted such positions as conservative in character.135 Indeed, such rhetoric relied on long-​standing assumptions about women’s “natural” differences without critically calling them into question. Yet, embedded within it was a fierce critique of men’s record. After all, the city needed women’s touch precisely because men had proved themselves ill-​fitted for the task of governing.136 Municipal housekeeping retooled gendered tropes to shatter women’s restricted places in cities and empowered metropolitan activists to rethink urban space, even the polling booth itself. The state legislature resisted this rhetoric. In 1911, it approved the Levy Bill to clarify that only electors, meaning male citizens, could serve as poll watchers.137 Suffragists might have surrendered and left the polls to men for the time being. Or, they might have trespassed and risked arrest in order to highlight their right to enter the space. Ultimately, they chose a middle ground: working within the political system to reinstate women as poll watchers. They successfully championed a bill in early 1914 that would allow them to return to election sites for the referendum, convinced that only with supporters hovering around the voting booths would their cause receive a fair hearing.138

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In all, activists struck a delicate balance:  highlighting the corruption at the polls to underscore the need for women’s attendance, without depicting election sites as too dangerous for female citizens. Voting places might be far from ideal, but lobbyists consistently pointed out that women’s presence could be beneficial. Serving as poll watchers also gave women a degree of power over voters—​an ironic situation given their own disfranchised status. Blatch went a step further, though. Rather than just asking for entry into men’s electoral geography, she demanded its relocation, advocating moving polling sites from male homosocial spaces to more feminized and largely public ones within the metropolis. Fighting for the vote revealed the enduring ways space was circumscribed. Metropolitan mores might have shifted in a more gender-​inclusive direction, but ostensibly democratic spaces remained highly regulated—​and regulated by a male-​dominated government. Even as they worked to dismantle the status quo, suffragists, as part of the urban milieu, also navigated more ordinary New York problems, like the real estate market. Rentals dominated the New York real estate landscape. Each year, May 1 saw New Yorkers leave one property and move to another, as leases for both business and residential properties ended the previous day; it was such a common experience that May 1 became known as “Moving Day” in the metropolitan vernacular.139 Though suffrage central headquarters remained in Murray Hill through the 1915 referendum, leaders shifted locations within the neighborhood on several occasions. The havoc wreaked by the competitive real estate market brought both challenges and advantages for the movement. The experience of the Women’s Political Union is a case in point. Blatch’s organization moved twice in a matter of months in 1913. First members found themselves in conflict with the Woman’s Municipal League, which had sublet the union rooms on Twenty-​Ninth Street. The civic organization released the union from the rental contract soon after members accidentally trampled on a beloved garden.140 The association made the best of the ordeal, securing offices in a better location on Forty-​Second Street in July 1913.141 Across from the New York Public Library and the headquarters of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and sandwiched between Grand Central Terminal and Times Square, this new spot with its twenty-​ six-​ foot show window promised to “work wonders as an advertising medium on account of the excessive pedestrianism that daily prevails in front of it.”142 But the allure did not last long. Conflict once again brewed between Women’s Political Union activists and the landlord, this time over a sign hanging outside.143 Ultimately, leaders claimed that the proprietor broke the lease by not providing sufficient heat during the winter and moved a few blocks north in March 1914.144 That the state association and Empire State Campaign Committee also relocated

“Suffrage ‘Owns’ City”    119 indicates that this was not an idiosyncrasy of Blatch’s organization; it was a reality of urban life.145 Stability could be difficult to achieve in a real estate market dominated by rentals. But this instability also had some hidden benefits for suffrage organizations with financial resources. Compared with ownership, a lessee could change buildings or neighborhoods without much difficulty, enabling an association to relocate as the city itself changed. An occupant could also upgrade or downgrade as circumstances dictated. And the transaction itself did provide a degree of security and leverage to renters, especially at a moment when at least some industry leaders expressed concern about a surplus of commercial buildings.146 The Woman Suffrage Party took advantage of the situation to move to new, larger headquarters in 1913. Extant sources suggest that the association wanted to rent an entire house, rather than just a floor of a building.147 Moving a few doors east on Thirty-​Fourth Street secured it “a great big house” with six floors. Along with offices, managers opened a reception room and a suffrage shop.148 Across the metropolis, secondary headquarters popped up as the referendum neared. One Woman Suffrage Party affiliate opened a “Suffrage Social

Suffragists gather outside the Woman Suffrage Party headquarters on Thirty-​ Fourth Street. The headquarters enabled strategists to advertise their cause to pedestrians as well as sell their votes-​for-​women wares to consumers leisurely window-​shopping at nearby B. Altman and Company and other high-​ class department stores. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-​DIG-​ggbain-​14075.

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Center” across from “Harlem’s largest department store.”149 Another turned a Bronx haberdashery into a campaign “station.”150 Even in the financial district they found owners willing to rent. Both the union and the Empire State Campaign Committee installed offices in the male bastion of political and financial power.151 The committee tailored its operations to suit Wall Street’s unique rhythms, establishing a “Votes for Women Restaurant” to feed brokers and clerks needing a quick and cheap meal. Twenty-​five cents bought them meat, soup, a vegetable, and dessert.152 The lunchroom is “so popular,” The Woman’s Journal bragged, “that it has been impossible to take care of all of the would-​be lunchers. Every day there is a long line waiting, and even the street outside gets blocked.”153 Those who had chased suffragists out a few years earlier now listened to the propaganda, swallowing it alongside their food.154 Gotham’s real estate landscape was complicated. Renters clamored for desirable spaces, and landlords negotiated to achieve the most profit possible. A lease allowed an organization to start an office, but still required that it abide by certain rules and regulations. The power balance between renter and landlord shifted regularly. That the city itself was in a constant state of flux did have at least one benefit, though. It provided the flexibility for a mushrooming campaign to upgrade headquarters whenever necessary. All of these efforts—​establishing headquarters, serving as poll watchers, entering sport venues—​were geared toward achieving success at the referendum. November 2 had the potential to be a watershed day for the New York campaign. Leaders worked to convey that to a wide public and ensure success in the days leading up to the referendum. With less than two weeks before the vote, organizers held their largest Fifth Avenue parade. The numbers overwhelmed:  roughly 50,000 participated and another 1.5  million watched, according to one suffrage publication. More than 3,000 teachers marched, as did some 300 nurses.155 Actresses strode “militantly” up Fifth Avenue.156 Other groups included doctors, a large number of authors, and artists. In addition to these professional women, socialites joined, as did laborers at the bottom of the pay scale.157 Leaders had mobilized Gotham’s patchwork quilt of female subcultures, while also successfully politicizing Fifth Avenue for women.158 But behind this facade of unity and strength lay a cauldron of simmering rivalries. Tensions grew between the Women’s Political Union, which had planned many previous parades, and the Empire State Campaign Committee, which led the 1915 event.159 The internal squabbling worsened once the Congressional Union, a new, competing association, began attracting attention in its drive for a federal amendment.160 Leaders also worried about the pace of upstate work, recognizing that much of their efforts were concentrated downstate.161 The upstate lag is not surprising. Manhattan housed the campaign’s

“Suffrage ‘Owns’ City”    121 central offices. That it served as the nation’s information and entertainment hub made it a particularly valuable place for strategists to open shop. The tactics urban suffragists developed—​parades, canvassing, voiceless speeches—​ also worked best in cities where people lived in close proximity to one another and pedestrian traffic choked the streets. Standing on the central thoroughfare in Carmel, New  York, preaching women’s rights would guarantee a smaller audience than doing so at any Manhattan intersection. As a result, meetings in more rural districts revolved around main streets, courthouses, and post offices where speakers sometimes struggled to build crowds.162 Ultimately, this last-​minute finger-​pointing over strategy was of little relevance. The Empire State as a whole roundly defeated the proposed amendment in the November 2 referendum. More than 700,000 residents rejected it, including 320,000 in Greater New York (only 553,000 endorsed it, 238,000 of them in Greater New York), sending a clear message that men throughout the state opposed women voting.163 Strained and battle-​weary workers sobbed at their headquarters as they received news of this devastating blow.164 Three other states also voted against women’s rights in fall 1915. All northeastern states with large urban centers, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Jersey shared similarities with New  York State. With the exception of Pennsylvania, whose leaders continued to pursue a “quiet campaign” to evade opponents, activists employed parallel strategies in these 1915 battleground states. They held street meetings, ensured their movement received press coverage, and created organizations targeting specific groups of residents.165 In each case, voters overwhelmingly opposed the enfranchisement measure. Movement officers pointed to a variety of reasons to explain the failures. New Jersey organizers complained that illegal voting by outside residents contributed to their defeat.166 Those in Massachusetts, in part, blamed immigrants and religious divisions; organizers in Philadelphia bemoaned political corruption as well as poor organizational decisions.167 Multiple factors explain the New York loss. The anti-​suffrage movement in the Empire State peaked during this referendum campaign. Opponents staged luncheons, chartered boats, and organized open-​air meetings. Their energy and tactics kept pace with suffragists’ efforts.168 Anti-​suffragists also proved shrewd politicians. Their chameleon-​like comments about alcohol showcased their political know-​how. In upstate New York, they courted temperance supporters by claiming that enfranchised women would work against prohibition; to gain industrial laborers’ endorsement in the city, they maintained that female voters would support prohibition.169 That New York men were also voting on a revised state constitution alongside the suffrage amendment complicated the political landscape.170 Twenty

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years had passed since 1894, and, as outlined in the state constitution, voters had the right to request a constitutional convention once again. They did so by an incredibly small margin in April 1914, and the convention commenced in April of the following year.171 Republicans controlled the proceedings, and their constitutional revisions included changes to the executive and the introduction of the short ballot.172 Democrats and organized labor predictably opposed the Republican measures. Tammany Hall took an increasingly ambivalent, rather than an explicitly antagonistic, stance toward women’s rights by 1915, but Catt still blamed Democratic voters. Catt skewered them for not being able to disentangle the suffrage amendment from the separate, Republican-​backed constitution.173 “Men were too weak-​minded to know how to vote against the Constitution and to be neutral on everything else,” she exploded in a letter to other leaders, “so they had to be lined up to vote ‘No’ on both ballots.”174 Blatch agreed.175 Partisanship hammered one more nail into their coffin—​an irony for a movement that spent decades striving for nonpartisanship. Xenophobia flooded Catt’s and Blatch’s explanations as well. Blatch blamed immigrant men for the loss; Catt proved slightly more nuanced—​ Russian Jews supported suffrage, whereas Poles, Italians, and Germans opposed it. Nevertheless, she still found it especially “humiliating and unfair” that supporters had to plead with “men of all nations of the earth” to gain the vote.176 In the American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, Abram Lipsky combined census information with voting results to challenge some of these claims, arguing that Russian and Austrian districts approved the amendment and that German, Italian, and Irish neighborhoods generally rejected it.177 Lipsky was partly correct. Jews were indeed the most supportive; Italians generally divided over the ballot, as did native-​born, middle-​and upper-​class white men. The Irish, of all the immigrant groups, most unfailingly resisted enfranchisement.178 Such findings would have done little to calm strategists, as many remained convinced that immigrants steadfastly opposed women’s rights. For them, the 1915 defeat vindicated their long-​standing suspicions and stereotypes. Of course, even the most disappointed supporter could find silver linings if she looked closely enough. The political parties both technically kept to their pledge of neutrality. Even the polling numbers in New York City left room for optimism. Despite organizers’ frustrations with Staten Island, nearly half of its voters supported the amendment. Next came the Bronx with 45 percent of its eligible population endorsing political equality, Manhattan with 42 percent, Brooklyn 41  percent, and finally Queens with 38  percent. The Woman Voter remained hopeful. Manhattan, “where the most difficult problems of the campaign seemed to be concentrated,” a columnist applauded, “astonished political prophets by a vote of 42  percent.”179 This was indeed a striking change

“Suffrage ‘Owns’ City”    123 from 1894, when suffragists had won the endorsement of 5 percent of men in Manhattan, Kings (Brooklyn), and Queens. Twenty-​five percent of those upstate backed enfranchisement during that campaign.180 In 1915, a nearly equal percentage of individuals in upstate New York and in the state’s downstate metropolis voted for women’s rights, a tribute to the gains won by activists’ more nuanced and thoughtful approaches to Gotham. In retrospect, it is clear that New York suffragists devised their strategies with a politician’s calculating eye in the years leading up to this failed referendum. Teachers could depend on the movement’s support in professional struggles, and impoverished actresses could tap into the movement’s unemployment fund. Immigrants read about the vote in their native languages; African Americans living in San Juan Hill needed only to travel around the corner to pick up literature; and industrial laborers found middle-​class champions of unionization. Door-​to-​door canvassing further personalized the cause, speeches filled the air, and Fifth Avenue dazzled with parades. Many of these tactics demanded a redefinition of women’s, especially middle-​and upper-​class women’s, position within the metropolis, one that the government and many men proved slow to endorse. Men might have accepted activists on the street corner and even in the workplace by 1915, but some balked when they invaded the few remaining sites of urban homosociability—​the baseball diamond, the boxing ring, and even the polling place, ostensibly a democratic space. At a moment when masculinity seemed under attack, suffragists had little to offer men in return for the vote. The anti-​suffrage New York Times must have seemed right to those reading it the day after the failed referendum. The defeat in New  York and its three sister states, the newspaper editorialized, provided “unmistakable and ample notice to the suffragists that the old, highly developed, populous, complex Commonwealths of the East will have none of a political experiment that some simpler, meagerly settled communities of the West have ventured to make.”181 The urban, conservative East appeared a bulwark against suffrage. Just as the ink dried on the Times’ pessimistic prediction, however, the 1916 polio epidemic and the United States’ 1917 entry into World War I reconfigured the political landscape.

6 From Confrontation to Collaboration, 1916 and 1917

The 1915 loss roiled the movement. Leaders had publicly expressed confidence going into the November referendum. One reporter found the headquarters of the Women’s Political Union buzzing with chants of “We’re going to win; we’re going to win” a few days before the vote.1 Now, lobbyists doled out blame. Carrie Chapman Catt turned on the rank and file, denouncing those who prioritized fashion and etiquette over political equality. Catt exploded, “We can’t use such workers in the next campaign.”2 She was not alone. Vira Boarman Whitehouse, the New  York State organization’s wealthy chair, also blasted activists for working like self-​indulgent and distracted “amateurs.”3 The defeat demanded a reassessment of strategies. “The campaign of 1915 had been one of the highways, and of spectacular display,” the movement’s official history recounted. “That of 1917 was of the byways, of quiet, intensive work reaching every group of citizens.”4 Historians since then have echoed this understanding, comparing 1915’s spectacles to the more somber sacrifices that defined the 1917 drive.5 But this interpretation skims over an important nuance: it was suffragists’ earlier reconfiguration of the city’s gendered geography for white, middle-​class women that enabled the 1917 tactics to register as quiet and routine.6 Lobbyists’ work appeared subdued only because their public presence had been normalized. Having claimed their “right to the city,” activists now demonstrated how they could nurture and safeguard its citizens during the 1916 polio epidemic and the beginning of World War I in 1917. As the city in crisis superseded the city of spectacle, suffragists opened their urban toolbox to rescue it.

From Confrontation to Collaboration    125 Following the November 1915 referendum defeat, other paths to enfranchisement began to appeal to some in New York’s community. Two gained the most traction: partial suffrage or a federal amendment.7 The partial suffrage model followed the precedent set in Illinois, where women won the right to vote in presidential and municipal elections via statute, rather than state amendment. An option with fewer obstacles, it also contained restrictions, since Illinois women could not vote for any offices mentioned in the state constitution, including the governorship.8 Some in the Women’s Political Union believed this an attractive starting point.9 Harriot Stanton Blatch herself promoted presidential suffrage, although she quickly prioritized the federal amendment and aligned herself with the militant Alice Paul.10 Ultimately, the Women’s Political Union followed suit, dissolving itself to join the Congressional Union, Paul’s new organization.11 Although it disagreed with the Congressional Union’s aggressive strategies, the National American Woman Suffrage Association also made the federal amendment its top priority in 1916.12 Organizers in the other 1915 campaign states—​Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts—​similarly looked for alternatives to a state amendment following defeat. Leaders in Massachusetts decided against advocating for a new suffrage bill and focused on a federal amendment. Those in New Jersey turned to presidential suffrage. Pennsylvania activists decided to continue pursuing a suffrage bill, but the state constitution required five years to pass before voters could again consider the amendment.13 New York had no such constitutional requirement, and many remained committed to pursuing a state amendment.14 They would need to start from scratch at the New York state capitol: the constitution required that two different legislative sessions endorse a proposed amendment before New York voters had the opportunity to consider it at the polls again. Still, the state amendment seemed the most viable option to many Gotham activists. The Empire State Campaign Committee hosted a “Reorganization Convention” less than a month after New York men rejected political equality. Those attending discussed how to permanently streamline statewide work, resulting in the New York State Woman Suffrage Party’s birth. The new association reaffirmed the New  York City Woman Suffrage Party’s assembly district model.15 Gotham denizens managed it: the chair, the treasurer, and two of its three vice chairs lived in Manhattan.16 One member explained that leaders needed to live close to headquarters, which remained in Midtown.17 The lines dividing the state and city organizations had once been strikingly distinct: the state association resided in upstate New  York and distrusted Gotham’s leadership.18 The 1909 relocation of state headquarters to Manhattan might have blurred these lines, but the 1915 changes left them nearly indistinguishable.

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Tactics, arguments, and even urban space overlapped. The mainstream press recognized the monumental shift. Under the headline “CITY DOMINATES SUFFRAGE TICKET,” the New-​York Tribune observed, “The upstate women seem to have given up the historic struggle.”19 Despite the rejection at the polls, the New  York State Woman Suffrage Party was confident in Carrie Chapman Catt’s management. She agreed to serve as its president. It was only a matter of weeks, however, before the National American Woman Suffrage Association beckoned. Anna Howard Shaw’s eleven-​year reign had drained her and left her anxious for retirement, a decision she announced in late 1915. Catt, the national association’s former president (serving from 1900 to 1904), seemed the natural replacement. She accepted and found herself leading an organization mired in controversy. Both the Congressional Union, which eschewed movement orthodoxy like nonpartisanship, and the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, which challenged the drive for a federal amendment out of loyalty to states’ rights, contested the league’s hegemony over the campaign.20 As president of the national organization, Catt mobilized the lessons she learned in New  York. Anger over the 1915 state loss convinced the advocate to quickly develop a new strategy once she was national president. She focused the association’s attention on a federal amendment.21 Catt’s experience counterpoising radicals’ militancy to underscore the mainstream’s respectability also served her well when more aggressive suffragists began picketing the White House in 1917. She went on record with the New York Times to deride the picketers, labeling their protest a “psychological mistake” out of sync with the movement and reaffirming her own position as the campaign’s standard-​bearer in the process.22 Maud Malone’s stunts had taught Catt how to engage in strategic contrast, and she used this lesson to great effect with the Congressional Union’s ascendancy.23 Meanwhile, a new crop of leaders emerged from Blatch’s and Catt’s shadows in New  York. Vira Boarman Whitehouse succeeded Catt in the New York State Woman Suffrage Party. A socialite whose husband was an influential banker, Whitehouse garnered acclaim for her publicity work during the 1915 referendum campaign; she became the state’s chair in late 1915.24 For questions about finances, she could turn to well-​connected Helen Reid, wife of the New York Tribune’s owner and another Social Register habitué, who served as treasurer.25 And if she needed to consult about New York City specifically, she could talk with Mary Garrett Hay, former president of the New York State Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Woman Suffrage Party’s “boss” since 1912 and Catt’s dear friend, who gained more visibility in the metropolitan crusade after Catt’s departure.26

From Confrontation to Collaboration    127 Reid, Whitehouse, and their colleagues did not have long to ease into their new positions. Time wasted would translate into momentum lost; and the campaign had very little of that to expend after defeat. Convincing those in Albany to once again approve the amendment was the first matter of business. Friendly legislators reintroduced the resolution in the state assembly and senate in mid-​January 1916, but the Judiciary Committees in both chambers delayed action. The Assembly Judiciary Committee voted it to the floor in February, but five hundred suffragists needed to flood the capitol in March and coordinate a newspaper campaign to pressure those in the Senate Judiciary Committee to do the same. Organizers faced two significant obstacles in their legislative drive. Harriot Stanton Blatch had endorsed a separate, more limited resolution, which would allow women to vote for presidential electors and which complicated the political landscape. Second, opponents needed merely to point to the November results to convince wavering legislators that their constituents did not support enfranchisement.27 It required weeks of organizers’ attention, delicacy, and vigilance, but by mid-​April both houses approved the full suffrage amendment.28 A second legislature would need to agree to it the following year. That lag time could not be spent idly if activists expected a better outcome at the next referendum. At first, lobbyists relied on familiar practices. Stunts resurfaced, although in toned-​ down versions. Supporters placed “Votes for Women” ribbons on their umbrellas during a week of April rain; they dubbed it “Shower Week.”29 In late May, a “Suffrage Flower Market” sold an ambrosial array of cuttings along Fifth Avenue.30 And in June, those at the Polo Grounds had another opportunity to learn about enfranchisement while enjoying a baseball game.31 Organizers could also still count on the support of some of their more famous converts. Actress Fola La Follette continued to publish suffrage articles, and stars like Mary Shaw still spoke on the cause’s behalf.32 Public theatrics and celebrity endorsements complemented the grunt work of door-​to-​door canvassing. This tactic’s genealogy within the movement traced back to the pioneer generation. Second-​generation leaders added allure to the routine, recounting canvassers’ adventures in a monthly newspaper. The tenor shifted after defeat, when discipline and dedication replaced entertainment in activists’ framing, not a surprising change in light of leaders’ frustration with, in their opinion, self-​indulgent supporters. But the general system remained the same. The state party outlined a plan to collect one million names beginning in January. The city party managed Gotham’s process, calculating specific quotas for which each assembly district and borough was responsible.33 Directors reminded canvassers to conduct their calls during appropriate visiting hours, wearing proper attire—​potentially abrasive advice to rank-​and-​file

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supporters who had spent years trudging up unfamiliar staircases to recruit new members, but advice organizers felt compelled to give nevertheless.34 Although lobbyists returned to familiar patterns in the wake of the 1915 referendum defeat, they were also keenly aware that those strategies had not achieved their objective. Perhaps, most striking about the referendum result was what it said about regional support within the state. Strategists had long assumed that metropolitan areas would obstruct their work. The outcome, however, suggested otherwise:  more than half of the state’s “no” votes came from outside of Greater New York.35 One newspaper suggested talking “about family and the crops and politics” to enroll more rural New Yorkers in the future.36 Some seemed to heed this call, or at least recognize the need to tailor their message. In 1916, the New York State Woman Suffrage Party held a session devoted to “Rural Problems” at its annual convention, featuring lectures on “Rural Press Work,” “Advertising a Rural Meeting,” and “The Conservative Churchwoman.”37 Advocates also printed a flyer that enumerated “six reasons why farmers’ wives should vote.” Its reasons meandered from the work they contributed to farms to how food laws might affect crops.38 Spotty transportation and thin publicity, however, complicated the task of reaching those in Gotham’s hinterlands.39 Plus, headquarters and leadership remained in Manhattan. The controversy over the 1916 suffrage ball lays bare the extent to which the Empire City had come to dominate the state landscape, despite a real need for upstate recruitment. The New York State Woman Suffrage Party had booked Madison Square Garden for the early March jubilee, which organizers promised would be “the greatest ball ever given for suffrage.”40 The state Senate Judiciary Committee complicated this plan, however, when it announced that representatives would discuss the suffrage bill on the same day as the scheduled “Mardi Gras Ball.” Planners immediately sensed a conspiracy: legislators either wanted to ruin their ball or consider enfranchisement free of activists. In either case, advocates proved unwilling to move the event to one of Albany’s many venues in order to help with logistics. Instead, one vowed to “show them we can run the Legislature with one hand and a ball with the other.”41 Ultimately, the ball proved a success, with some twenty thousand individuals cramming into Madison Square Garden and $15,000 raised. Managers did not have much time to enjoy the festivities, though. They rushed from Albany, hopping aboard an evening train so that they could lead the grand march in Midtown Manhattan at 10:30 p.m. That was not the worst of it. They spent less than three hours total in the metropolis, having to take a 12:30 a.m. train back to Albany because the Judiciary Committee had failed to report on the bill as expected.42 Organizers’ commitment to hosting the gala in Manhattan required

From Confrontation to Collaboration    129 logistical acrobatics and stamina. It turned them into harried, sleep-​deprived commuters at a moment when concentration and presence were necessary. But relocating the ball to Albany did not seem to be an option. As the logistics surrounding the ball indicate, Manhattan remained the campaign’s epicenter in 1916, and activists remained committed to the urban strategies that they had honed over the past decade. The pace was certainly less frenetic than that leading up to the 1915 referendum; still, managers continued to rely on a regiment of local, routine canvassing plus occasional, citywide actions. Suffragists did not radically revise their tactics following defeat. Unprecedented events, however, intervened to reshape urban life, and the movement that organizers had built around it. The first came in the form of an epidemic. The worst outbreak of polio in Gotham’s history struck in 1916. There were, of course, occasional outbreaks before 1916. The metropolis recorded two thousand cases of polio during a 1907 scare. And some people were more vulnerable to contagion than others—​ those in tenement districts unable to afford care, children, or the elderly. Uncontrolled epidemics, however, were not the norm in the early twentieth century, as they were in the 1830s, 1840s, and even 1880s. Instead, cancer or heart disease was more likely to cut short a person’s life than an infectious dis­ ease such as smallpox or tuberculosis. This epidemiological context explains New Yorkers’ panic when polio infected some nine thousand people in 1916, more than four times the numbers in 1907.43 The disease originated in a heavily Italian district in Brooklyn, quickly reaching the rest of the city and sweeping out to Long Island and north to the Hudson River Valley. The metropolitan government reacted swiftly:  sending in street cleaners, reportedly killing seventy-​two thousand cats to curb the disease’s advance, quarantining sick children in public hospitals, shutting down theaters, and delaying public school openings. The Pennsylvania Railroad announced that it would fumigate train cars coming in and out of New York City, and the New York Times published streets with known infections. Some vacation spots barred New  Yorkers, terrified that the epidemic would spread into their towns.44 Suffragists could not help but be affected by the epidemic rocking the metropolis.45 On a personal level, they worried about their own families’ health.46 On a professional level, the contagion “halt[ed]” their work.47 Concerns about the virus crept into suffrage minutes in the middle of July.48 Metropolitan leaders discontinued street meetings later that month, heeding the Board of Health’s advice.49 Their canvassing plan required revision as well. Organizers clung to the belief that enrolling a million names was “one of the most important tasks  .  .  .  ever undertaken.”50 But the city organization extended the

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deadline from September 1 until November 1, presumably optimistic that cooler weather would quell the epidemic.51 The Woman Suffrage Party approached the Board of Health to offer assistance in early July, just as the death toll reached 205 people in New York City.52 Supporters considered it an “opportune” time to help the city government, since they already planned to discuss the ballot with residents across the metropolis.53 Canvassers shifted from doling out suffrage literature to distributing details about the virus, reaching out to “tenement mothers,” and monitoring sanitary code violations.54 Brooklyn activists formed a committee that worked alongside the Board of Health Tenement House Department, and Bureau of Charities to combat the virus: they visited districts where the disease thrived, tracked unsanitary conditions in tenements, and provided general “clerical” services.55 At the same time, they aligned themselves with the “better babies” movement sweeping the nation. This movement initially targeted working-​class immigrant mothers in urban areas, with advocates opening milk stations for babies and providing medical aid. It broadened to include middle-​class women by the 1910s. “Baby weeks” popped up across the United States with lectures, literature, and exhibits on newborn care.56 In one prescient issue a month before the epidemic, The Woman Voter explicitly drew the connection between the suffrage movement and this “better babies” campaign. Alongside the argument that enfranchisement in New Zealand resulted in healthier children, editors published an image intended to frighten people into action. In it, an innocent toddler reaches for a bottle swarming with bugs, and an army of insects infiltrates the home. “I wish my mother had a vote,” the child whimpers, “to keep the germs away.” Enfranchisement would result in “Better Babies,” the issue boldly suggested.57 The polio outbreak provided suffragists an opportunity to put such municipal housekeeping rhetoric into action.58 Against a backdrop where Long Islanders advocated armed resistance if philanthropists opened a polio hospital in Hempstead, some Italians in Brooklyn threatened to murder anyone who reported ailing children to the Board of Health, and everyone feared contracting the disease, this work was not for the faint of heart.59 In persevering, suffragists were performing the role of the good, informed, and active female citizen—​one who supported the metropolis in its time of need and prioritized the family. They were tapping into a long history of woman’s groups, especially charities, collaborating with the government, and their work paralleled that of other contemporaneous woman’s organizations like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.60 Many activists seemed glad to capitalize on their experience to help. They had spent years canvassing neighborhoods (both rich and poor), speaking to strangers (both

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A cartoonist tried to capitalize on readers’ protective instincts by drawing germs threatening a toddler’s well-​being and indicating that only her mother’s vote could help. Since no child was immune from the outside world, it suggested, all mothers needed the franchise in order to reform that world. The Woman Voter, May 1916, New York Public Library.

men and women), and tailoring arguments to reach residents (both immigrant and native-​born); now they volunteered their know-​how. Civic concern alone did not motivate their generosity, however. They subtly tied their cause to the city’s welfare—​at one point backhandedly bemoaning the fact that they could not devote more energy to combating the disease because they still needed to fight for the ballot.61 Organizers’ concern for the metropolis might have been genuine, but it was also savvy to link suffrage to maternalism, government aid, and disease control.

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At the end of July 1916, advocates began to resume some of their routine work. The Woman Suffrage Party declared July 28  “Commuters’ Day.” Lobbyists presented New  York commuters with taffy and fudge at transportation hubs like Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal.62 Along with the candies came a letter to commuters’ wives. In it, a “tenement house mother” lamented that her children “romp in the dirty and congested [city] streets; receive bad influences from low dance halls, saloons and motion picture places; suffer because of cheap food, bad air, dark and cramped quarters.” The letter provided suburban housewives, its intended audience, with a heart-​ rending mission: they could help these struggling mothers save their children from urban threats only by working to promote enfranchisement and thereby ensuring that all women had a voice in government. Though the message echoed previous pleas, it likely elicited a more visceral reaction as the epidemic continued to claim children’s lives.63 Suffragists transformed their political expertise into social welfare skills with the polio outbreak. Rather than confronting men in the financial district or public officials like the police, they allied with the government to eradicate the epidemic. The emergency bred opportunity for partnership, and activists capitalized on it to remind residents what enfranchising women would mean for the metropolis. Only with the vote, one journalist preached to New Yorkers at the height of the scare, could women “more effectively serve in bettering civic conditions.”64 And, after they won the ballot, they could focus exclusively on doing so.65 Fortunately for New  Yorkers, they did not need to wait for women to achieve the ballot to defeat the outbreak. It subsided by October, leaving parents exhaling with relief and suffragists resuming their canvassing drive.66 The state suffrage league convened the following month to formalize plans for 1917. Among its efforts to centralize and standardize work, the party pledged itself to more street politicking and fewer indoor events. Again, leaders reminded members to prioritize suffrage above all else. This was especially necessary in 1917: if the state legislature reapproved their amendment, as they expected it would, New York men would have a second opportunity to vote on it come November. Whitehouse urged supporters to “give up club work and civics” and “remember the greatness of the cause,” while also stressing that “victory for New York women means victory for all the women of the country.”67 Such New York pride was a recurring theme in the 1917 campaign. By then, women could vote for president in twelve states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming, influencing ninety-​one Electoral College votes.68 Gotham suffragists contended that allowing western women to vote while disfranchising eastern

From Confrontation to Collaboration    133 women resulted in the “women of the ‘golden West’” governing New  York men.69 “To bring back prestige,” one shamed, “New  York must match the woman vote of the West with the woman vote of its own state.”70 Their excitement each time a state in the West enfranchised women belied this pronouncement of jealousy. By 1917, however, they willingly framed the suffrage map in terms of unequal power relationships to recruit more supporters. Just as suffragists settled back into a familiar routine following the polio outbreak, outside events rent their plans once more. War had decimated much of Europe since 1914, when a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The Battle of the Somme alone, a four-​month conflict in France in 1916, resulted in more than a million casualties. Americans clung to neutrality in the face of this global tumult. Even after a German submarine downed the Lusitania in 1915, killing 124 Americans, President Woodrow Wilson avoided warfare. Tension continued to escalate, however, reaching a peak in early 1917 when Germany renewed its attacks on American ships and news of secret diplomatic negotiations between Germany and Mexico reached the public. The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany in early February. Americans would not be immune to world conflict for much longer.71 Anti-​suffragists proved more clairvoyant in understanding this than their foes. As early as 1914, the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage committed itself to supporting the nation in case of combat. Meanwhile, the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage hosted the Red Cross Auxiliary Committee’s Monday meetings, and the Woman’s Protest, a national anti-​suffrage publication, detailed the work allied associations undertook to aid those affected by the conflict. That suffragists continued to focus on the vote while brutal warfare ripped the world apart provided fodder for opponents who questioned their patriotism.72 It took until February 1917, after Wilson severed diplomatic relations with Germany, for New York suffragists to delve into war preparedness. Mary Garrett Hay, chair of the Gotham campaign, urged the city party to perform “war relief work” if the United States joined the conflict, although she remained confident that it would not. Even if the country did declare war, she added, suffragists must not forget the campaign. The New York State Woman Suffrage Party echoed this a day later.73 Both leagues sent resolutions to the governor and mayor (respectively) offering assistance, as “loyal American citizens” and “woman suffragists organized and trained in co-​operation and service” (state party) or “women thoroughly organized and highly trained in co-​operative work” (city party).74 Whitehouse recognized that others might offer aid but reminded the governor that the state suffrage party had “the advantage of being prepared for

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immediate action.”75 Champions of the vote spent the early 1910s confronting the city’s gendered geography and, at times, its government. They were now in a position to help—​and competed with other organizations for the limelight. Before the United States seemed likely to enter the international conflict, suffragists could simultaneously champion European women’s wartime aid and promote pacifism. This contradictory position was unsustainable once war grew imminent. Pacifist-​suffragists fumed that leaders had not consulted them before offering wartime assistance. At least fifteen felt so betrayed that they sent a telegraph to the governor, in which they chastised Whitehouse, declared their opposition to the conflict, and resigned from the party.76 In a separate letter to Whitehouse, they accused her of “misrepresent[ing] the position of a large number of suffragists,” overstepping her authority, and “betray[ing]” the cause by moving beyond enfranchisement.77 Movement officers generally tried to prevent internal bickering from spilling onto newspaper pages, but they could not contain this rift. Perhaps the most damaging rebuke came from Lillian Wald, a celebrated public health nurse with close ties to Gotham’s immigrant communities, who appeared unwilling to surrender her pacifist principles for the campaign’s strategic gain.78 Leaders reacted by softening their promises, searching for a broad consensus that would satisfy everyone. They stressed that they did not welcome warfare, but also vowed that they were ready to help should the need arise.79 On one hand, Hay demanded patriotism, since “devotion to country is the first principle of good citizenship.” On the other, she promised that the city party would not surrender its “purpose” or money for “war needs.”80 The March issue of The Woman Voter repeated these sentiments, explaining that both the state and city parties would “quietly” focus on “regular work” and sidestep debates about war. After all, the column concluded, lobbyists should trust the government, which was “better informed as to the whole situation”—​a remarkable concession for a movement that routinely condemned the government, but one that revealed an effort to maintain internal harmony and avoid unnecessary detours.81 The legislative rhythm did provide some opportunities for “regular work.” Both political parties had endorsed suffrage at their 1916 national conventions—​a milestone for the campaign.82 New York supporters gathered in Albany to pressure legislators to reapprove their amendment in early 1917.83 In March, they celebrated: the state legislature accepted the suffrage amendment, guaranteeing a fall referendum.84 “The road has been a long and trying one,” a leader wrote in The Woman Voter, “but the very difficulties and the opposition we have encountered have on one hand engendered greater strength in our campaign and on the other hand have been the most inspiring evidence that we have valid reason to expect a triumphal passage” in November.85

From Confrontation to Collaboration    135 The war still loomed large in their rhetoric, though. At a rally celebrating the legislative achievement, Catt discussed the international crisis in terms of strategic opportunities. European women’s home front sacrifices helped suffrage gain prominent recruits, Catt explained: the French president tempered his opposition, and the former British prime minister embraced the cause. “We ask America to do a little better,” the national president preached, “and give women the vote before the war begins.”86 Catt politicized warfare, hoping to turn it to organizers’ advantage. Catt’s suggestion that America would ultimately intervene in the Great War proved accurate. Wilson addressed Congress less than a week later, detailing the wrongs Germany committed against the United States and declaring that Americans needed to make the “world  .  .  .  safe for democracy.”87 Congress agreed and declared war on April 6. With that, New York City and the suffrage movement entered World War I. The movement’s official history neatly traces the effect of the declaration of war on the suffrage campaign. “Work was at its height,” it states, “when it was suddenly stopped short by the entrance of the United States into the World War. At once everything else became of secondary importance.”88 The contemporary sources cast doubt on this assessment. The February 1917 issue of The Woman Voter explained that in the preceding twelve months—​long before the United States entered the Great War—​activists had conducted “plain, hard, grubbing” work “devoid of spectacular features.”89 Such laborious work would continue. World War I did not usher in tactical moderation. Humiliation from the 1915 defeat pushed some in that direction, and the polio epidemic accelerated the shift from glitz to gravitas. That the everyday urban rhythm had absorbed once-​extraordinary actions like street speeches further facilitated it; they no longer caused the stir that they once did. The Great War certainly committed the campaign to this more sedate approach, though. Suffrage would be fought for in a very different key in 1917 than it had been in 1915. With the declaration of war, lobbyists pointedly and somberly demanded the ballot, readily appropriating the United States’ objectives in Europe—​to make the world “safe for democracy.” The nation needed to enfranchise women, activists contended, in order to achieve the democratic ideals at home for which it claimed to fight abroad.90 Supporters emphasized that the United States “lag[ged] behind” other countries in terms of political justice.91 This sort of international comparison was not novel to World War I. In the 1912 suffrage parade, American women marched with Chinese women to draw attention to the fact that some women in China voted, while New York women remained ballotless.92 Publicists used nationalist-​inflected shaming as a motivating tool in 1917 as well, although with less flair.

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One particularly cutting ad deployed the Statue of Liberty’s iconography to trigger anxieties about democracy at home and abroad. Its central message capitalized on concerns about America’s standing in the world. England and Russia had “pledge[d]‌” themselves to political equality, it noted and then demanded, “LET AMERICA LEAD.” Domestic insecurities about states’ rights encircled this global message, as the flyer rhetorically asked if the Empire State “MUST . . . BE CONSCRIPTED INTO WOMAN SUFFRAGE BY FEDERAL AMENDMENT” and concluded that it needed to “LEAD AMERICA.”93 Designers intended their poster to provoke a gut reaction: Russia lurched toward a socialist revolution in 1917, and some believed that states’ rights alone had driven the nation into a civil war. The Empire State needed to act to avoid such a fate and maintain its democratic reputation. At its worst, the campaign tried to exploit war-​fueled prejudices. Some Americans began violently condemning Germans, German culture, and even German foodways with the outbreak of international conflict, renaming hamburgers “liberty burgers” in one act of patriotic erasure.94 Catt manipulated the hysteria, proposing a state plan to convince community leaders that “liquor interests” defeated the 1915 referendum and that Germans dominated this “interest.” The assumption that “liquor interests” opposed suffrage was not new; neither was the assumption that “foreigners” opposed the vote. What was new was the targeted nature of this argument, as it slandered a specific immigrant community. Catt leveraged concerns about a fifth column to paint opponents of suffrage as enemies of the nation. The national president stressed that this line of argument should “be used only in private conferences, and with the greatest discretion,” clearly recognizing its potential to alienate the more than half million Germans residing in Gotham.95 The strategy’s benefits, however, outweighed the risks in Catt’s mind. Words—​subtle and explicit—​marked just the beginning of organizers’ wartime work. Lobbyists in New York collected loyalty pledges and pasted “Wake Up America” recruiting posters throughout the metropolis in the months following the United States’ military intervention, both strategies they honed in their crusade for political equality. They also temporarily stopped adorning their automobiles with suffrage flags, halted street meetings, and discontinued leafleting.96 City headquarters morphed into a spot where women could list their contact information and enumerate the resources they might provide the relief effort; later, they knit for the Red Cross as they awaited suffrage assignments.97 Bronx activists cultivated vegetable gardens.98 And the Woman Suffrage Party hosted a “sacrifice” sale, raising more than $5,000 for its war service fund selling jewelry and even Governor Whitman’s cane.99

From Confrontation to Collaboration    137

The Statue of Liberty was a central feature in New York City suffrage iconography. This 1917 advertisement demanding that New York and America lead the way in terms of political equality featured a rendering of the monument; organizers also used it as a backdrop during their actual protests in 1886 and 1915. The Woman Citizen, June 23, 1917, New York Public Library.

None of these actions challenged traditional gendered expectations, but suffragists politicized them to convince New Yorkers of women’s capabilities. Whitehouse, in particular, believed that such efforts would help women win in November.100 At the very least, advocates could use their efforts to challenge the long-​standing anti-​suffrage position that women did not contribute to national security and therefore did not earn the ballot.101 Before their 1915 defeat, activists frequently contested Gotham’s political leadership when claiming a

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A group of women gather at suffrage headquarters to enlist in home front support during World War I. Despite pacifist-​suffragists’ resistance, New York City leaders rushed to provide aid during the Great War and publicized that assistance to advance their cause. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-​DIG-​ggbain-​23992.

“right to the city.” In 1916 and 1917, they used this right to support men’s agenda and thereby bolster their own credentials. They still maintained their autonomy, though, refusing to surrender their identity as suffragists in the larger name of womanhood or patriotism. Hay made sure of that, celebrating assembly district leaders who promised to hold “members in line to work for the government through the suffrage organization.”102 Their decision to decline a partnership with the National League for Women’s Service brings this priority into clearer focus. Filled with anti-​ suffragists, the National League organized in January 1917 and committed itself to efficiently mobilizing women. Its Motor Corp gained perhaps the most attention, as women chauffeured officials and supplies around in support of the war effort.103 New York suffragists wanted little to do with the league, despite its patriotic objectives. The state party refused its offer of cooperation, explaining “as diplomatically as possible” that it had already developed a wartime agenda.104 Another reason hid between the lines:  organizers refused to follow anti-​suffragists’ lead, and lose an opportunity for positive publicity. They would support the home front, but would do so on their own terms.

From Confrontation to Collaboration    139 The governor’s announcement in June that every individual between the ages of sixteen and fifty would need to answer a questionnaire to ascertain the state’s military resources provided an opportunity to do just that.105 Whitehouse did not even wait until the official announcement before asking the governor to include the Woman Suffrage Party in planning for this census. She promised that the state party could begin census work immediately. A competitive undertone inflected her request, an effort to preemptively box out rivals. Unlike others offering to help, Whitehouse jockeyed, the state league was “an old organization” with members “trained in co-​operation and service.”106 Even in war work there would be winners and losers; Whitehouse wanted to ensure that her cause came out on top.107 It proved more difficult than Whitehouse might have expected. The gen­ eral in charge of census work hesitated. The New York State Woman Suffrage Party had offered to fund the project and complete it through house-​to-​house canvassing.108 Adjutant General Stotesbury preferred military officials to civilians and centralized “enrollment depots” over home visits. Whitehouse persisted, detailing how the government could save the million dollars it budgeted if it relied on suffrage volunteers.109 The strategy itself would also be more effective: residential calls would prevent any “slacker[s]‌” from escaping. Confidence had clearly superseded the pangs of frustration and ambivalence that those in the pioneer generation felt when approaching the metropolis.110 The state party continued to pledge its headquarters and workers even after the government rebuffed its initial offer to direct the drive.111 Suffragists’ expertise impressed wavering bureaucrats, particularly the official organizing Gotham’s census who saw it firsthand when visiting city headquarters. Borough maps hanging from the walls combined with Hay’s metropolitan acumen convinced the official to accept the activists’ offer of assistance. The Woman Voter celebrated the achievement, reminding lobbyists that their “great familiarity with district lines and their training in systematic procedure” made them especially indispensable for the project.112 Ultimately, the census manager appointed a Woman Suffrage Party member to act as assistant director for metropolitan census work.113 In the early 1910s, suffragists enriched their knowledge of the cityscape. They now mobilized that information to help the government and themselves. The city dedicated two weeks to the census, bombarding residents with reminders about it on the subway, in newspapers, and in churches. Public schools, department stores, and even empty houses became enrollment depots, as fifty thousand volunteers helped some three million men and women register.114 Suffrage headquarters in Brooklyn transformed into a “general bureau of information.” Advocates fielded telephone questions from residents trying

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to determine their assembly districts—​a vital piece of information for those attempting to locate the closest enrollment spot. That the police turned to activists for information left them feeling especially validated.115 Campaigners’ previous interactions with law enforcement had ranged from pleading for protection to challenging the state’s authority, both of which emphasized the police’s power in the exchange. Now the tables were turned. The government officially recognized the altered dynamic. The chair of the Mayor’s Committee on National Defense sent a letter that described the city party’s census contribution as “invaluable,” admitting that the municipality might not have completed the project without the 11,700 suffragists who volunteered.116 Similarly, Gotham’s census director wrote Hay, extolling her colleagues’ “initiative, resourcefulness and intelligence,” which he proclaimed “earned the gratitude of the city and the state.”117 Rather than heckling and questioning the movement, bureaucrats in New  York City and elsewhere in the state now expressed admiration of and gratitude for campaigners’ skills.118 Clearly, organizers used the census to highlight their patriotism and metropolitan know-​how, trying to associate suffrage with ideals of virtuous citizenship. But they wrested even more meaning from it by analogizing registering at the census to voting on Election Day. One state suffrage flyer directed at men did so by firing off a litany of rhetorical questions: “Did your ‘wife neglect your home or babies’ when she went to register in the recent Military Census? Did she meet with any but courteous and respectful treatment from the men she saw there? . . . Did she feel less feminine, less womanly or less motherly for having registered?” And then the author deftly pivoted to the point: “DO YOU KNOW THAT WHEN SHE REGISTERED IN THE MILITARY CENSUS SHE EXPERIENCED PRACTICALLY THE SAME PROCEDURE SHE WOULD GO THROUGH IF SHE WERE A  FULL-​ FLEDGED VOTER—​ EXCEPT THAT VOTING IS LESS COMPLICATED, LESS PERSONAL AND IS NOT COMPULSORY.”119 Since women did not experience discomfort enrolling in the census, they should have no difficulty with the ritual of voting. It, too, would be friendly, straightforward, and safe. Film provided a potentially even more powerful and long-​lasting medium than ephemera like flyers for suffragists to showcase their home front support.120 Activists had relied on celluloid to convey their ideas and reach new audiences since 1912, benefiting from Manhattan’s position as the entertainment capital. In 1917, the Woman Suffrage Party acquired its own movie projector to serve as an “instrument of propaganda and incidental revenue in the assembly districts.”121 Another suffrage film came to the silver screen that year, two years after the last campaign film.

From Confrontation to Collaboration    141 The details about Woman’s Work in War Time remain vague. As early as June 1917, the state party’s records mentioned a proposed film and its “propagandist value.”122 More specifics about its origins are unfortunately lacking, and the scholarly literature has overlooked the film, but scattered newspaper evidence and organizational records allow us to reconstruct its central features. The S.S. Film Company produced the motion picture for the New York State Woman Suffrage Party in the weeks leading up to the referendum.123 The “thrilling new suffrage movie,” as the party described it, revolved around sisters who use war service to convert their reluctant mother.124 The film showed women “farming, making ammunition, working in locomotive shops, and working as conductors on trolley cars.” It balanced these more gender-​transgressing scenes with those spotlighting suffragists’ caretaking roles, mainly food conservation classes held by the state league. Warfare was not an abstract concept in the film, a fact underscored by footage of soldiers mobilizing on Fifth Avenue. That the story ended with the family’s son leaving for the front provided a personal and poignant reminder of sacrifice, one that helped producers link soldiers’ duty with the sisters’ civilian devotion featured in the plot.125 The whole film told a wartime version of the municipal housekeeping arguments that appeared in earlier suffrage pictures. The nation needed women’s special skills to combat the Central Powers. The state party first screened Woman’s Work in War Time at its August convention in Saratoga.126 By the end of October, the Short Features Exchange reserved twenty-​five theaters in the Marcus Loew circuit for it.127 The film played in theaters across the state on the eve of the 1917 vote—​from the Bronx to Brewster to Corinth.128 But it garnered less attention than previous campaign movies, themselves never blockbusters. Essentially an infomercial honoring women’s wartime service, it would have had a difficult time competing with technologically innovative and controversial moving pictures like The Birth of a Nation. And it lacked the celebrity of other wartime films, such as Little American starring Mary Pickford.129 Although Woman’s Work in War Time had limited success, its very existence illuminates the synergy activists found in wartime Gotham. Suffragists masterfully combined the place’s resources (New  York’s film industry) with the time’s unique needs (home front assistance) in their fight for the vote. Women had provided support to the nation during other conflicts, including the Civil War and the Spanish-​American War, but they had not successfully linked the vote to their contributions.130 Newspapers overlooked Margaret Chanler Aldrich’s (then Margaret Chanler’s) suffrage affiliations when she traveled to the Caribbean to provide aid during the Spanish-​American War, for instance. This was not true of World War I. Designed to win men’s admiration, as

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well as women’s, suffragists’ new approach showcased the metropolitan skills they had gained and refined over the last decade. It did so while prioritizing the ballot, reminding New  Yorkers about the need for political equality at every turn. This was not always easy. Raising money for the franchise while the Red Cross and the government solicited funds to subsidize a military mission could seem gauche.131 Attracting the press’s attention also proved challenging. Details of submarine warfare and land battles overshadowed campaign news.132 The potential for criticisms of suffragists’ patriotism remained high, as they continued to push their agenda during wartime. Some stopgap solutions emerged. One leader developed a simple response: it was legislative policy driving the campaign, not suffragists; the amendment was already on the calendar.133 And advocates turned to paid advertisements to keep their cause in the public eye, seeking to raise $200,000 to oil their publicity engine.134 Headquarters failed to provide stability to a movement already stretched thin. The New York City Woman Suffrage Party, for one, lost its offices in the summer of 1917. The league had resided at 48 East Thirty-​Fourth Street since 1913, even expanding to the adjacent building in anticipation of the 1917 campaign.135 Abruptly, the landlord informed organizers that they had thirty days to vacate; he planned to transform the offices into shops.136 The war generated extraordinary obstacles and opportunities, but it did not eliminate the day-​to-​ day headaches of renting property in a highly competitive commercial center.137 The double assignment of wartime service and suffrage campaigning drained organizers, a fact that even the leadership recognized. For Whitehouse, it made the campaign “ten-​fold” more difficult. However, options were limited:  either advocates ignore the conflict, risk accusations of disloyalty, and lose New Yorkers’ support, or they combine campaigning with patriotic duty. These dual tasks required a delicate balancing act and significant endurance as “government work” increasingly “overburdened” suffragists. Frustrated and fatigued, Whitehouse implored those who “believe[d]‌that woman suffrage is important for the government itself” to “redouble” their efforts in August.138 Organizers set in motion plans to make Whitehouse’s plea a reality in the late summer and early fall.139 In August, the New York City Woman Suffrage Party proudly displayed at its headquarters the names of five hundred thousand female supporters that it had quietly accumulated during a yearlong canvass.140 Beginning in September, suffrage preachers took over street corners to give nightly addresses; they also led meetings in factories and churches. These were top-​down affairs, carefully controlled by leaders, not spontaneous, grassroots protests. Planners required that the speeches highlight women’s contribution to the war and that the speakers themselves not have any potentially

From Confrontation to Collaboration    143 objectionable affiliations.141 Hay grilled lecturers before she approved their participation. “Nobody who is a Socialist, or a pacifist, or any other kind of an ‘ist’ but a suffragist” would address a crowd, Hay promised a reporter, “We shall have no one on the street corners who would not be acceptable as a speaker at a parlor meeting.”142 Organizers deliberately moderated meetings, making them much less confrontational than in the past. They were to highlight women’s supportive wartime roles, roles that traced back to the American Revolution. Yet it was only because suffragists had successfully altered the metropolis’s gendered geography leading up to the 1915 vote that they could make political speeches in public without raising eyebrows in 1917. New Yorkers had grown accustomed to women politicking on their bustling streets. The eroding nature of repetition had also deradicalized suffrage parades. The 1915 march drew an unprecedented crowd, thanks to the carefully orchestrated pageantry and advertising blitz—​not to the marvel of seeing women protesting on Fifth Avenue. Maud Malone had pushed the metropolis well beyond that. The city party divided over organizing a fall parade, which before the 1915 referendum had been a near-​annual ritual, when Hay raised the subject in August 1917.143 Supporters eventually agreed to go “Heart and soul” into a procession arranged by the state party; the hesitancy, though, reveals some members’ extreme fatigue as well as their desire not to dilute their wartime service with stunts.144 Strikingly different priorities informed 1917 parade planning compared with 1910 or 1911. Patriotism, not protest, took center stage. Twenty thousand women ultimately participated in the late October demonstration. “The mood,” a former state president remembered, “was serious.” “The dash and color” of the 1915 procession vanished. Instead of white clothing, women marched up Fifth Avenue in dark attire.145 American flags were ubiquitous during the almost three-​hour procession. Specially curated divisions added to the somber atmosphere. Nearly one thousand mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters gathered in a unit exclusively for those with male relatives fighting in the war. Each woman waved a service flag embroidered with stars to represent the men she “contributed” to the army and navy. Some flags contained as many as five stars.146 In all, the parade created a tapestry of womanly service. Suffrage threaded it together. More than two thousand supporters lugged the signatures of one million New York State women who wanted the ballot along Fifth Avenue.147 Others carried banners celebrating President Wilson’s support of the Empire State’s proposed amendment. Half a million spectators watched as strategists masterfully linked women’s sacrifice to their need for the franchise in a quid pro quo plea for equality.148 The New-​York Tribune recognized

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this, headlining its front-​page coverage, “Service to the U.S. Is the Keynote of Great Suffrage Parade.”149 Organizers did everything in their power to ensure the procession’s solemnity, especially when it involved the militant Washington, DC–​ based National Woman’s Party. The party, which supplemented and then succeeded the Congressional Union, challenged the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s hegemony at every turn, questioning its policies and ignoring its mandates. Its decision to blame the entire governing party for suffrage’s failure irritated more conservative leaders in the National American Woman Suffrage Association who wanted to target individual representatives. Wartime only widened the chasm. The radicals began picketing the White House in January 1917, goading the commander in chief with signs like “Mr. President, What Will You Do for Woman Suffrage?” National Woman’s Party agitators highlighted inconsistencies in America’s message upon its entrance into World War I in April. “Democracy Should Begin at Home,” one scoffed. President Wilson became “Kaiser Wilson.” Law enforcement had enough by the end of June. Collaring the picketers for “obstructing traffic,” they imprisoned many radicals at a notorious workhouse in Virginia. Some New Yorkers embraced this militancy; nurse Lavinia Dock picketed and faced jail time as a result.150 Most in Gotham’s established movement, however, wanted to draw clear lines between themselves and the National Woman’s Party. That much of the radicalism took hold in the capital, where the National Woman’s Party could directly condemn national representatives, helped. The Capitol Building and the White House pulled these militants to DC in the same way that Gotham’s publicity potential and financial resources had earlier attracted more conservative tacticians. This did not, however, completely insulate the New York campaign. Movement brass tried to use the 1917 parade to highlight differences between their campaign and that of the National Woman’s Party. Individuals marched with banners denouncing radical techniques. “The Woman Suffrage Party [of New York City] Does Not Picket the White House,” one criticized.151 Extra police stood guard. Even so, radicals infiltrated the sober procession, distributing “Peace” and “Not One Cent for War” buttons and hawking their newspaper.152 One tried to interrupt the parade when the Men’s League passed by the reviewing stand at the New  York Public Library. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” she scolded, “with your sisters in the workhouse in Washington.” A nearby police officer reportedly gave her the “bum’s rush.”153 There is no evidence that marchers tried to intervene to protect the woman. Instead, those in the parade supported the state’s power, relying on it to silence a woman also fighting for the ballot. Image was critical, and

From Confrontation to Collaboration    145 mainstream suffragists fought to preserve theirs, even if it meant censoring potential allies. Open-​air meetings, an eight-​hour Columbus Circle rally, and a smaller torchlight procession followed the march.154 In total, the New York City Woman Suffrage Party managed to hold 2,085 meetings, distribute more than five million leaflets, enroll a half million women, and place some two thousand posters in shop windows during the 1917 campaign—​impressive statistics considering their wartime contributions. Suffrage films played at clubs, churches, and settlements; speakers addressed audiences everywhere from factories to the Waldorf-​Astoria; and translators detailed suffrage news in at least ten different languages.155 Even Election Day did not bring supporters respite: five thousand women served as poll watchers, and five thousand others stood ready to answer questions about enfranchisement.156 The results would determine if it had all been worthwhile. The weight of a half-​century campaign hung heavily over organizers as they anxiously awaited the referendum’s outcome on November 6. Hay stationed herself at headquarters, ready to calculate the city results as they began trickling in. Catt hovered around the long-​distance telephone. By 8:45, it was clear that Syracuse, Ithaca, Niagara, Jamestown, and Auburn had all voted for enfranchisement. Buffalo soon followed. By 9:30, New  York City’s votes suggested a majority of more than nine thousand. With results from Schenectady soon thereafter, suffragists began to exhale. Excitement peaked once they saw a white light shine westward from the Times Building, the newspaper’s sign that New York men had approved the amendment.157 Anna Howard Shaw, donning her Susan B.  Anthony pin, celebrated along with Hay, Catt, and three hundred other activists.158 “Wild Joy Seen in Headquarters,” exclaimed one journalist.159 “Victory Makes All Women Kin on Day of Rejoicing in City,” another cheered.160 The headline in The Woman Citizen simply read, “Glory, Glory Halleluia!”161 Women replaced their suffrage buttons with ones declaring, “I’m a Voter,” thrilled by their new identity.162 An overflowing “jubilee” at Cooper Union celebrated success as joyous tears and exuberant laughter filled the venue. Still, it was a toned-​down celebration. No triumphant procession followed, as it might have in 1915 and did in 1920.163 And leaders urged those newly enfranchised “to dedicate” their new “citizenship to serve our country, our homes and our God.”164 With the national amendment on the horizon and wartime casualties mounting, the movement celebrated success, but it did so without gloating. Plus, the results surprised leaders. Campaign heads felt confident that the state would pass the amendment, but they admitted that New York City’s approval had caught them off guard. They had believed that upstate districts

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would have to compensate for Gotham’s opposition. That partially happened in 1915—​suffragists lost by nearly 195,000 votes, nearly half of that coming from the city. Just the opposite happened in 1917: the metropolis carried the state. Some 353,000 New York City men supported the amendment, compared with 249,800 who opposed it. Greater New York provided the state with a 103,863 vote surplus, a pivotal margin of victory since the proposal lost by 1,510 votes outside of the city. The large majority in the state’s most difficult metropolis more than made up for the deficit—​a rewarding but unexpected turn of events.165 One task remained for leaders. They needed to make sense of the victory for the public. A cascade of reasons followed. Catt pointed to “organization and intensive work,” rationalizing that New Yorkers needed time to adjust to the idea of enfranchisement. She also acknowledged the war’s role. “We thought war would hinder our success,” the national president reflected, “but instead it has helped.”166 A colleague pointed to enfranchisement’s inevitability, believing that the juggernaut of progress steamrolled over men’s resistance. Others thought that the war weakened “liquor interests,” which subsequently put enfranchisement over the top.167 Individually, these supporters might prioritize different explanations. But they agreed that voters from “all the parties” approved the amendment—​a clear response to opponents who tried to discredit their success by (accurately) claiming that socialists, pro-​German pacifists, and radicals carried it.168 Their explanations instead rendered the metropolis a bastion of modernity (where men “read the newspapers”) and the countryside as teeming with bumpkins (where isolation prevented men from “get[ting] in touch with modern waves of thought”).169 This was certainly not how Lillie Devereux Blake imagined her city. We cannot know for certain what convinced men to back the amendment in 1917 and not in 1915. Perhaps some men who endorsed the ballot in 1917 never even voted in 1915—​as the increase in total New York City voters from 558,800 in 1915 to 603,500 in 1917 suggests.170 Others might have changed their mind and went from opposing enfranchisement to accepting it, and certainly the picketing at the White House might have led at least a few to move in the opposite direction. It is too simplistic to assume that men endorsed the ballot to thank suffragists for their war work. But, at the very least, the Woman Suffrage Party’s home front contributions removed one arrow from opponents’ quivers. The vocally anti-​suffrage New York Times editorials provide evidence of this. The editorials bracketing the 1915 defeat pressured readers to oppose the suffrage resolution, in part, because the global crisis required “steady attention and study,” and “intelligence” on “matters of national self-​defense, of business self-​preservation and enlargement.”171 Expanding the electorate to include the “sentimental sisterhood,” another editorial explained, “would be positively

From Confrontation to Collaboration    147 dangerous at present.”172 Suffragists’ wartime contributions challenged this depiction of women as “sentimental.” The New York Times’ reasons for opposing enfranchisement in 1917 included outrage that some suffragists embraced socialism and pacifism; frustration that some picketed the White House during a moment when the government needed unity; scorn that Jeannette Rankin, the country’s first elected female congressperson and sole dissenting vote on the declaration of war, cried when announcing her decision; and acclaim that men were “doing the fighting” and thus “should do the voting.”173 The 1915 representation of women as fragile sentimentalists, though still present, was less coherent in the 1917 editorials. That women had indeed contributed to the war effort eliminated one potent anti-​suffrage attack. And soldiers themselves supported the amendment in Manhattan at a slightly higher rate than the civilian population (66 percent compared with 59 percent).174 Two years prior, strategists had tapped into New York City’s constellation of women, tailoring their ideas and arguments. This along with municipal housekeeping rationale, which encouraged a reimagining of the metropolis and access to a broadening swath of urban spaces, empowered activists to claim a “right to the city.” But they lost the 1915 referendum. Organizers revised their approach to the metropolis for the 1917 drive, transforming their “right to the city” into infrastructure to support, rather than challenge, men’s agendas. Winning Gotham and the Empire State made the national amendment a “certainty” in suffragists’ telling.175 It proved that they could successfully conscript states teeming with diverse and complicated metropolises. Alice Stone Blackwell brazenly forecasted that New York State voters’ endorsement would force “the blindest reactionary to see the handwriting on the wall” and break “the backbone of the opposition.”176 It also freed up New York’s resources for a federal amendment drive and guaranteed that the state’s representatives would feel female voters’ wrath if they failed to support it.177 The 1917 campaign, one movement publication predicted, marked the last stage in the suffrage timeline, the “stage of final surrender.”178 Despite the celebratory rhetoric, in some ways New York’s victory complicated the national movement’s agenda. By 1917, Catt had shifted much of the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s focus to the federal amendment and away from state-​level battles.179 Catt worried that enfranchised Empire State women might actually turn inward now that they had achieved success. Rather than support the national drive, they very well could decide, “We got the vote for ourselves, let the women of other states do the same. We are not interested,” Catt fretted.180 Other difficulties emerged as well. Many questioned the focus on the federal amendment, especially many in the American South who preferred a state-​based approach. These individuals might use New York

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as evidence to show that a federal amendment was not necessary, since even difficult states would ultimately revise their constitution to eliminate manhood as a qualification for voting.181 National leaders rewrote suffrage axioms to preempt this argument. In their narratives, New York went from being one of the most challenging states to one of the most conducive to enfranchisement. Its laws permitted women to serve as poll watchers, whereas other states left that up to political parties that had no investment in women achieving the ballot and thereby likely tolerated voting irregularities. Its laws allowed suffragists to immediately convene a new campaign following their 1915 defeat; other states required a specified amount of time to elapse first. Finally, the state narrowly and advantageously defined “majority” to mean that a majority of voters on the suffrage resolution were required for an amendment to pass, rather than the majority of total votes cast on Election Day.182 Victory in New York demanded a celebration, a reassessment, and an explanation.

Epilogue

Five thousand women marched along Pennsylvania Avenue on the eve of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration in March 1913. Parade units featured everyone from a nine-​month-​old baby to teachers garbed in caps and gowns. Floats traced the trajectory of women’s progress from 1840 until “Today.” Badges, banners, and pennants championing the ballot filled the street, turning the most famous avenue in Washington, DC, into a billboard for enfranchisement.1 New  York City activists had clearly set precedents that those around the country followed, but many in the nation’s capital did not take kindly to Gotham-​inspired stunts. Spectators jostled and swarmed the marchers. More than two hundred men and women sustained injuries. A congressional investigation followed.2 New York advocates had certainly experienced unnerving moments during street meetings and parades, but that backlash was minor compared with the melee in Washington.3 The nation’s capital was essentially a company town, one trading in a politics that excluded women.4 Gotham’s dense webs of professional women, reformers, socialites, consumers, and laborers established a different environment. New Yorkers’ acclimation to women’s broadening pursuits and recreations resulted in a highly “feminized” city and a more tolerant milieu for suffrage parades and events by the 1910s.5 It took time for activists to learn how to capitalize on and augment this unique milieu. Initially, Manhattan—​ its reputation, diversity, size, and mores—​hampered the New York City Woman Suffrage League. Leaders sheltered meetings in private homes, reluctant to expose themselves to the ostensible anarchy of the streets. They worried about immigrants and corporations. And they assumed metropolitan life endangered white, middle-​class women. How, then, did the Empire City end up pioneering parades that inspired

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processions elsewhere? How did suffragists move from condemning the city to celebrating it? What did it mean that New York City, the nation’s largest urban center, shouldered the state victory? Explanations for the 1917 triumph run the gamut. Immigrant New Yorkers and the working-​class population delivered critical support; suffragists’ public actions, including parades and street speeches, helped the cause gain visibility.6 Tammany Hall’s weakening opposition and ultimate neutrality enabled activists to convert new voters.7 World War I  distracted anti-​suffragists and allowed organizers to pursue their agenda relatively unimpeded.8 All of these factors contributed to success, but none alone satisfactorily explains how suffragists won New York. Most of these explanations prioritize the campaign’s last years, emphasizing pageants at the expense of earlier, more tedious actions.9 Taking an interdisciplinary approach and long view provides a fresh understanding of the women’s rights campaign and demonstrates that New York was more than just a stage for suffrage; it shaped the script. To win Gotham, suffragists had to claim a “right to the city.” They had to learn to read the metropolis as a map overlaid with different grids:  physical neighborhoods and spaces, social networks and hubs, and invisible rhythms and mores. At moments, they did this brilliantly, tapping into the tangle of aspirations that united different subcultures and mobilizing each community’s specific collection of skills in their fight for the vote. At other times, they misread the map completely, invading enclaves of male homosocial culture and stoking fears about feminization. Suffragists’ objective not only threatened a bastion of male constitutional privilege; their tactics sometimes physically encroached on male terrain as well. Over the course of their crusade, lobbyists learned firsthand that strategies successful with one group or neighborhood did not necessarily translate to another, and that voters might be more inclined to accept political equality if packaged in a way that spoke to their own self-​interests. Victory did not spring from some sudden change of heart among voters or an inevitable juggernaut of progress. Suffragists had spent decades slowly conquering their own misgivings about the city, fashioning together a broad base of support, and pushing against an urban gendered geography. The polio epidemic and World War I created the cultural and political context for stalwarts to illustrate how enfranchising women might benefit everyone, as they made use of their urban expertise to blend relief work, education, and enfranchisement. It was a long battle, one filled with disappointments and frustrations. But suffragists did more than win the ballot in 1917; the fight to do so emboldened activists to carve out a greater role for themselves in the nation’s largest metropolis, dining where they pleased, proselytizing on street corners, co-​opting

Epilogue    151 baseball games, and temporarily shutting down Fifth Avenue. It was as much a cultural victory as a political one. Because New  York acted as the country’s communication nerve center, details about these developments quickly flooded other states. Newspapers from Salt Lake City to Richmond to Missoula, Montana, cannibalized suffrage stories from the city’s publications. On the silver screen, Americans could relive the parades, view headquarters, and vicariously participate in Gotham’s movement. The rest of the nation learned about its strategies and used its tactics. Marches in Oakland, California, and later Iowa quickly followed those in Manhattan, and by the early 1910s, suffragists were staging processions and street meetings everywhere from Washington, DC, to Seattle, Washington.10 The National American Woman Suffrage Association’s decision to open Manhattan headquarters only enhanced the New  York City movement’s impact. And, with New York’s amendment in 1917, women gained influence over roughly 10 percent more votes in the Electoral College as well as the ability to shape federal policies via their senators and representatives in Congress. The Empire State was the first state on the East Coast to fully eliminate gender as a criterion for voting. Still, it is important not to overstate New  York’s influence. Not all cities reacted well to the introduction of Gotham-​inspired strategies, as we saw with the Washington, DC, parade in 1913. And many trends found in the Empire City existed elsewhere. Chicago, for instance, witnessed parallel suffrage activities. Its teachers struggled for their rights, and many enrolled in the campaign. Settlement house legend Jane Addams traversed the Windy City’s tenements, favored the vote, and starred in at least one suffrage film.11 Chicagoans also adopted tactics akin to New Yorkers, canvassing their metropolis, publishing arguments in various languages, and organizing street meetings. Illinois granted women partial suffrage in 1913, four years before New York State.12 Moreover, there was not a direct through line from New York enfranchisement to the Nineteenth Amendment. We might expect those representing New  York to endorse a federal amendment after 1917 in order to appease their new constituents. But not all did so. Three members of the House of Representatives from New York State opposed the federal amendment, and five did not vote on it at all in 1919.13 One of New York’s senators, James Wadsworth Jr., also remained opposed to suffrage even after the state amendment. In 1918, Wadsworth tried to prevent the Senate from endorsing enfranchisement.14 He voted against a federal amendment the following year.15 New  York’s victory certainly helped the national drive, but it did not guarantee the Nineteenth Amendment. Masculinity and voting were deeply entwined in American

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culture, to the extent that some men risked their own political future to preserve all (white) men’s electoral prerogatives. The lessons learned from a focus on urban space, gender, and politics in New  York raise questions about the geopolitical trends of suffrage victories across the nation. Historians have detailed militancy, racism, and states’ rights within the campaign, but they have paid less attention to the changes necessary to transform a largely rural, nineteenth-​century movement into one rooted in twentieth-​century American cities. Indeed, most focus on why western women achieved the vote first, not why eastern women achieved it last. Notably, those states and territories that did enfranchise women first (Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho) all lacked large urban centers comparable to those in the East, a fact that studying Gotham throws into stark relief.16 Concerns about women’s safety fused with assumptions about urban residents’ conservatism and corruption in urban politics to shape suffragists’ priorities and strategies. Carrie Chapman Catt summarized these priorities in 1896: “While by popular votes it would not be possible to carry the states of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New  York, Illinois with its great city of Chicago, Wisconsin with its breweries, Missouri with its city of St. Louis, it is possible to carry all the states west of Missouri [emphases added].”17 National leaders’ beliefs affected resource allocation, and city managers’ own delicate waltz with metropolitan notions of respectability narrowed their strategic visions. The presence or absence of large cities cannot in itself explain the geographic trend of suffrage achievements. If it did, all of the states (nearly a dozen) that did not have a city large enough to make the top one hundred most populated metropolises in 1890 would have enfranchised women. Only two of them did by century’s end.18 Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, and North Carolina, for instance, did not include large urban centers; still, they failed to amend their constitutions. In southern states, racism, African American men’s disenfranchisement, and the Civil War’s legacy complicated the campaign.19 Though the prevalence of cities is only one factor explaining the regional pattern of success, it is one that we have largely overlooked. The suffrage centennial reminds us that laws once prohibited women from voting, quite literally making them second-​class citizens. We celebrate heroines such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton who fought to change that status. Museums feature movement milestones: the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, the first victory in Wyoming in 1869, and the Nineteenth Amendment’s adoption in 1920. Photographs of parades, picketers, and paraphernalia flash across computer screens. These are important memories to preserve, especially in an era when just half the eligible

Epilogue    153 population casts their ballot. But in lionizing New York leaders we risk losing the messy reality—​the limited power available to achieve change for second-​ class citizens, the prejudice women of color combated, the exclusions that continued to exist (indigenous women, for instance, remained disfranchised), the corporeality of activism, the rocky landscape of recruitment, and the mundane grunt work and stamina necessary to sustain a movement.20 Victory in New  York City required that activists find power in unexpected places, challenge the status quo in fundamental ways, and renegotiate ingrained notions of “ladylike” behavior. In all, suffragists needed to reimagine women’s place within the metropolis to achieve the ballot. Enfranchisement revolutionized women’s position vis-​ à-​ vis the metropolitan government, but that revolution had limits.21 Women trekking through neighborhoods to their polling place, casting ballots, and voting for everyone from city council members to president did not completely eliminate patriarchal notions of women’s propriety or gendered violence. Suffragists had never promised it would. Even a century after New York City endorsed political equality, a century after women swarmed Fifth Avenue to collectively demand justice, and a century after they held court in a boxing ring, a gendered (along with a class and racial) grid overlays Gotham. The news, television, parents, schools, and film provide warnings about the ways in which the city’s density, spontaneity, and anonymity threaten women’s safety. Catcalling documentaries go viral, highlighting the ways in which women’s bodies continue to be policed.22 SheRides, a taxi company “for women, by women,” responds to concerns about women’s vulnerability.23 Subway flyers advise straphangers to remain alert for “unwanted sexual conduct.” Perhaps less visible, concerns about women’s safety pervade twenty-​first-​century New York, influencing people’s routines, decisions, and expectations—​consciously or not. That anxieties still whirl around women’s bodies in urban space lays bare the fact that claiming a “right to the city” is dramatically different from achieving that right; that protesting on the streets is different from controlling those streets;24 that the vote’s ability to enact change has limitations; and that ascriptive privilege has an evolutionary quality, able to adapt to and find power within shifting environments.25 Such circumscribed changes are not unique to the suffrage campaign. The Voting Rights Act similarly failed to vanquish racism, just as marriage equality has not eradicated homophobia. We have still not completely dismantled the (largely invisible) structures that necessitated the movement for enfranchisement in the first place. Those structures deal in culture as much as politics, in permissions as much as restrictions, and in bodies as much as ideas. Cities depend on these systems

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to, ostensibly, maintain order and stability. At the same time, they provide the resources—​the people, the social networks, the landmarks, the media, the transportation, the commercial venues and public spaces—​to subvert such structures. Mobilizing them remains a project for a new generation of activists, and for the scholars who trace their lives across the urban stage.

Appendix Key Suffrage Organizations in Manhattan

Organization

Established

Influential Leader(s)

Name Changes/​Affiliations

Civic and Political Equality Union Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York State Empire State Campaign Committee Equal Franchise Society Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women Harlem Equal Rights League Interurban Political Equality League

1897 1905

Lillie Devereux Blake Katrina Ely Tiffany; Jessie Ashley

Joined Empire State Campaign Committee in 1913

1913 1908 1907

Carrie Chapman Catt Katherine Mackay Harriot Stanton Blatch

Joined Empire State Campaign Committee in 1913 Became Women’s Political Union in 1910

1905 1903

Maud Malone Carrie Chapman Catt

Became Interurban Woman Suffrage Council in 1907

Manhattan Equal Suffrage League Men’s League for Woman Suffrage New York City Woman Suffrage League

1900 1909 1870

Gail Laughlin Max Eastman; James Lees Laidlaw Lillie Devereux Blake

New York Equal Suffrage League New York State Woman Suffrage Association

1901 1869

Carrie Chapman Catt Lillie Devereux Blake; Mariana Chapman

New York State Woman Suffrage Party

1915

Progressive Woman Suffrage Union Wage Earners’ League for Woman Suffrage Women’s Political Union Woman Suffrage Party (New York City)

1907 1911

Carrie Chapman Catt; Vira Boarman Whitehouse Maud Malone Leonora O’Reilly

1910 1909

Harriot Stanton Blatch Carrie Chapman Catt; Mary G. Hay

Became New York Equal Suffrage League Joined Empire State Campaign Committee in 1913 Became New York County Woman Suffrage League in 1898 Formerly Manhattan Equal Suffrage League Joined Empire State Campaign Committee in 1913; became New York State Woman Suffrage Party in 1915 Formerly New York State Woman Suffrage Association

Formerly Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women Joined Empire State Campaign Committee in 1913

Notes Introduction 1. Reel 2, vol. 17, National American Woman Suffrage Association (hereafter NAWSA) Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, New York Public Library (hereafter NYPL), New York, New York. 2. By “suffrage movement” or “campaign,” I am referring primarily to the work of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), its local affiliates, and organizations that NAWSA considered its greatest competitors. It is important to clarify this since it affects methodological scope, approach, and findings—​points too often left implied in the literature, especially given the larger fight for voting rights in American history that extended well beyond these organizations. The nickname “Gotham” originated with Washington Irving in 1807. It was regularly used in newspapers as a synonym for New York by century’s turn. Irving Lewis Allen, “Gotham,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 518. 3. Henri Lefebvre first discussed this right five decades ago. Since then, geographers have elaborated on his theory, breaking down the concept into the “right to participation” in decisions about the “production of urban space” and the “right to appropriation” or access. David Harvey has emphasized an important, if abstract, third dimension: “to change and reinvent the city more after our hearts’ desire.” Much of the scholarship dealing with this concept has centered on Marxist critiques of neoliberalism, examining how economic changes have left urban residents powerless to shape their cities. As such, the “right to the city” remains an ideal to be achieved. But the theory’s revelatory power does not end there. It can also lay bare women’s struggles against the physical and social boundaries that policed gender norms in nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century American cities. My understanding draws from Mark Purcell, “Citizenship and the Right to the Global City: Reimagining the Capitalist World Order,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27, no. 3 (September 2003): 564–​90; Mark Purcell, “Excavating Lefebvre: The Right to the City and Its Urban Politics of the Inhabitants,” GeoJournal 58 (2002): 99–​108; Eugene J. McCann, “Space, Citizenship, and the Right to the City: A Brief Overview,” GeoJournal 58 (2002): 77–​79; David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (London: Verso, 2012), 4.

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Notes to pages 2–3

4. Fremont Rider, ed., Rider’s New York City and Vicinity, Including Newark, Yonkers, and Jersey City (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1916), v. 5. Mona Domosh, “Shaping the Commercial City: Retail Districts in Nineteenth-​ Century New York and Boston,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80, no. 2 (1990): 268–​84. 6. H. B. (Harriet Burton) Laidlaw Papers, 1851–​1958, Anna Howard Shaw to Harriet Burton Laidlaw, September 29, 1916, Folder 160, Reel 6, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 7. Walter Laidlaw, ed., Statistical Sources for Demographic Studies of Greater New York, 1920 (New York: New York City 1920 Census Committee, 1922), xxxiii; Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1931), 280, 748. 8. Seeing New York: The Metropolis of the Western World as Seen from Touring Car, Boat, Bridge, and Skyscraper: A Descriptive Guide for the Tourist (Boston: John F. Murphy, 1906),  5–​6. 9. For women in higher education, see Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985). 10. Jane Hodson, ed., How to Become a Trained Nurse: A Manual of Information in Detail (New York: William Abbatt, 1898), 167–​72, 178–​89. 11. US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, Regularity of Employment in Women’s Ready-​to-​Wear Garment Industries, Bulletin 183 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1915), 23. 12. For changes in the consumer landscape, see William R. Leach, “Transformations in a Culture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890–​1925,” Journal of American History 71, no. 2 (September 1984): 319–​42; Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-​of-​the-​Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986). 13. Daphne Spain, How Women Saved the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 125; Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830–​1900 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 309–​11. 14. Joanne J. Meyerowitz has discussed this in terms of Chicago. See Joanne J. Meyerwoitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880–​1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). 15. This draws on Richard Stott, Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-​Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-​Class Culture in America, 1830–​1870 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825–​1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). 16. Michael Monahan, “The American Peril,” The Reply: An Anti-​Suffrage Magazine (1914), 19–​21; quote originally cited in Shelley Stamp, Movie-​Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 165.

Notes to pages 3–4    159 17. See Sharon E. Wood, The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship, and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005),  1–​13. 18. Rosalind Rosenberg, Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think about Sex and Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004),  93–​94. 19. Thomas Kessner, Capital City: New York City and the Men Behind America’s Rise to Economic Dominance, 1860–​1900 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), xvi; David M. Scobey, Empire City: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), 15–​54; Thorin Tritter, “Paper Profits in Public Service: Money Making in the New York Newspaper Industry, 1830–​1930” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2000); Richard Koscarski, Hollywood on the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008). 20. For a discussion of race and class in Boston, see Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870–​1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–​ 1860 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 145; Paula E. Hyman, “Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York City Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902,” American Jewish History 70, no. 1 (September 1980): 91–​105. 21. One of the earliest accounts exploring feminism and urbanization, Barbara J. Berg’s The Remembered Gate, focuses on female voluntary associations in cities up until the Civil War. See Barbara J. Berg, The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism: The Woman and the City, 1800–​1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978). Other pioneering works include Stansell, City of Women; Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women; Peiss, Cheap Amusements; Ryan, Women in Public; Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-​Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Maureen A. Flanagan, “The City Profitable, the City Livable: Environmental Policy, Gender, and Power in Chicago in the 1910s,” Journal of Urban History 22, no. 2 (January 1996): 163–​90. Works that deal adroitly with class, race, and/​or ethnicity include Deutsch, Women and the City; Mary Ting Yi Lui, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-​of-​the-​Century New York City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). Works on consumer culture include Andrew P. Haley, Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle-​Class, 1880–​1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Mona Domosh, “The ‘Women of New York’: A Fashionable Moral Geography,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19, no. 5 (2001): 573–​92. 22. Deutsch, Women and the City. 23. Aileen Kraditor’s, Ellen Carol DuBois’s, and Eleanor Flexner’s studies stand as the pioneering works within the discipline. See Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–​ 1869 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978); Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement: 1890–​1920 (New York: Columbia University Press,

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Notes to pages 4–5

1965; New York: W. W. Norton, 1981); Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States, enl. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996). For revisions, see, for example, Suzanne Marilley, Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 1820–​1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Sara Hunter Graham, Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). For works on race and class in the South, see, for instance, Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, New Women in the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Elna C. Green, Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). For consumer culture and suffrage, see Margaret Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). For spectacle, see Susan A. Glenn, Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). 24. The leading works on New York State include Susan Goodier, No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-​Suffrage Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013); Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello, Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017); Ellen Carol DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); David Kevin McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood: Women’s Culture and the Politics of Suffrage in New York State, 1865–​1917” (PhD diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1987); Johanna Neuman, Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote (New York: NYU Press, 2017); Brooke Kroeger, The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017); Elinor Lerner, “Immigrant and Working Class Involvement in the New York City Woman Suffrage Movement, 1905–​1917: A Study in Progressive Era Politics” (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1981). 25. David Kevin McDonald considered the relationship between New York City and suffrage as early as 1987, but he was most concerned with the effects that centralizing the campaign in Manhattan had on the state movement, rather than the causes of that centralization. Jessica Ellen Sewell, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890–​1915 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood.” 26. Allison L. Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870–​1929 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 27. Holly J. McCammon and Karen E. Campbell, “Winning the Vote in the West: The Political Successes of the Women’s Suffrage Movements, 1866–​1919,” Gender and Society 15, no. 1 (February 2001): 55–​82; Holly J. McCammon, Karen E. Campbell, Ellen M. Granberg, and Christine Mowery, “How Movements Win: Gendered Opportunity Structures and U.S. Women’s Suffrage Movements, 1866 to 1919,” American Sociological Review 66, no. 1 (February 2001): 49–​70; Rebecca Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868–​1914

Notes to pages 5–11    161 (New York: NYU Press, 2004); Beverly Beeton, “How the West Was Won for Suffrage,” in One Woman, One Vote, ed. Marjorie Spruill Wheeler (Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 1995), 99–​116.

Chapter 1 1. “City and Country Houses,” Revolution, December 2, 1871. 2. Mary Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825–​1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 58–​94; Joanne Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880–​1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), xix. 3. Quote and details in Lori D. Ginzberg, Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman’s Rights in Antebellum New York (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 7. 4. David Kevin McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood: Women’s Culture and the Politics of Suffrage in New York State, 1865–​1917” (PhD diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1987), 22–​29. 5. See Lisa Tetrault, The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848–​1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 2–​3. 6. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 3 (Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony, 1886; New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1969), 395–​97. 7. The New York City Woman Suffrage League was originally named the New York City Women Suffrage Society, but leaders changed it to the New York City Woman Suffrage League in 1886 to distinguish it from competing organizations. Lillie Devereux Blake (hereafter LDB) Diary, Copy of March 14, 1886, Folder 21, Box 2, Lillie Devereux Blake Papers (hereafter LDB Papers), Missouri Historical Society (hereafter MH), St. Louis, Missouri. 8. Katherine Devereux Blake and Margaret Louise Wallace, Champion of Women: The Life of Lillie Devereux Blake (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1943), 59; Grace Farrell, Lillie Devereux Blake: Retracing a Life Erased (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 3–​51, 73–​100, 108, 119–​22, 155. 9. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” The Woman’s Journal (hereafter TWJ), January 27, 1894. 10. Proceedings of the Twenty-​Sixth Annual Convention of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Held in Washington, D.C., February 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20, 1894, ed. Harriet Taylor Upton (Warren, OH: Chronicle Print, n.d.), 23. 11. According to Thomas Kessner, 298 “major American businesses, each worth more than $1 million, were headquartered in Manhattan” in 1895. See Ida Husted Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 5 (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922; Arno & the New York Times, 1969), xviii; Thomas Kessner, Capital City: New York City and the Men behind America’s Rise to Economic Dominance, 1860–​1900 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 308–​9. 12. Ryan, Women in Public,  58–​94.

162 

 

Notes to pages 11–12

13. Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-​ Class Culture in America, 1830–​1870 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 1–​32; Pamela Lupkin, Manhood Factories: YMCA Architecture and the Making of the Modern Urban Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 1–​10. 14. David Hammack has challenged this portrayal of late nineteenth-​century Gotham to highlight the role of the middle class. See David Hammack, Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1982), 60–​62; Angela Blake, How New York Became American, 1890–​1924 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 7–​9. 15. Quote and information in Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 777–​78. 16. This was not entirely inaccurate. Between 1840 and 1890, Gotham went from a city without professional law enforcement to one with a large police force, growing criminal underworld, and exponentially increasing murder rate. Timothy J. Gilfoyle, A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-​Century New York (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), xiii, 68; Ryan, Women in Public, 68. 17. Gilfoyle, A Pickpocket’s Tale, 85, 185; John F. Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-​Century Urban America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990), 100–​105. 18. Working-​class women had a different relationship to the city—​one less clearly delineated by public and private spheres. See Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–​1860 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987). 19. Ryan, Women in Public, 68–​76; Kasson, Rudeness and Civility, 128–​29. 20. Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood, Manners and Social Usages (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1884), 58–​59, 62. 21. Sherwood, Manners and Social Usages, 120–​24. 22. Social Etiquette of New York (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1879), 22–​23, 29–​30, New-​York Historical Society, New York, New York. 23. Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 1158–​60; Also see Barbara J. Berg, The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism: The Woman and the City, 1800–​1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 176–​222. 24. “A Great Danger,” Revolution, February 2, 1871. 25. Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 1–​2; Sharon E. Wood, The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Sexuality and Citizenship in a Gilded Age City (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 161–​62. 26. That these measures had been used to threaten all women must have been clear to suffragists. Just a decade earlier, Civil War general Benjamin Butler infamously declared that any New Orleans women who “by word, gesture or movement insult or show contempt” for Union soldiers be “treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.” Information and quote from Catherine Clinton, “‘Public Women’ and Sexual Politics during the American Civil War,” in Battle Scars: Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War, ed. Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 64–​65; “A Great Danger,” Revolution, February 2, 1871.

Notes to pages 12–13    163 27. “Reasons for Licensing the Social Evil,” Revolution, March 23, 1871. 28. “Legalized Crime,” Revolution, March 23, 1871; Rodger Streitmatter, Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001),  39–​53. 29. This reading was informed by Judith Walkowitz’s work on London. See Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-​Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 30. “Gossip and Gleanings,” TWJ, March 21, 1885; “Drift of Thought,” National Citizen and Ballot Box, December 1880; “Girls Smoking in the Street,” National Citizen and Ballot Box, May 1881. 31. Draft of LDB Autobiography, Box 4, Folder 22, Chapter 13, 12–​13, LDB Papers, MH. 32. Cited in Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 63–​64. 33. Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women, 55. 34. This draws from Mona Domosh, Invented Cities: The Creation of Landscape in Nineteenth-​Century New York and Boston (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 35–​64; Mona Domosh and Joni Seager, Putting Women in Place: Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World (New York: Guilford, 2001), 88–​93. Also see William R. Leach, “Transformations in a Culture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890–​1925,” Journal of American History 71, no. 2 (September 1984): 319–​42; Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890–​1940 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Elaine Abelson, When Ladies Go A-​Thieving: Middle-​Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990),  13–​62. 35. Maud C. Cooke, 20th Century Hand-​Book of Etiquette or Key to Social and Business Success (Philadelphia: Co-​Operative Publishing Co, 1899), 335–​36. 36. Mona Domosh, “The ‘Women of New York’: A Fashionable Moral Geography,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19, no. 5 (2001): 573–​92. 37. For more information on Woodhull, see Amanda Frisken, Victoria Woodhull’s Sexual Revolution: Political Theatre and the Popular Press in Nineteenth-​Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2004), especially 1–​54; George Robb, Ladies of the Ticker: Women and Wall Street from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 110–​43. 38. Celia Burleigh, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, March 26, 1870; Celia Burleigh, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, May 14, 1870; “Do Women Vote in New York,” TWJ, March 22, 1879. Also see Celia Burleigh, “Our New York Letter,” May 7, 1870, TWJ, for complaints about the ugliness of the city. This should not suggest that women felt completely safe in rural areas. In fact, one of the first times Blake expressed discomfort in her autobiography was during a trip to the Midwest. See LDB Autobiography, Chapter XL, pp. 15–​16, Folder 5, Box 5, LDB Papers, MH; Kenneth A. Scherzer, The Unbounded Community: Neighborhood Life and Social Structure in New York City, 1830–​ 1875 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992), 20.

164 

 

Notes to pages 14–17

39. Lillie Devereux Blake, Fettered for Life Or Lord and Master, A Story of To-​Day (New York: Sheldon & Company, 1874; New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1996), 9, 26, 35. 40. Blake, Fettered for Life,  9–​12. 41. Blake, Fettered for Life, 26. 42. Blake, Fettered for Life, 366. 43. Grace Farrell has reached a similar conclusion. See afterword to Blake, Fettered for Life, 404. 44. Blake, Fettered for Life, 314, 348. 45. Blake, Fettered for Life, 48, 319. 46. Blake’s perception of “women adrift” in nineteenth-​century Gotham follows the pattern that Joanne Meyerowitz has found in turn-​of-​the-​century Chicago. According to Meyerowitz, middle-​class women assumed that single women traveling to the city would be consumed by urban crime and vice in the late nineteenth century; she contends that this perception changed by the 1920s. Meyerowitz, Women Adrift, xvii–​xxiii. 47. “New Books,” Independent Statesman, April 23, 1874. 48. Quoted in Farrell, afterword to Blake, Fettered for Life, 388. 49. This paper did comment that a scene in the courthouse where innocent women were kept overnight was unrealistic. Boston Daily Advertiser, April 7, 1874. 50. LDB, “New York Letter,” TWJ, November 8, 1890. 51. In 1892, for instance, the New York City Woman Suffrage League finally moved its monthly gatherings out of the home of John Lovell, a publisher, and his wife because Lovell had pledged to allow the organization to hold meetings in the hall he owned on Twenty-​Third Street. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, October 1, 1892. 52. Jessica Ellen Sewell has discussed this in California and contends that “cultural and strategic choice[s]‌more than financial” considerations influenced the San Francisco movement’s decisions. See Jessica Ellen Sewell, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890–​1915 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 134. 53. Marc Ferris, “Chickering Hall,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 238; Marc Ferris and Richard K. Lieberman, “Steinway Hall,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 1243. 54. LDB Autobiography, Chapter XXV, Folder 16, Box 4, LDB Papers, MH; LDB Autobiography, Chapter XL, pp. 2–​3, Folder 5, Box 5, LDB Papers, MH. 55. Katherine Devereux Blake draft of LDB biography, “My Mother’s Friends,” p. 2, Folder 18, Box 5, LDB Papers, MH. 56. Fletcher W. Battershall, The Law of Domestic Relations in the State of New York (Albany, NY: Matthew Bender & Company, 1910), 256–​58; Natasha Kirsten Kraus, A New Type of Womanhood: Discursive Politics and Social Change in Antebellum America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 161–​210. 57. LDB Autobiography, Chapter XXV, Folder 16, Box 4, LDB Papers, MH.

Notes to pages 17–20    165 58. The phrase “capital city” draws from Kessner, Capital City. 59. For information on working-​class New Yorkers’ uses of the city, see Stansell, City of Women. 60. Ryan, Women in Public,  19–​57. 61. Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 239–​44; Susan Branson, These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 55–​99; Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 68–​75. 62. “Liberty’s Great Statue,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), October 28, 1886; “In Honor of the Statue,” NYT, October 24, 1886. 63. LDB Diary, Copy of October 28, 1886, Folder 21, Box 2, LDB Papers, MH; Blake and Wallace, Champion of Women, 165. 64. “They Enter a Protest,” NYT, October 29, 1886. 65. Blake and Wallace, Champion of Women, 179; LDB Diary, Copy of October 12, 1892, Folder 2, Box 3, LDB Papers, MH; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, October 8, 1892. 66. “State Correspondence,” TWJ, April 1, 1911; “Glimpses of the Parade,” TWJ, May 11, 1912; “Half Million Cheer Parade,” TWJ, November 16, 1912. 67. “Centennial,” Ballot Box, October 1876; Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 3, 27–​45; “City of the Declaration,” NYT, July 5, 1876. 68. “Liberty’s Great Statue,” NYT, October 28, 1886. 69. They did deliver speeches in Union Square during a demonstration for Home Rule for Ireland in 1886. However, they generally only used public spaces during celebrations. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, July 10, 1886; LDB Diary, Copy of July 5, 1886, Folder 21, Box 2, LDB Papers, MH. 70. Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 1036–​37, 1091. 71. Portions of the following discussion on the 1894 New York State Constitutional Convention were initially published in my article “‘The Merry War Goes On’: Elite Suffrage in Gilded Age New York,” New York History 98, no. 3–​4 (Summer/​Fall 2017): 343–​66. 72. The final resolution at the 1894 Constitutional Convention proposed asking voters to consider the suffrage amendment separately from a revised constitution. Peter Galie, Ordered Liberty: A Constitutional History of New York (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996), 159–​61; Peter J. Galie, The New York State Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 20; 1894: Constitutional Campaign Year, Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, Twenty-​Sixth Annual Convention, Ithaca, NY, November 12–​15 (Rochester, NY: Charles Mann Press, 1895), 71. 73. Not everyone was so optimistic. In 1892, Mary Seymour Howell responded to a request Isabel Howland made for her help, informing Howland that she would not be able to comply. Explaining that while she hoped suffragists would be successful, she did not think it likely. Not only was New York State far from organized, according to Howell, there were also very few “out and out” suffrage women. See

166 

 

Notes to pages 20–22

Letter, Mary Seymour Howell to Isabel Howland, December 19, 1892, Folder 75, Box 1, Isabel Howland Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts; “Address of Mary Putnam-​Jacobi,” TWJ, June 16, 1894; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, January 27, 1894. 74. See Allison L. Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870–​1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 75. Proceedings of the Twenty-​Sixth Annual Convention (February 1894), 17–​26. 76. Proceedings of the Twenty-​Sixth Annual Convention (February 1894), 19. 77. The New York State campaign did benefit from a handful of “helpers from outside the State,” but it remains unclear if the national organization facilitated this collaboration. Proceedings of the Twenty-​Seventh Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association Held in Atlanta, GA., January 31st to February 5th, 1895, ed. Harriet Taylor Upton (Warren, OH: Wm. Ritezel & Co., Printers, n.d.), 104; 1894, 164. 78. Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 (Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony, 1902; New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1969), 849; 1894, 155. 79. “Woman Suffrage Association,” NYT, February 16, 1894; “Persons and Places,” NYT, February 25, 1894. 80. Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, 25th Annual Convention, 18–​19, National American Woman Suffrage Association (hereafter NAWSA) Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, New York Public Library (hereafter NYPL), New York, New York. 81. She expressed reluctance as early as 1892. See Letter, Lillie Devereux Blake to Isabel Howland, December 28, 1892, Folder: Letters to Isabel Howland, Box 1, Blake Family Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts; Minutes of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association (hereafter NYSWSA), November 17, 1893, Woman Suffrage Association of New York State (hereafter WSANYS) Papers, Box 1 and Volume 2, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, New York. 82. LDB Diary, Copy of November 17, 1893, Folder 3, Box 3, LDB Papers, MH. 83. Farrell, Lillie Devereux Blake, 161–​65. 84. For Susan B. Anthony’s frustration with Blake over her refusal to embrace canvassing, see Letter, Susan B. Anthony to LDB, December 11, 1893, Folder 8, Box 7, LDB Papers, MH; Letter, Susan B. Anthony to LDB, December 29, 1893, Folder 8, Box 7, LDB Papers, MH; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, June 9, 1894. 85. Later, Ida Harper Husted too acknowledged that it “had been impossible” to make a “thorough canvass” of New York City and Brooklyn. Ida Harper Husted, ed., The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony; Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many from Her Contemporaries during Fifty Years, vol. 2 (Indianapolis: Bowen-​Merrill Company, 1898), 755–​76. 86. “Club Women and Students,” NYT, January 14, 1894. 87. Two years later, California suffragists placed their headquarters in the Emporium building in San Francisco, which also housed a department store. Sewell,

Notes to pages 22–23    167 Women and the Everyday City, 140–​41; “Ladies’ Mile,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 716; Eric Homberger, The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1998), 102; Eric Homberger, Mrs. Astor’s New York: Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 65. 88. Moses King, King’s Handbook of New York City: An Outline History and Description of the American Metropolis (Boston: Moses King, 1892), 132–​34. 89. George W. Bromley and Walter S. Bromley, Atlas of the City of New York, Manhattan Island: From Actual Surveys and Official Plans (Philadelphia: G. W. Bromley, 1897), Plates 11 and 14; Homberger, The Historical Atlas of New York City, 102–​3; Ernest Ingersoll, A Week in New York (New York: Rand, McNally & Co., 1891), 100–​101. 90. Sewell, Women and the Everyday City, 26–​27; Benson, Counter Cultures, 19; Leach, “Transformations in a Culture of Consumption,” 331–​33. 91. Kessner, Capital City, 204–​5, 238. 92. One wealthy woman who was involved early on and became a close friend of Blake was Susan B. King. A wealthy property owner and partner in the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Stores, King became involved in the campaign because of the obstacles she encountered in controlling her property. Blake and Wallace, Champion of Women, 132; Katherine Devereux Blake’s draft of LDB biography, “Miss Susan King,” pp. 1–​2, Folder 18, Box 5, LDB Papers, MH; Maureen E. Montgomery, Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith Wharton’s New York (New York: Routledge, 1998), 141–​62. 93. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, March 28, 1885; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, April 4, 1885; “Our Unconscious Allies,” TWJ, May 23, 1885; LDB Diary, Copy of March 24, 1885, Folder 20, Box 2, LDB Papers, MH. 94. Letter, Juliette Arden to LDB, March 22, 1894, Folder 9, Box 7, LDB Papers, MH; Letter, Juliette Arden to LDB, March 25, 1894, Folder 9, Box 7, LDB Papers, MH. 95. Carla Bittel, Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-​ Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 99–​109, 204–​8, 215–​20. 96. Bittel, Mary Putnam Jacobi,  207–​8. 97. Her friends ranged from Mary Garrett, the extremely wealthy daughter of a railroad magnate; to Carl Schurz, a revolutionary, politician, and reformer; to Frank Boas, an influential anthropologist. Bittel, Mary Putnam Jacobi, 166; Kathleen Water Sanders, Mary Elizabeth Garrett: Society and Philanthropy in the Gilded Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 88–​89. 98. This group was called by a variety of names during the campaign, including the Committee of Six and the Sherry Committee. This reflected its unofficial and amorphous status. See Ruth Crocker, Mrs. Russell Sage: Women’s Activism and Philanthropy in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 157; Mary Putnam Jacobi’s Report to Jean Greenleaf, 1894, 217–​18. 99. Lucia Gilbert Runkle, “A New Knock at an Old Door,” in Women and Higher Education, ed. Anna C. Brackett (New York: Harper, 1893), 79–​102; “Death of C. A. Runkle,” NYT, March 20, 1888.

168 

 

Notes to pages 23–25

100. “Obituary,” NYT, February 24, 1891; Mitchell C. Harrison, Prominent and Progressive Americans: An Encyclopedia of Contemporaneous Biography, vol. 1 (New York: Tribune Association, 1902), 147–​49; “Ben Ali Haggin,” Salt Lake Herald, March 4, 1891; “Mrs. Ben Ali Haggin,” Morning Call, July 12, 1891; “Mrs. Haggin Dead,” NYT, August 8, 1934. 101. “Joined for Life,” NYT, November 15, 1891; “Mrs. Catherine Amory B. Abbe,” NYT, September 28, 1920; “The Nineteenth Century Club,” NYT, January 10, 1883. 102. “Obituary,” NYT, August 8, 1905; “Obituary,” New-​York Tribune, January 21, 1884. 103. Helen Norton Stevens, Memorial Biography of Adele M. Fielde, Humanitarian (New York: Fielde Memorial Committee, 1918), 147, 232–​35. 104. Ward McAllister coined the idea of the Four Hundred. According to McAllister, there were only four hundred people who truly composed New York’s fashionable world. Money alone did not grant someone access to the Four Hundred; good breeding and sophistication were necessary. One paper was more nuanced: these were individuals in the “Four Hundred, but not of it.” They tended to be women who had received higher education and spent their time reforming society. “Parlor Suffrage Tidal Wave,” New York Herald, April 11, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “New Woman Suffragist,” April 19, 1894, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL; Homberger, Mrs. Astor’s New York, 212–​15. 105. Margaret Chanler Aldrich, Family Vista: The Memoirs of Margaret Chanler Aldrich (New York: William-​Frederick Press, 1958), 59–​64, 70; For the family’s background, see Lately Thomas, The Astor Orphans: A Pride of Lions (Albany, NY: Washington Press Park, 1999). 106. The Rockefellers moved to Gotham in 1883. Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York: Random House, 1998), 218–​19; Russell Sage relocated to New York City from upstate New York in 1863. Olivia Sage moved to Gotham after their marriage in 1869. Crocker, Mrs. Russell Sage, 77, 80–​85. 107. Call to the Public, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 108. “The Fight for Women,” New-​York Tribune, April 16, 1894; “Equal Suffrage for Women,” NYT, April 15, 1894. 109. “Suffragists on the Warpath,” NYT, May 3, 1894. 110. Homberger, Mrs. Astor’s New York, 11–​23, 202–​10; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 1072–​73; Montgomery, Displaying Women, 141–​62. 111. Letter, Elizabeth Jordan to LDB, April 25, 1894, Folder 9, Box 7, LDB Papers, MH. 112. “Should Women Vote?,” Press, April 15, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Parlor Suffrage Tidal Wave,” New York Herald, April 11, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Society Women Want Votes,” NYT, April 11, 1894. 113. “The Lady and the Female,” Evening World, April 14, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 114. “Parlor Suffrage Meeting,” New York Herald, April 14, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Obituaries,” American Lawyer 9 (December 1901); Town Topics, April

Notes to pages 25–28    169 5, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Incidents in Society,” New-​York Tribune, January 10, 1894. 115. “The Woman Have the Floor,” World, April 23, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 116. “The Lady and the Female,” Evening World, April 14, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 117. For “conspicuous leisure,” see Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (London: Macmillan & Company, 1899); Telegram–​New York, April 7, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 118. Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 1185–​86. 119. The New York City Woman Suffrage League did infrequently make use of similar spaces. For instance, it held a luncheon for Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the Plaza Hotel in 1892. However, these instances were exceptions to the more general pattern of commercial halls or private homes, and elegant establishments were never used as headquarters. Sorosis, an influential woman’s club, frequently used Delmonico’s and Sherry’s for luncheons and meetings. See Blake and Wallace, Champion of Women, 178–​79; LDB Diary, Copy of May 7–​8, 1892, Folder 2, Box 3, LDB Papers, MH; for Sorosis, see Karen J. Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–​1914 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980), 20–​21; LDB Diary, Copy of December 7, 1891, Folder 1, Box 3, LDB Papers, MH. 120. “Working for Woman Suffrage,” NYT, March 25, 1894. 121. “Society Leaders’ Suffrage Crusade,” Philadelphia Press, April 24, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 122. “To Strike out the Word ‘Male,’” New York Herald, March 24, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 123. Homberger, Mrs. Astor’s New York,  15–​16. 124. “The Question of the Hour,” Examiner, May 10, 1894. 125. “Society Women Want Votes,” NYT, April 11, 1894. 126. Aldrich, Family Vista, 70. 127. Letter, Mary Putnam Jacobi to LDB, April 29, Folder 16, Box 8, LDB Papers, MH. Also see Letter, Mary Putnam Jacobi to Margaret Chanler, June 1, 1894, Suffrage File, Rokeby Archives, Barrytown, New York. 128. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, May 5, 1894. Also see LDB, “New York Campaign Notes,” Woman’s Tribune, April 28, 1894. 129. Margaret L. Chanler, “The Equal Suffrage Campaign in New York, An Informal Report and Some Suggestions,” Suffrage File, Rokeby Archives. 130. Letter, Mary Putnam Jacobi to LDB, May 9, Folder 16, Box 8, LDB Papers, MH. 131. “Workingwomen and the State,” TWJ, June 30, 1894. 132. “Two Meetings for Women,” Herald, April 12, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 133. “Cut Friends for the ‘Cause,’” NYT, April 23, 1894. 134. “Planning Their Campaign,” NYT, April 28, 1894; “Why They Oppose the Ballot,” NYT, April 26, 1894. For more information on the anti-​suffrage movement

170 

 

Notes to pages 28–30

in New York State, see Susan Goodier, No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-​ Suffrage Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 15–​39. 135. “As to Woman’s Suffrage,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 26, 1894. 136. Anti-​Suffrage Petition, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL; Jerome Mushkat, “Hewitt, Abram S.,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 594; George A. Thompson Jr., “Gilder, Richard Watson,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 509. 137. “The Question of the Hour,” Examiner, May 10, 1894. 138. “The Merry War Goes On,” New-​York Tribune, April 29, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 139. “Women Who Would Not Vote,” NYT, April 22, 1894; “They Would Scorn to Vote,” NYT, April 24, 1894. 140. “Stole March on the ‘Antis,’” NYT, May 3, 1894; “Women Who Would Not Vote,” NYT, April 22, 1894. 141. “Cut Friends for the ‘Cause,’” NYT, April 23, 1894; “Planning Their Campaign,” NYT, April 28, 1894. 142. “Seeking the Right to Vote,” NYT, April 13, 1894. 143. Aileen S. Kraditor’s research demonstrates that this nativism was not unique to the New York State movement. Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement: 1890–​1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965; New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 123–​62. 144. Adele M. Fielde, “Statistics Bearing on Equal Suffrage,” Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 145. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1894 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1895), 393. 146. “Seeking the Right to Vote,” NYT, April 13, 1894, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 147. This number is for the Sherry’s meeting alone. Jacobi’s Report to Greenleaf, 1894, 219; “Not Room for All Who Came,” NYT, May 4, 1894. 148. 1894,  9–​10. 149. There is no extant copy of Chanler’s speech. This summary is from Jacobi. Letter, Mary Putnam Jacobi to Margaret Chanler, June 1, Suffrage File, Rokeby Archives. 150. “Address of Mary Putnam Jacobi,” TWJ, June 16, 1894. 151. 1894,  26–​30. 152. “Address by Harriette A. Keyser,” 1894, 30–​33, 198. 153. “Will Help Elect Flower,” NYT, October 14, 1891; “A Representative Convention,” NYT, May 31, 1892; Anthony and Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, 850. 154. Matthew Hale of Albany also spoke against suffrage and brought up the issue of urban dangers. For Hale, Gotham was filled with thirty to fifty thousand prostitutes. If these women were willing to “sell” their bodies, they would be happy to “sell their votes.” Francis M. Scott, Speech of Francis M. Scott before the Committee on Suffrage of the New York State Constitutional Convention, June 14, 1894, Open Collections

Notes to pages 30–34    171 Program, Widener Library, Harvard University; “Opposing Woman Suffrage,” NYT, June 15, 1894; Matthew Hale, “The Useless Risk of the Ballot for Women,” Forum 17 (March–​August 1894): 406–​12. 155. Anthony and Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, 852; Husted, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, vol. 2, 767; “Equal Suffrage Their Aim,” NYT, April 12, 1894. 156. Revised Record of the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York: May 8, 1894 to September 29, 1894, revised by William H. Steele, vol. 2 (Albany, NY: Argus Company Printers, 1900), 561. 157. Revised Record of the Constitutional Convention, vol. 2, 528. 158. Revised Record of the Constitutional Convention, vol. 2, 509–​10. 159. “Woman Suffrage Defeated,” NYT, August 16, 1894. 160. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacobi (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925), 378–​80. 161. Proceedings of the Twenty-​Eighth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association Held in Washington, D.C., January 23rd to 28th, 1896, ed. Rachel Foster Avery (Philadelphia: Press of Alfred J. Ferris, n.d.), 136. 162. Proceedings of the Twenty-​Ninth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association at the Central Christian Church . . . 1897, ed. Rachel Foster Avery (Philadelphia: Press of Alfred J. Ferris, n.d.), 66–​67. 163. Letter, Carrie Chapman Catt to Catherine Abbe, November 27, 1908, Reel 1, NAWSA Records, NYPL.

Chapter 2 1. Proceedings of the Twenty-​Seventh Annual Convention of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Held in Atlanta, GA., January 31st to February 5th, 1895, ed. Harriet Taylor Upton (Warren, Ohio: Wm. Ritezel & Co., Printers, n.d.), 8, 113–​14. 2. The National Council of Women organized the event. Letter, Susan B. Anthony (hereafter SBA) to Lillie Devereux Blake (hereafter LDB), March 19, 1895, Folder 10, Box 7, Lillie Devereux Blake Papers (hereafter LDB Papers), Missouri Historical Society (hereafter MH), St. Louis, Missouri; “Mrs. Stanton’s Birthday,” Sun, November 13, 1895. 3. Moses King, King’s Handbook of New York City: An Outline History and Description of the American Metropolis (Boston: Moses King, 1892), 546. 4. “Elizabeth Cady Stanton Birthday Celebration,” Woman’s Tribune, December 28, 1895; “Honors for Mrs. Stanton,” New-​York Tribune, November 13, 1895. 5. Mariana Chapman Diary, December 31, 1895, Box 4, Mariana W. Chapman Family Papers, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. 6. “Event of the Century,” New York Recorder, November 13, 1895. 7. Grace Farrell, Lillie Devereux Blake: Retracing A Life Erased (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 174. 8. According to Eleanor Flexner, the national movement stagnated from 1896 to 1910, marking its “doldrums.” Unsuccessful state campaigns and the federal

172 

 

Notes to pages 34–35

amendment’s marginalization in Congress defined this period. In striking contrast, Sara Hunter Graham celebrates the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s “renaissance” in this era: new organizational strategies, including efforts to enroll socialites and memorialize pioneers, enlivened the movement. Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States, enl. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 241; Sara Hunter Graham, “The Suffrage Renaissance: A New Image for a New Century, 1896–​ 1910,” in One Woman, One Vote, ed. Marjorie Spruill Wheeler (Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 1995), 161–​65. 9. Eleanor Butler Sanders was made president, Lucia Gilbert Runkle and Catherine Abbe vice presidents, Lee Haggin treasurer, Mary Putnam Jacobi corresponding secretary, and Adele Fielde recording secretary. Over the ensuing decades, the league would blossom into an important civic institution in New York City. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacobi (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925), 378–​80; Mary Putnam Jacobi’s Report to Jean Greenleaf, 1894: Constitutional Campaign Year, Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, Twenty-​Sixth Annual Convention, Ithaca, NY, November 12–​15 (Rochester, NY: Charles Mann Press, 1895), 220; “Town Hall to Pay Founders Tribute,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), November 5, 1939. 10. Most of the meetings of the Civic and Political Equality Union, for example, were held in leaders’ homes throughout Greater New York. For examples, see LDB, “Our New York Letter,” The Woman’s Journal (hereafter TWJ), April 30, 1898; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, October 15, 1898; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, December 31, 1898. 11. This summarizes Andrew P. Haley’s insights. Similarly, George Chauncey has suggested that profit might have been a reason that managers allowed gay New Yorkers to socialize openly at restaurants in the early twentieth century. George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–​1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 170; Andrew P. Haley, Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle-​Class, 1880–​1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 122. 12. For examples, see LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, November 11, 1899; LDB Diary, Copy of February 9, 1898, Folder 8, Box 3, LDB Papers, MH; Minutes of the Civic and Political Equality Union, January 26, 1898, Folder 4, Box 10, LDB Papers, MH. 13. Although the organizations’ budgets are no longer available, scattered rental information still exists: in one case, the Astor Gallery cost a patron $1,000 to rent for a week, whereas the Tuxedo charged $6,200 for a six-​year lease of multiple floors. See “The American Indian and Historian,” Up-​To-​The-​Times, February 1907; “Leases,” Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, March 14, 1903. 14. George W. Bromley and Walter S. Bromley, Atlas of the City of New York, Manhattan Island: From Actual Surveys and Official Plans (Philadelphia: G. W. Bromley, 1897), Plate 22. 15. May N. Stone, “Waldorf=Astoria,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 1373.

Notes to pages 35–37    173 16. Quoted in Jerry E. Patterson, Fifth Avenue: The Best Address (New York: Rizzoli, 1998), 81. 17. Patterson, Fifth Avenue, 76–​84; For examples, see “The League Bazaar Crowded,” NYT, November 30, 1898; “The Press Club Banquet,” NYT, December 5, 1897; “An Early Candle-​Light Tea,” NYT, January 25, 1898; “Zangwill on the Ghetto,” NYT, November 16, 1898; “Dewey Ceremonies To-​Day,” NYT, September 30, 1899. 18. Ernest Ingersoll, Rand, McNally & Co.’s Handy Guide to New York City, 16th ed. (Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 1904), 119. 19. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, January 1, 1898. 20. Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 (Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony, 1902; New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1969), 873; “In Honor of Pilgrim Mothers,” NYT, December 24, 1892. 21. LDB Diary, Copy of December 23, 1892, Folder 2, Box 3, LDB Papers, MH; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, December 8, 1894; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, December 19, 1896; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, December 11, 1897. 22. Statistic from Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1186. 23. Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–​1896 (New York: Cambridge University Press), 1–​2. 24. Unfortunately, treasury reports for the city association no longer exist. However, at least one diary entry from Lillie Devereux Blake suggests that this dinner did not always turn a profit. See LDB Diary, Transcript of December 24, 1902, Box 3, Folder 12, LDB Papers, MH. 25. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, January 1, 1898; “Pilgrim Mothers Dine,” Sun, December 23, 1897. 26. The New York Equal Suffrage Association also held its monthly meetings at the Astor in 1905. See Annual Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, 1905 (Syracuse, NY: C. W. Bardeen, n.d.), 99; LDB, “New York City Letter,” TWJ, December 6, 1902; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, December 3, 1898; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, December 2, 1899; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, December 15, 1900; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, November 30, 1901; LDB Diary, Copy of December 22, 1904, Folder 14, Box 3, LDB Papers, MH. 27. “The May Festival,” TWJ, May 7, 1904; “The May Festival,” TWJ, May 17, 1902; “The May Meeting and Festival,” TWJ, May 23, 1903; “The May Festival” TWJ, April 27, 1901; “The May Festival,” TWJ, May 19, 1900. 28. Rand, McNally & Co.’s Handy Guide to Boston and Environs (Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 1904), 70–​71. 29. “Meet at Festival,” Boston Daily Globe, May 8, 1907. 30. Rand, McNally & Co.’s Handy Guide to Boston and Environs, 7. 31. Laura L. Behling, The Masculine Women in America, 1890–​1935 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 1–​9. 32. For a history of gender and the luxury hotel, see Carolyn Brucken, “In the Public Eye: Women and the American Luxury Hotel,” Winterthur Portfolio 31, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 203–​20.

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Notes to pages 37–40

33. Letter, Susan B. Anthony to LDB, December 24, 1896, Folder 12, Box 7, LDB Papers, MH. 34. See Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 1009. 35. One exception is “A Handsome Recognition,” Revolution, December 2, 1871. 36. For this shift, see Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–​1869 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 78–​104. 37. “Tammany Hall Platform,” Revolution, July 2, 1868; “Susan B. Anthony in Tammany Hall,” Revolution, July 23, 1868; “Look Up Higher,” Revolution, September 17, 1868; “Southern Tone and Temper,” Revolution, August 6, 1868. 38. David C. Hammack, Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1982), 110–​11, 121, 159. 39. Hammack, Power and Society, 147; “Dr. Parkhurst to Women,” NYT, October 13, 1894; “Praise for Dr. Parkhurst,” NYT, May 27, 1892. 40. S. Sara Monoson, “The Lady and the Tiger: Women’s Electoral Activism in New York City Before Suffrage,” Journal of Women’s History 2, no. 2 (Fall 1990): 102–​5. 41. “Parkhurst’s Suggestion to Women,” NYT, September 28, 1894; “Women against the Tiger,” NYT, November 3, 1894. 42. “Women against the Tiger,” NYT, November 3, 1894. 43. “Mrs. Stanton on Our Foremothers,” TWJ, December 29, 1894. 44. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, October 20, 1894. 45. LDB Speech, “Women in Municipalities,” 1897, Folder 8, Box 9, LDB Papers, MH. 46. “Miss Anthony on Tammany,” October 20, 1894, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 32, the Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, editors Patricia G. Holland and Ann D. Gordon, Microfilm Edition, Scholarly Resources Inc., Wilmington, Delaware. 47. For the “moral rhetoric” of women in the Woman’s Municipal League, see Monoson, “The Lady and the Tiger,” 100–​135. 48. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, November 2, 1901. 49. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, November 2, 1901. 50. For a further discussion of this in terms of the Woman’s Municipal League, see Monoson, “The Lady and the Tiger,” 104–​5. 51. Mary H. Loines, “State Legislating in New York,” 1905, Folder 617, Reel 8, Mary H. Loines Papers in the Woman’s Rights Collection, 1886–​1944, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 52. Carrie Chapman Catt, “Woman Suffrage and the Home,” Interurban Woman Suffrage Series, No. 4, 1907, Woman Suffrage Association of New York State (hereafter WSANYS) Papers, Box 3, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, New York. 53. This builds off of Aileen Kraditor’s insight. See Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement: 1890–​1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965; New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 68–​71. Also see Maureen A. Flanagan, “The City Profitable, the City Livable: Environmental Policy, Gender, and Power in

Notes to pages 40–41    175 Chicago in the 1910s,” Journal of Urban History 22, no. 2 (1996): 163–​90; Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–​1920,” American Historical Review 89, no. 3 (June 1984): 625–​32. For the Addams piece, see Jane Addams, “Why Women Should Vote,” in Woman Suffrage: Arguments and Results, ed. Frances Maule Björkman (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1913), New-​York Historical Society, New York, New York. 54. Aileen Kraditor’s pioneering work on suffrage arguments created the framework for scholars’ understandings of campaign rhetoric. According to Kraditor, the national campaign shifted from “justice” arguments about individual rights to “expedient” arguments that highlighted the ways in which women’s differences could benefit society at century’s turn. She pointed to a host of reasons to explain this shift, including that the “justice” argument had succeeded and that the leaders to whom lobbyists addressed their claims changed by the early twentieth century. Kraditor did briefly mention urbanization in her explanation, discussing it in terms of her larger point about government’s changing responsibilities. Cities reconfigured government responsibilities (demanding municipalities take on food inspection, for instance) and these new responsibilities regularly involved domestic life, according to Kraditor; this, in part, created the context for more “expedient” claims revolving around municipal housekeeping. Sociologists Holly J. McCammon, Lyndi Hewitt, and Sandy Smith have most systematically studied Kraditor’s claims, complicating her periodization of rhetorical shifts. Like Kraditor, they do mention urbanization, but only briefly. They combine urbanization, immigration, and industrialization into one variable of more than a dozen that they analyze in relationship to “reform” and “justice” arguments. Their finding that justice arguments appeared less frequently where urbanization, immigration, and industrialization defined the landscape is interesting, though underexplored in their analysis. See Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 43–​74; Holly J. McCammon, Lyndi Hewitt, and Sandy Smith, “‘No Weapon Save Argument’: Strategic Frame Amplification in the U.S. Woman Suffrage Movements,” Sociological Quarterly 45, no. 3 (Summer 2004): 529–​ 56. For a thorough analysis of Kraditor’s effect on the field, see Louise M. Newman, “Reflections on Aileen Kraditor’s Legacy: Fifty Years of Woman Suffrage Historiography, 1965–​2014,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 14, no. 3 (2015): 290–​316. 55. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, February 27, 1897. 56. The Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Association did use Prospect Park for suffrage events. However, these events were still within the tradition of femininity—​they held luncheons and tea parties in its Farm House. Blake described, “About fifty ladies spent an hour wandering under the budding trees in the winding walks of the Park, and then assembled for luncheon, which was daintily served.” LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, May 8, 1897; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, May 26, 1900; Lauren Rabinovitz, For the Love of Pleasure: Women, Movies, and Culture in Turn-​of-​the-​Century Chicago (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 15–​46; Mary Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825–​1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 58–​94.

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Notes to pages 41–43

57. Letter, Jean Brooks Greenleaf to LDB, March 19, 1895, Folder 10, Box 7, LDB Papers, MH. 58. Farrell, Lillie Devereux Blake, 119. 59. This summarizes Farrell, Lillie Devereux Blake, 162–​68. 60. Katherine Devereux Blake and Margaret Louise Wallace, Champion of Women: The Life of Lillie Devereux Blake (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1943), 169. 61. LDB Autobiography, 1897–​1898, Folder 17, Box 5, LDB Papers, MH. 62. David C. Hammack, “Consolidation,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 305–​6; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 1219–​36; “Greater New York,” NYT, May 8, 1897. 63. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, January 16, 1897; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, January 9, 1897. 64. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, January 16, 1897; LDB Diary, Transcript of February 7, 1897, Folder 7, Box 3, LDB Papers, MH. 65. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, January 16, 1897; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, January 30, 1897. 66. “Mrs. Mariana Wright Chapman,” NYT, November 12, 1907; “Mariana Wright Chapman,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 11, 1907. 67. See “Report of Legislative Committee,” in Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association. Thirtieth Annual Convention Hudson, N.Y., November 8–​11, 1898 (Auburn, NY: Knapp, Peck & Thomson, Printers, 1899), 25–​28; “Report of Legislative Committee,” in Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association. Twenty-​Ninth Annual Convention Geneva, N.Y., November 3–​6, 1897 (Auburn, NY: Knapp, Peck & Thomson, Printer, 1898), 25–​29. 68. Mariana Chapman Diary, January 2, 1898, Box 4, Chapman Family Papers, Swarthmore College. 69. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, May 1, 1897. 70. LDB Autobiography, 1897–​1898, Folder 17, Box 5, LDB Papers, MH. 71. The umbrella organization included groups ranging from Manhattan’s Assembly District Political Equality Leagues to the Queens County Woman Suffrage Society to the Single Tax Club. The union existed for three years and dissolved in October 1900. Minutes of the Civic and Political Equality Union 1897, Folder 4, Box 10, LDB Papers, MH; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, October 23, 1897; LDB Diary, October 17, 1900, Folder 10, Box 1, LDB Papers, MH; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, December 10, 1898. 72. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, March 3, 1900; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, April 15, 1899; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, November 25, 1899; Minutes of Civic and Political Equality Union, December 15, 1897, Folder 4, Box 10, LDB Papers, MH. 73. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, February 19, 1898; Constitution of the Civic and Political Equality Union, Folder 4, Box 10, LDB Papers, MH; Civic and Political Equality Union of the City of New York, October 14, Summary, Folder 4, Box 10, LDB Papers, MH; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, November 26, 1898.

Notes to pages 43–45    177 74. Ellen Carol DuBois, ed., The Elizabeth Cady Stanton—​Susan B. Anthony Reader: Correspondence, Writings, Speeches, rev. ed. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), 172–​93. 75. Andrew P. Haley has pointed out that upper-​class restaurants were beginning to allow elite women into their establishments without escorts by the second half of the nineteenth century. Haley, Turning the Tables, 147–​61; Jessica Ellen Sewell, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890–​1915 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 67–​69. 76. Minutes of the Civic and Political Equality Union, December 15, 1897, Folder 4, Box 10, LDB Papers, MH. 77. Minutes of the Civic and Political Equality Union, October 19, 1898, Folder 4, Box 10, LDB Papers, MH; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, June 3, 1899. 78. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, March 3, 1900. 79. The best resource to see the sweep of the policies is the Minutes of the Civic and Political Equality Union, 1897–​1900, Folder 4, Box 10, LDB Papers, MH. 80. For more on this focus see DuBois, ed., The Elizabeth Cady Stanton—​Susan B. Anthony Reader, 172–​93. 81. Information and quote from Farrell, Lillie Devereux Blake, 167–​69. 82. Transcript of LDB Diary, May 21 and 24, 1899, Folder 9, Box 3, LDB Papers, MH. 83. Letter, Marilla M. Ricker to LDB, May 31, 1899, Folder 4, Box 8, LDB Papers, MH. 84. Circular, “For President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association,” Folder 25, Box 10, LDB Papers, MH. 85. LDB Diary, February 11, 1900, Folder 10, Box 1, LDB Papers, MH. 86. LDB Diary, January 7, 1900, Folder 10, Box 1, LDB Papers, MH. 87. Jacqueline Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life (New York: Feminist Press of the City University of New York, 1987), 18–​37. 88. “Organization Committee’s Report,” in Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association . . . 1898, ed. Rachel Foster Avery (Philadelphia: Press of Alfred J. Ferris, n.d.), 30–​34; “Organization Committee’s Report,” Proceedings of the Twenty-​Ninth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association at the Central Christian Church . . . 1897, ed. Rachel Foster Avery (Philadelphia: Press of Alfred J. Ferris, n.d.), 37; “Report of the Plan of Work Committee” and “Report of Organization Committee,” Proceedings of the Twenty-​Eighth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association Held in Washington, D.C., January 23rd to 28th, 1896, ed. Rachel Foster Avery (Philadelphia: Press of Alfred J. Ferris, n.d.), 40, 60, 66. 89. Letter, Jean Brooks Greenleaf to LDB, March 10, 1900, Folder 5, Box 8, LDB Papers, MH. 90. “Women to Elect Leader,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 6, 1900; “Woman Suffrage Presidency,” NYT, February 6, 1900; “Just Like Men,” Boston Daily Globe, February 10, 1900. 91. Letter, Jean Brooks Greenleaf to LDB, March 10, 1900, Folder 4, Box 8, LDB Papers, MH.

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Notes to pages 45–47

92. LDB Diary, June 14, 1900, Folder 10, Box 1, LDB Papers, MH; Mary H. Loines to Cranford, January 8, 1931, WSANYS Papers, Folder: 1930-​10th Anniversary, Box 2, Columbia University. 93. Letter, Alice Stone Blackwell to LDB, April 14, 1900, Folder 6, Box 8, LDB Papers, MH. 94. In the late 1890s, the National American Woman Suffrage Association moved to Gotham from Philadelphia. At first, the organization resided in the famous World Building and later in the American Tract Society Building, both in the vicinity of Newspaper Row. Letter, Carrie Chapman Catt to LDB, March 21, 1900, Folder 5, Box 8, LDB Papers, MH; Mariana Chapman Diary, February 1, 1896, Box 4, Chapman Family Papers, Swarthmore College. 95. Marie Jenney Howe, “National Headquarters Letter,” TWJ, September 19, 1903. 96. Flexner, Century of Struggle, 241. 97. Letter, SBA to Mariana Chapman, March 8, 1897, Box 1, Chapman Family Papers, Swarthmore College. Also see Letter, Elizabeth Curtis to Mariana Chapman, November 23, 1897, Box 1, Chapman Family Papers, Swarthmore College. 98. LDB Diary, October 4, 1900, Folder 10, Box 1, LDB Papers, MH; Minutes of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association (hereafter NYSWSA), October 30, 1900, WSANYS Papers, Box 1 and Volume 4, Columbia University. 99. Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association Thirty-​Second Annual Convention Glens Falls, N.Y., October 29 to November 1, 1900 (Syracuse, NY: Press of Hall & McChesney, n.d.), 56, 60–​61; Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association Thirty-​Third Annual Convention Oswego, N.Y. October 29 to November 1 1901 (Syracuse, NY: C. W Bardeen, n.d.), 64. 100. Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association Thirty-​First Annual Convention Dunkirk, N.Y., November 1–​4, 1899 (Auburn, NY: Knapp, Peck & Thomson, Printers, 1900), 26. 101. “Pilgrim Mothers Dine,” TWJ, January 2, 1909. 102. In his dissertation, David Kevin McDonald claims that the New York City movement lacked a leader by 1900. While Blake’s power was on the decline by then, she still remained an important, if divisive, figure in the campaign. David Kevin McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood: Women’s Culture and the Politics of Suffrage in New York State, 1865–​1917” (PhD diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1987), 79. For Blake speaking, see New York Suffrage Newsletter, November 1901; New York Suffrage Newsletter, December 1904; New York Suffrage Newsletter, February 1906. 103. McDonald has reached a similar conclusion regarding the split between the state and city movements, although he fails to trace its origins back to the 1890s and the feud between Anthony and Blake. See McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood,” 139–​47. 104. New York State Suffrage Newsletter in Minutes of the NYSWSA, WSANYS Papers, Box 6 and vol. 6, Columbia University. 105. McDonald has pointed out that only 15 percent of members in the state association resided in New York City in the years after 1894. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 454; McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood,” 60, 62.

Notes to pages 47–51    179 106. Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt, 59. 107. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 459. 108. Nicolas Fraser to Ella Hawley Crossett, 1905, in Minutes of the NYSWSA, WSANYS Papers, Box 6 and vol. 6, Columbia University. 109. Alice Williams to Ella Hawley Crossett, 1905, in Minutes of the NYSWSA, WSANYS Papers, Box 6 and vol. 6, Columbia University. 110. This echoes some of David Kevin McDonald’s insights in “Organizing Womanhood,” 78–​79, 139–​47. 111. Maureen A. Flanagan, Charter Reform in Chicago (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 1–​46, 123–​25. 112. Proceedings of the Thirty-​Eighth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association Held at Baltimore, MD., February 7th to 13th inclusive, 1906 (Warren, OH: Wm. Ritezel & Company, n.d.), 92–​93. 113. Proceedings of the Thirty-​First Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Grand Rapids, Mich., April 27 to May 3, 1899, ed. Rachel Foster Avery (Warren, OH: Press of Perry, The Printer, n.d.), 110–​11; Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Convention, 106; Proceedings of the Twenty-​Ninth Annual Convention,  88–​89. 114. See Gayle Gullett, Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women’s Movement, 1880–​1911 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 151–​200. 115. Flexner, Century of Struggle, 231; McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood,”  79–​80.

Chapter 3 1. Lillie Devereux Blake (hereafter LDB) Diary, Transcript of May 12, 1908, Folder 18, Box 3, Lillie Devereux Blake Papers (hereafter LDB Papers), Missouri Historical Society (hereafter MH), St. Louis, Missouri. 2. Lydia Kingsmill Commander, “State Correspondence,” The Woman’s Journal (hereafter TWJ), May 30, 1908. 3. Patricia Greenwood Harrison, Connecting Links: The British and American Woman Suffrage Movements, 1900–​1914 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), 61, 64, 81, 103, 107. 4. Patricia Greenwood Harrison explores the links between the British and American movement. Laura E. Nym Mayhall examines the complicated roots of militancy in the British movement and the wide spectrum of activities this label encompassed. Laura E. Nym Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860–​1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 40; Harrison, Connecting Links. 5. Harrison, Connecting Links, 105. 6. Quotation and information in Harrison, Connecting Links, 73. 7. “Personal Glimpses: Militant Maud Malone,” Literary Digest, December 21, 1912; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, The Rebel Girl, An Autobiography: My First Life (1906–​1926),

180 

 

Notes to pages 52–54

rev. ed. (New York: International Publishers, 1973), 56–​57; “Say They’ll Parade over Police Veto,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), February 16, 1908. 8. Catherine Shanley, “The Library Employees’ Union of Greater New York, 1917–​ 1929,” (DLS, Columbia University, 1992), 119–​22. 9. It was this “organization which started the suffragette movement in the United States,” Malone later informed readers of the New York Times. Maud Malone, “The Original American ‘Suffragettes,’” NYT, December 30, 1908; Shanley, “The Library Employees’ Union,” 128–​30. 10. Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, Negro New York, 1890–​1930, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971), 81–​91. 11. “Women Had an Election,” NYT, November 8, 1905; Annual Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association Thirty-​Eighth Annual Convention Syracuse, New York October 16 to 19, 1906 (Syracuse, NY: C. W. Bardeen, n.d.), 88. 12. “Women on Warpath,” New-​York Tribune, December 28, 1907; Maud Malone, “The Woman’s Suffrage Movement,” NYT, December 29, 1907. 13. “Suffragette Meeting,” New-​York Tribune, December 31, 1907. 14. George W. Bromley and Walter S. Bromley, Atlas of the City of New York, Borough of Manhattan, vol. 2 (G. W. Bromley: Philadelphia, 1920), Plates 9, 10, 13, 14; Seeing New York: The Metropolis of the Western World as Seen from Touring Car, Boat, Bridge and Skyscraper: A Descriptive Guide for the Tourist (Boston: John F. Murphy, 1906), 43, 50. 15. “First Gun Fired,” New-​York Tribune, January 1, 1908. 16. Subject File, PR 068, Folder: People—​Women Suffrage, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, New-​York Historical Society, New York, New York. 17. “Hear Suffragettes’ Appeal,” Sun, January 1, 1908. 18. This was under the Progressive Woman Suffrage Union, which Malone helped to organize, but with which she would quickly part ways. See Shanley, “The Library Employees’ Union,” 132–​34. 19. “Ask Clubs to Parade,” New-​York Tribune, January 29, 1908; “Women Will Parade,” New-​York Tribune, February 3, 1908. 20. “Suffragettes Will Parade,” Sun, February 16, 1908. 21. “Women in Unofficial March,” Sun, February 17, 1908; “Great Moral Victory,” New-​York Tribune, February 17, 1908. 22. “Men She Can’t Reason With,” Sun, December 20, 1908. 23. Bromley and Bromley, Atlas of the City of New York (1920), Plate 21. 24. “Miss Malone on Her Rights,” NYT, June 22, 1909; “Maud Malone Arrested,” NYT, June 20, 1909. 25. “Arrest Maud Malone Again,” NYT, June 27, 1909. 26. “Sad for Suffragette,” New-​York Tribune, June 27, 1909. 27. “The Suffrage Quest a Wild Goose Chase,” NYT, December 13, 1909. 28. “First Gun Fired,” New-​York Tribune, January 1, 1908; “Hear Suffragettes’ Appeal,” Sun, January 1, 1908; “Men She Can’t Reason With,” Sun, December 20, 1908. 29. “Mrs. Mackay Opposes ‘Sensationalism,’” TWJ, November 27, 1909.

Notes to pages 54–56    181 30. “Suffragists Here Divide,” NYT, December 28, 1907. 31. “State Correspondence,” TWJ, January 4, 1908. 32. Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association Fortieth Annual Convention Buffalo, New York October 13 to 15, 1908 (Syracuse, NY: C. W. Bardeen, n.d.),  95–​96. 33. This discussion of Blatch is informed by Ellen Carol DuBois’s biography. Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association Thirty-​Fourth Annual Convention Buffalo, N.Y. October 28 to 31 1902 (Syracuse, NY: C. W. Bardeen, n.d.), 94; Ellen Carol DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 34–​35, 54–​59, 60–​61, 85, 91–​94. 34. Notably absent, though, was an effort to attract domestic servants, 85 percent of whom were of color—​an indication that the league might have been acutely aware of class disadvantages for white women, but perpetuated racial exclusions. Julie A. Gallagher, Black Women and Politics in New York City (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 14; DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 94–​119. 35. Ella Hawley Crossett, “Report of President,” in Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association Forty-​First Annual Convention Troy, New York October 20 to 23, 1909 (Syracuse, NY: C. W. Bardeen, n.d.), 32; “State Correspondence,” TWJ, January 12, 1907. 36. Joseph Adam Hill, Statistics of Women at Work: Based on Unpublished Information Derived from the Schedules of the Twelfth Census, 1900 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907), 146. 37. DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch,  95–​96. 38. “State Correspondence,” TWJ, December 7, 1907; “State Correspondence,” TWJ, February 6, 1909; “State Correspondence,” TWJ, October 9, 1909. 39. For a description of the Hoffman House, see “Glories of Bygone Hotels Sparkle in Traditions,” Sun and New York Herald, June 13, 1920; Andrew P. Haley, Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle-​Class, 1880–​1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 145. 40. The following year, two women fought a similar policy at Keen’s Chop House, a place where “lawyers, literary men, and actors” gathered. See “Suffragettes Barred at Keen’s Sue the Manager,” World, December 13, 1908, Reel 1, vol. 4, National American Woman Suffrage Association (hereafter NAWSA) Records, Manuscript and Archives Division, New York Public Library (hereafter NYPL), New York, New York; Haley, Turning the Tables, 146–​47; “Hotels May Bar Lone Women Diners,” NYT, February 6, 1908. 41. One exception to this general trend is an article from Auburn, New York, that associates Blatch’s actions with militancy. “Women Make War on Restaurant Managers,” Auburn Semi-​Weekly Journal, August 16, 1907. 42. “The Hotel and the Woman,” New York Evening Post, August 9, 1907, Folder 1.2, Harriot Stanton Blatch Papers (hereafter HSB Papers), Archives and Special Collections, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. 43. This draws from DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 104–​5; The Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women, Report for Year 1908–​09 in Box 1, Folder 8, HSB Papers, Vassar College.

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Notes to pages 56–58

44. Draft, Folder 1.3, HSB Papers, Vassar College. 45. “Steal a March on Parkhurst,” NYT, December 4, 1909. 46. Transcript of Sun, October 26, 1909, Folder 1.7, HSB Papers, Vassar College; Transcript of New York Evening Post, October 26, 1909, Folder 1.7, HSB Papers, Vassar College; Draft, Folder 1.7, HSB Papers, Vassar College; “Mrs. Pankhurst Gets Crowd,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 26, 1909; DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 113–​15. 47. Letter, Anna Garlin Spencer, n.d., Woman Suffrage Association of New York State (hereafter WSANYS) Papers, Folder: New York (City and State) Woman Suffrage Correspondence and Documents, Box 1, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York. 48. Quotation and information from DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 113; Harrison, Connecting Links, 111–​12. 49. “Women on Warpath,” New-​York Tribune, December 28, 1907; Winnifred Harper Cooley, “Suffragists and Suffragettes,” World To-​Day, October 1908. 50. For a biography of Catt’s life before she became president, see Jacqueline Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1987), 14–​51. 51. In 1907, the Interurban Political Equality League changed its name to the Interurban Woman Suffrage Council to make its purpose clearer. “State Correspondence,” TWJ, March 23, 1907; Robert Booth Fowler, Carrie Catt: Feminist Politician (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986), 24–​26. 52. “Fashion Smiles on Suffrage,” New-​York Tribune, January 10, 1909; “State Correspondence,” TWJ, November 28, 1908; Cooley, “Suffragists and Suffragettes,” World To-​Day, October 1908. 53. Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association Thirty-​Ninth Annual Convention Geneva, New York October 15 to 18, 1907 (Syracuse, NY: C. W. Bardeen, n.d.) 86; “State Correspondence,” TWJ, March 2, 1907; Ad, TWJ, April 13, 1907. 54. “A Twentieth Century Kitchen,” New-​York Tribune, November 6, 1908; “At Suffrage Bazaar,” New-​York Tribune, November 7, 1908. 55. “Woman Suffrage Gains in Europe,” NYT, April 4, 1909. 56. In 1907, she told an interviewer that the conditions in England and the United States were different, and “far from attempting violence we do everything to urge and encourage the use of gentle means.” “No Suffragist Raids Here,” Sun, March 17, 1907; “Women Who’d Vote Disagree,” Sun, June 20, 1909. 57. “Urges Suffragists to Become Militant,” NYT, June 15, 1909. 58. “Active Suffragist Fight,” NYT, June 16, 1909; “Women Who’d Vote Disagree,” Sun, June 20, 1909. 59. “State Correspondence,” TWJ, November 6, 1909; Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 282–​83. 60. Ronald Schaffer has detailed the party’s creation. Ida Husted Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6 (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922; New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1969), 460; Ronald

Notes to pages 58–62    183 Schaffer, “The New York City Woman Suffrage Party, 1909–​1919,” New York History 43, no. 3 (June 1962): 269–​87. 61. Catt and Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics, 283–​84. 62. Schaffer, “The New York City Woman Suffrage Party, 1909–​1919,” 270; Mary Grey Peck, “Woman Suffrage in the United States,” in The Woman Citizen’s Library: Woman Suffrage, ed. Shailer Mathews (Chicago: Civics Society, 1913), 1677; Mary Isabel Brush, “Suffragizing Tammany,” Saturday Evening Post, November 22, 1915, in Folder: 1914–​1915, Reel 59, National American Woman Suffrage Association Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (hereafter LOC), Washington, DC. 63. I wish to thank Sarah Deutsch for helping to name this shift. 64. Forty-​Third Annual Report of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Given at the Convention Held at Louisville, KY. October 19 to 25 Inclusive (New York: n.p, n.d.), 142. 65. M. G. Peck, “History of the Woman Suffrage Party,” 1912, Reel 48, National American Woman Suffrage Association Records, LOC. 66. “Organizing to Win by the Political District Plan: A Handbook for Working Suffragists,” compiled by H. B. Laidlaw, July 1914 in Folder: Laidlaw, H. B., Reel 12, National American Woman Suffrage Association Records, LOC. 67. Carrie Chapman Catt, “The New York Party,” TWJ, February 19, 1910. 68. “An Appeal,” The Woman Voter (hereafter TWV), September 1910. 69. Minutes of Woman Suffrage Party, January 24, 1910, vol. 1, WSANYS Papers, Box 8, Columbia University; “Opening of Headquarters,” TWV, February 1910. 70. Moses King, King’s How to See New York: A Complete Trustworthy Guide Book (New York: Moses King, 1914), 105–​7. 71. See Headquarters, Woman Suffrage Party, Rosika Schwimmer Papers, Manuscript and Archives Division, New York Public Library; available online through the digital collections (accessed July 2, 2013). 72. Part of their work, historian Sara Hunter Graham explains, included “banish[ing]” the league’s “radical past” to make its message palatable to “mainstream society.” Sara Hunter Graham, Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 52. 73. Jean Strouse, Morgan: American Financier (New York: Harper Perennial, 2000), 521; Karen J. Blair, “Colony Club,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 283; “New Colony Club No Place for Men,” NYT, February 18, 1907. 74. “Rush of the Unelect to the Colony Club,” NYT, December 7, 1908; “Cruelty to Children,” New-​York Tribune, March 6, 1909. 75. “Stead Addresses Suffrage League,” NYT, April 18, 1907; “Notes of Clubs and Charities,” New-​York Tribune, April 15, 1907. 76. “Colony Club Debate,” New-​York Tribune, April 1, 1908. 77. “Says Suffragettes Lean to Socialism,” NYT, April 1, 1908. 78. “Women Debate at Colony Club,” Sun, April 1, 1908. 79. For details on Progressive Era socialism, see Michael Kazin, American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 109–​54.

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Notes to pages 62–64

80. Special Notice, Reel 1, vol. 4, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 81. Maureen E. Montgomery, Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith Wharton’s New York (New York: Routledge, 1998), 141–​62. 82. Ruth Crocker, Mrs. Russell Sage: Women’s Activism and Philanthropy in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 166–​67,  214. 83. DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 107; “School Suffrage Work,” New York Suffrage Newsletter (hereafter NYSN), October 1908; “Mackay Case Goes to United States Court,” Courier-​Journal, November 3, 1910. 84. Quotation and information in DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 109. 85. For quotation and information about Blatch and Mackay’s relationship see DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 107–​110; Draft, Folder 1.3, HSB Papers, Vassar College. 86. Dorothy Dix, “Woman Suffrage Made Fashionable,” New York Evening Journal, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 1, vol. 5, NAWSA Records, NYPL. Also see “Mrs. Clarence Mackay Invites Others to Join,” World, January 3, 1909, Reel 1, vol. 5, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 87. “Mrs. C. H. Mackay Leads Suffragists,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 1, vol. 4, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “State Correspondence,” TWJ, April 10, 1909; “Field Work,” NYSN, May 1909. 88. “Equal Rights Society Aims to Advance Measures for the Extension of the Franchise,” NYT, February 21, 1909; “Mrs. Clarence Mackay Invites Others to Join,” World, January 3, 1909, Reel 1, vol. 5, NAWSA Records, NYPL; Elinor Lerner, “Immigrant and Working Class Involvement in the New York City Woman Suffrage Movement, 1905–​1917: A Study in Progressive Era Politics” (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1981), 90. 89. Draft, Folder 1.3, HSB Papers, Vassar College. 90. “Social Leaders Hear Why They Need Votes,” NYT, January 30, 1909, Reel 1, vol. 6, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 91. “Equal Rights Society Aims to Advance Measures for the Extension of the Franchise,” NYT, February 21, 1909. 92. “Suffragist Bazaar Excited,” Sun, November 7, 1908; “State Correspondence,” TWJ, November 14, 1908. 93. Mona Domosh, Invented Cities: The Creation of Landscape in Nineteenth-​Century New York and Boston (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 89. 94. “Votes for Women,” NYT, November 7, 1909. 95. “Fashionable Society-​Suffragettes Fighting among Themselves,” Atlanta Constitution, April 2, 1911. 96. Letter to Olivia Sage, April 3, 1911, in Minutes of Woman Suffrage Party, vol. 2, WSANYS Papers, Box 8, Columbia University. 97. Dorothy Dix, “Woman Suffrage Made Fashionable,” New York Evening Journal, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 1, vol. 5, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Says Suffragettes Lean to Socialism,” NYT, April 1, 1908. 98. Joan Marie Johnson has reached a similar conclusion. See Joan Marie Johnson, Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women’s Movement, 1870–​1967 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 45–​49.

Notes to pages 64–66    185 99. “Mrs. Mackay Pleads for Equal Suffrage,” NYT, January 16, 1909. 100. Jessica Garretson Finch, “How the Ballot Would Help the Working Women,” Equal Franchise Society, 1909, WSANYS Papers, Unnamed Folder, Box 3, Columbia University. Also see “Gov. Shafroth Gives Suffragist Lecture,” NYT, December 4, 1909. 101. This follows DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 109. 102. “Not a Suffragette,” New-​York Tribune, October 14, 1909, Reel 1, vol. 5, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 103. Johanna Neuman, Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote (New York: NYU Press, 2017), 64–​70. 104. For examples of the rivalry narrative, see “Fashionable Society-​Suffragettes Fighting among Themselves,” Atlanta Constitution, April 2, 1911; “What Mrs. Belmont Has Done for Women,” NYT, March 9, 1910. 105. Sylvia D. Hoffert, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont: Unlikely Champion of Women’s Rights (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 40–​42. 106. Hoffert, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont,  40–​53. 107. Gertrude Foster Brown, “Suffrage and Music: My First Eighty Years,” ed. Mildred Adams, p. 131, in Gertrude Foster Brown Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 108. “Mrs. Belmont and Suffrage,” NYT, August 16, 1909; Hoffert, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, 76. 109. Wayne Craven, Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 163. 110. “Meeting at Marble House,” NYSN, September 1909. 111. Dubois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 108, 113. 112. “Various Suffrage Organizations in New York City,” TWJ, May 6, 1911. 113. “New Clubs,” NYSN, November 1909. 114. “Suffrage Color Line Now,” New-​York Tribune, April 7, 1911; “Suffrage at the Ball,” New-​York Tribune, May 7, 1911. 115. That the national organization removed its offices from New York only a few years before suggests that Harper might have let hindsight shape her perception of Anthony’s position. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 444–​45. 116. The national organization did appear to have opened up headquarters in Washington, DC, in the winter of 1908. David Kevin McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood: Women’s Culture and the Politics of Suffrage in New York State, 1865–​ 1917” (PhD diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1987), 137–​38. For the DC headquarters, see “What Women Are Doing,” Sun, December 20, 1908. 117. Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States, enl. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 241. 118. Crossett, “Report of President,” in Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association . . . 1909, 35; McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood,” 137–​38. 119. Crossett, “Report of President,” in Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association . . . 1909, 35; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 444–​45. 120. McDonald has made a similar point about the importance of consolidating power within New York. See McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood,” 145, 331.

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Notes to pages 66–69

121. “A Nearer View,” NYSN, August 1909. 122. “The Grand Central Terminal,” Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, July 5, 1913. 123. “The New Headquarters,” TWJ, September 4, 1909. 124. “The New Headquarters,” TWJ, September 25, 1909. 125. Subject File, PR 068, Folder: People—​Women Suffrage, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, New-​York Historical Society, New York, New York. Jessica Ellen Sewell has made a similar point about headquarters in San Francisco, especially in 1896. See Jessica Ellen Sewell, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890–​1915 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 135–​38. 126. “Votes for Women,” NYT, November 7, 1909. 127. “The New Headquarters,” TWJ, September 25, 1909; “A Nearer View,” NYSN, August 1909. 128. “National Headquarters to Move,” TWJ, July 17, 1909. 129. “New Headquarters,” NYSN, August 1909; Ella Crossett, “The President’s Letter,” NYSN, August 1909. 130. “The New Headquarters,” TWJ, September 4, 1909. 131. Harriet May Mills, “Report of the Vice-​President,” in Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association . . . 1909,  41–​42. 132. In Warren, Ohio, for example, the National American Woman Suffrage Association sold nearly $1,300 worth of literature and supplies. In New York in 1912, the organization sold $13,000 worth. Statistics from Forty-​Fourth Annual Report of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Given at the Convention Held at Philadelphia, PA. November 21 to 26 (Inclusive) 1912 (n.p.: New York, n.d.), 43. 133. See McDonald for a thorough discussion of New York City’s place within the state movement. McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood,” 60–​62, 70–​72, 139–​49, 322–​432. 134. For more details about Blatch’s and Mackay’s relationship see DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch,  107–​8. 135. “Expect Big Strike,” New-​York Tribune, November 23, 1909: “40,000 Called Out in Women’s Strike,” NYT, November 23, 1909. 136. Ellen Carol DuBois has argued that Blatch’s decision to support a compromise between strikers and manufacturers alienated her from the working class. DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 116, 118–​19. 137. DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 116–​17; “Mrs. Belmont Helps,” New-​York Tribune, December 2, 1909. 138. DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 117. 139. “Not Keen for Suffrage,” Sun, December 3, 1909. 140. Some did celebrate, though, when Belmont promised to pay bail for imprisoned strikers and accepted her car for the use in a march. “Girl Pickets’ Bail,” New-​York Tribune, December 19, 1909; “Strikers in Autos,” New-​York Tribune, December 22, 1909; “Suffragettes Fail,” New-​York Tribune, December 5, 1909. 141. “Vote No Help, Says Goldman,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 13, 1909. 142. “Says Vote Won’t Help Women,” Sun, December 13, 1909.

Notes to pages 69–71    187 143. “Emma at It Again,” New-​York Tribune, December 13, 1909. 144. “Women Socialists Rebuff Suffragists,” NYT, December 20, 1909. 145. Statistics from Grace Charlotte Strachan, Equal Pay for Equal Work: The Story of the Struggle for Justice Being Made by the Women Teachers of the City of New York (New York: B. F. Buck & Company, 1910), 11, 92; Rosalind Rosenberg, Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think about Sex and Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 94. 146. Ida Husted Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, vol. 3, (Indianapolis: Hollenbeck Press, 1908), 1117. 147. Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello have discussed Garnet’s influence in the Brooklyn suffrage community. Gallagher, Black Women and Politics, 21–​22; Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello, Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017). 148. Proceedings of the Twenty-​Sixth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association Held in Washington, D.C. . . . 1894, ed. Harriet Taylor Upton (Warren, OH: Chronicle Print, n.d.), 198. 149. LDB Diary, Copy of January 15, 1882, Folder 17, Box 2, LDB Papers, MH. 150. “Supt. Maxwell Sustained,” NYT, November 9, 1899; “Teachers Wait for Pay,” NYT, October 19, 1899; “Teachers Win the Fight,” NYT, December 13, 1899; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, December 23, 1899. 151. LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, January 20, 1900. 152. The Brooklyn legislator who introduced an 1897 bill to remove married women under age fifty hoped it would open up teaching jobs for single women who were being forced to “walk the streets” or take low-​paying jobs. “Where Reform Is Needed,” New-​York Tribune, January 22, 1897; LDB, “Our New York Letter,” TWJ, February 13, 1897; LDB, “New York City Letter,” TWJ, December 12, 1903; LDB, “New York City Letter,” TWJ, January 16, 1904; LDB, “New York City Letter,” TWJ, May 14, 1904. See also Patricia Carter, “Becoming the ‘New Women’: The Equal Rights Campaigns of New York City Schoolteachers, 1900–​1920,” in The Teacher’s Voice: A Social History of Teaching in Twentieth Century America, ed. Richard J. Altenbaugh (Bristol, PA: Falmer Press, Taylor & Francis, 1992), 52. 153. “Miss Anthony on the Late Convention,” Democrat and Chronicle, July 10, 1898, Reel 38, the Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, editors Patricia G. Holland and Ann D. Gordon, Microfilm Edition, Scholarly Resources Inc., Wilmington, Delaware. 154. Charlotte H. Chapman, “New York,” TWJ, January 28, 1899. 155. “Against Unequal Pay,” New-​York Tribune, March 17, 1907. 156. Robert E. Doherty, “Tempest on the Hudson: The Struggle for ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’ in the New York City Public Schools, 1907–​1911,” History of Education Quarterly 19, no. 4 (Winter 1979): 414. 157. Carter, “Becoming the ‘New Women,’” 45; Strachan, Equal Pay for Equal Work, 16. 158. “Against Unequal Pay,” New-​York Tribune, March 17, 1907. 159. Strachan, Equal Pay for Equal Work, 31–​32; Doherty, “Tempest on the Hudson,” 418.

188 

 

Notes to pages 71–73

160. As one journalist explained, “The proposal was aimed, as everybody in and out of the board knows, at those women teachers who have organized for the purpose of securing the passage of a law increasing the salaries of women teachers.” Quoted in Strachan, Equal Pay for Equal Work, 288–​89. 161. “No Gag on Teachers,” New-​York Daily Tribune, November 12, 1908. 162. “Oppose Women Teachers,” NYT, March 17, 1907; “Fight ‘Equal Pay’ Bill,” New-​York Tribune, March 17, 1907; Carter, “Becoming the ‘New Women,’” 47–​48; Kathleen D. McCarthy, Women’s Culture: American Philanthropy and Art, 1830–​1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 150–​51; Elliot J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-​Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 192; Doherty, “Tempest on the Hudson,” 419–​21. 163. Strachan, Equal Pay for Equal Work, 18–​19; Carter, “Becoming the ‘New Women,’” 46. 164. Newspaper Clipping, n.d., Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbook, 1906–​1907, p. 107, Library of Congress Online; 1907 Minutes of NYSWSA, Resolutions, WSANYS Papers, Box 6, vol. 7, Columbia University. 165. “Teachers Cheer for M’Carren,” NYT, January 31, 1908. 166. “Address by Harriet Stanton Blatch,” in Strachan, Equal Pay for Equal Work, 382–​83. 167. “Address by Carrie Chapman Catt,” in Strachan, Equal Pay for Equal Work, 398. 168. Holly J. McCammon, Lyndi Hewitt, and Sandy Smith have also found that suffragists were more likely to use “justice” arguments when speaking with professional women. Holly J. McCammon, Lyndi Hewitt, and Sandy Smith, “‘No Weapon Save Argument’: Strategic Frame Amplification in the U.S. Woman Suffrage Movements,” Sociological Quarterly 45, no. 3 (2004): 546. 169. “Teachers Ask Equal Pay,” TWJ, March 9, 1907. 170. “Club Reports,” NYSN, November 1907. 171. Annual Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association . . . 1908, 83–​ 84; “Do Teachers Need the Ballot?,” TWJ, October 31, 1908; “State Correspondence,” TWJ, January 30, 1909. 172. “Concentration and Cooking,” School, December 5, 1912. 173. “State Correspondence,” TWJ, May 30, 1908; “State Correspondence,” TWJ, December 19, 1908; “State Correspondence,” TWJ, December 12, 1908. 174. “Club Reports,” NYSN, March 1907. 175. This interpretation revises Patricia Carter’s suggestion that Strachan did not publicly embrace suffrage until 1913. Carter, “Becoming the ‘New Women,’” 46; “State Correspondence,” TWJ, July 3, 1909. 176. Doherty, “Tempest on the Hudson,” 417. 177. For the pedagogy see Jane Brownlee, A Plan for Child Training (n.p.: n.p., 1905), 1–​14: Fortieth Annual Report of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Held at Buffalo October 15th to 21st, Inclusive, 1908, ed. Harriet Taylor Upton (Warren, OH: Chronicle, n.d.), 85–​87; Forty-​First Annual Report of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Held at Seattle, Washington July 1st to 6th 1909, ed. Harriet Taylor Upton (Warren, OH: n.p., n.d.), 58–​63.

Notes to pages 73–77    189 178. For more on the College League, see Kelly L. Marino, “Votes for College Women: Women’s Suffrage and Higher Education in Modern America” (PhD diss., Binghamton University, State University of New York, 2016). 179. Here I am counting the following: NAWSA, New York State Woman Suffrage Association, Woman Suffrage Party, Women’s Political Union/​Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women, Equal Franchise Society, Political Equality Association, East Side League, Collegiate League, Society of the Suffragettes, Co-​Operative Service League, Equal Suffrage League, William Lloyd Garrison Association, Jean d’Arc League, Woman Suffrage Study Club, and Men’s League for Woman Suffrage. Forty-​ Second Annual Report of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Given at the Convention Held at Washington, D.C. April 14 to 19 Inclusive, 1910 (New York: n.p., n.d.), 131; Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, Forty-​Second Annual Convention Niagara Falls, New York October 18 to 21, 1910 (New York: James A. Rogers, n.d.), 9, 13, 110–​11. 180. Forty-​Second Annual Report of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association, 133; McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood,” 57–​58; Lauren C. Santangelo’s study of Margaret Chanler Aldrich for discussion of the Grange, “City and Country: Margaret Chanler Aldrich and the Space In-​Between,” Hudson River Valley Review 32, no. 1 (Autumn 2015): 15–​33; Proceedings of the Thirty-​Eighth Annual Convention of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Held at Baltimore, MD., February 7th to 13th inclusive, 1906 (Warren, OH: Wm. Ritezel & Company, n.d.), 105; “School Suffrage,” in Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, Forty-​Second Annual Convention, 75; Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association . . . 1909,  79–​82.

Chapter 4 1. “Suffrage Army Out on Parade,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), May 5, 1912; “Thousands Will March,” The Woman’s Journal (hereafter TWJ), April 20, 1912. 2. For the quote and detailed discussion of the parades, see Pamela Cobrin, From Winning the Vote to Directing on Broadway: The Emergence of Women on the New York Stage, 1880–​1927 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2009), 23–​61. 3. For this frustration, see David Kevin McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood: Women’s Culture and the Politics of Suffrage in New York State, 1865–​ 1917” (PhD diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1987), 71–​79. 4. Amy Shore’s recent work has done the most to recover these suffrage films. See Amy Shore, Suffrage and the Silver Screen (New York: Peter Lang, 2014). 5. Because this book explores New York City, it does not focus on political maneuverings in Albany, many of which are detailed in Harriot Stanton Blatch and Alma Lutz’s Challenging Years and Ellen Carol DuBois’s biography of Blatch. See Harriot Stanton Blatch and Alma Lutz, Challenging Years: The Memoirs of Harriot Stanton Blatch (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), 123–​28, 139–​52, 172–​87; Ida Husted Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6 (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922; New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1969),

190 

 

Notes to pages 77–79

444–​45; Ellen Carol DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 122–​47. 6. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1910 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911), 50. 7. “From the Assembly Districts,” The Woman Voter (hereafter TWV), December 1911. 8. “Valid Enrollments,” TWV, July 1911; “The Third in Process,” TWV, July 1912. 9. “An Appeal,” TWV, February 1910. 10. A. Maude Royden, “The Woman Suffrage Party: An Appreciation from England,” TWV, July 1913. 11. Letter, Mabel Craft Deering to James and Harriet Laidlaw, November 1, 1911, Folder 122, Reel 5, H. B. (Harriet Burton) Laidlaw Papers (hereafter HBL Papers), 1851–​1958, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 12. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 50–​51. 13. Cora P. Hamilton, “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, January 1912; Helen G. Ecob, “Queens,” TWV, September 1912; Adaline W. Sterling, ed., “Assembly District Notes,” TWV, November 1913. 14. “From the Assembly District,” TWV, August 1911. 15. “War among Suffragists,” New-​York Tribune, October 15, 1911; “Mrs. Elder Hid under Table, Says Opponent,” January 3, 1912, Newspaper Clipping, National American Woman Suffrage Association (hereafter NAWSA) Records, Reel 1, vol. 6, Manuscript and Archives Division, New York Public Library (hereafter NYPL), New York, New York; “Couldn’t Vote Even in Suffrage League,” NYT, January 5, 1912. 16. “King Suffragettes Angry,” Sun, November 10, 1911; “To Depose Mrs. Elder,” Sun, November 28, 1911; Minutes of Woman Suffrage Party (hereafter WSP), October 18, 1911, November 27, 1911, December 4, 1911, February 19, 1912, March 4, 1912, Woman Suffrage Association of New York State (hereafter WSANYS) Papers, vol. 2 and Box 8, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, New York; “Mrs. Elder Wins Injunction,” NYT, January 20, 1912; “Suffragist War Leads Faction to Halt Convention,” Newspaper Clipping, NAWSA Records, Reel 1, vol. 6, NYPL; “Suffragist War Aired in Court,” Newspaper Clipping, NAWSA Records, Reel 1, vol. 6, NYPL; “They Bounced Three Sister Suffragettes!,” World, Newspaper Clipping, NAWSA Records, Reel 1, vol. 6, NYPL; “Even in the Court,” Newspaper Clipping, NAWSA Records, Reel 1, vol. 6, NYPL. 17. Edgar E. Mountjoy, Official Congressional Directory for the Use of the United States Congress, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Government Publishing Office, 1914), 69–​76. 18. Murray Hill had shifting boundaries. In 1898, Appletons’ Dictionary expansively placed Murray Hill between Third and Sixth Avenues and Thirty-​Second and Forty-​ Fifth Streets. In 1914, King’s How to See New York limited it to Thirty-​Fourth and Forty-​Second Streets between Madison and Park Avenues. See Appletons’ Dictionary of New York and Its Vicinity (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1898), 173; Moses King, King’s How to See New York: A Complete Trustworthy Guidebook (New York: Moses King, 1914), 118; William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New

Notes to pages 79–82    191 American Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1993) 30–​32; “The Intensive Use of City Land,” Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, November 23, 1912. 19. Susan Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890–​1940 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 18–​20, 76, 84–​85; Leach, Land of Desire,  55–​61. 20. Margaret Finnegan has illuminated the ways in which suffragists employed new retailing and advertising tactics—​everything from electric signs to window displays—​to sell the vote. Consumerism also influenced the location of headquarters. Margaret Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 45–​75. 21. Jessica Ellen Sewell, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890–​1915 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 140–​41. 22. Proceedings of the Thirty-​Fifth Annual Convention of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Held at New Orleans, LA., March 19th to 25th, inclusive, 1903, ed. Harriet Taylor Upton (Warren, OH: Wm. Ritezel & Company, n.d.), 79. 23. Note, Folder: 1.8, Harriot Stanton Blatch Papers (hereafter HSB Papers), Archives and Special Collections, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. 24. Blatch and Lutz, Challenging Years, 120, 136. 25. Program, “Country Market,” 1912, Reel 3, vol. 26, NAWSA Records, NYPL; Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association Forty-​Third Annual Convention Ithaca, New York October 31 to November 3, 1911, 27; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 449. 26. Minutes of WSP, February 26, 1912, April 1, 1912, April 10, 1912, April 15, 1912, WSANYS Papers, vol. 3 and Box 8, Columbia University; “The New Home of the Woman Suffrage Party,” TWV, May 1912; “A Bit of History,” TWV, May 1917. 27. “Suffragists’ New Home,” TWJ, January 13, 1912. 28. Flyer, Political Equality Association, Reel 3, vol. 25, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Sausages and Suffrage Must Be Dished Up in New Home,” New York World, October 8, 1911, Reel 1, vol. 6, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Lunchroom Queen Quits Mrs. Belmont,” NYT, January 30, 1912. 29. “Fair Miss Suffrage Waits on Strikers,” NYT, November 26, 1911. 30. Forty-​Fourth Annual Report of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Given at the Convention Held at Philadelphia, P.A. November 21 to 26 (Inclusive) 1912 (New York: n.p., n.d.), 15; “Suffragists’ New Home,” TWJ, January 13, 1912. 31. “The Housewarming,” TWV, May 1913; “The New Headquarters,” TWV, April 1913; “State Correspondence,” TWJ, February 19, 1910. 32. Belmont resisted the labeling of her hygiene department a “beauty parlor,” considering it more medical than cosmetic in nature. “Girls Hear Health Talk,” New-​York Tribune, December 5, 1911; “Suffragists’ Home Has Club Features,” World, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 1, vol. 6, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Fair Miss Suffrage Waits on Strikers,” NYT, November 26, 1911, Reel 1, vol. 6, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Suffrage Ass’n Rejects Mrs. Belmont’s Offer,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 1, vol. 6, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Mrs. Belmont Plans Beauty Repair Shop,” NYT, October 19, 1911.

192 

 

Notes to pages 82–85

33. “Lunchroom Queen Quits Mrs. Belmont,” NYT, January 30, 1912; “Farmerettes Seek Jobs,” New-​York Tribune, January 16, 1911; “Deserts Mrs. Belmont,” New-​York Tribune, January 30, 1912. 34. “The Multiplication of Theatres,” Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, December 21, 1912. 35. “The Grand Central Terminal,” Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, July 5, 1913. 36. “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, June 1911; Ad, TWV, February 1912; “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, July 1911. 37. Neighbors remained a problem, though. Belmont experienced hostility from neighbors in the form of spiked fences when she opened up her early headquarters on Thirty-​Fourth Street. See “Mrs. Belmont Buys House,” New-​York Tribune, April 4, 1911. 38. “Behind Veiled Windows,” TWV, December 1913. 39. “Sausages and Suffrage Must Be Dished Up in New Home,” New York World, October 8, 1911. 40. Adaline W. Sterling, ed., “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, May 1913; “What Is Going On,” TWV, June 1910. 41. “State Correspondence: New York,” TWJ, September 24, 1910. 42. Annual Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association 1912 Utica Convention October 15 to 18, 31. 43. Forty-​Third Annual Report of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Given at the Convention Held at Louisville, KY. October 19 to 25 Inclusive (New York: n.p., n.d.), 106, 116, 144. 44. Forty-​Fifth Annual Report of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Given at the Convention Held at Washington, D.C. November 29 to Dec. 5 (Inclusive) 1913 (New York: n.p., n.d.), 92. 45. For a study of how open-​air meetings intersected with the right of assembly, government power, and gendered etiquette across the nation, see Linda J. Lumsden, Rampant Women: Suffragists and the Right of Assembly (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 23–​51. 46. Lillie Devereux Blake, Fettered for Life Or Lord and Master, A Story of To-​Day (New York: Sheldon & Company, 1874; New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1996), 183. 47. Lumsden, Rampant Women, 35. 48. “Boys Howl Down Suffrage Speakers,” NYT, November 28, 1911; Annual Report, January 1911–​January 1912 in Reel 1, vol. 3, Harriot Stanton Blatch Papers (hereafter HSB Papers), Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (hereafter LOC), Washington, DC. 49. “Suffrage Hearts Angry,” New-​York Tribune, November 28, 1911. 50. “Suffrage Hearts Angry,” New-​York Tribune, November 28, 1911. 51. “Hoot Down Women,” Syracuse Herald, November 29, 1911, in Reel 1, vol. 3, HSB Papers, LOC. 52. “Suffragists Get a Hearing,” NYT, December 8, 1911. 53. Anne Boylan, Treva B. Lindsey, and Sarah Deutsch have astutely discussed the ways in which class and race affected women’s access to public space. Lindsey,

Notes to pages 85–88    193 in particular, explores the ways in which racialized notions of “ladyhood” affected African American suffragists’ participation in parades. Anne M. Boylan, “Claiming Visibility: Women in Public/​Public Women in the United States, 1865–​1910,” in Becoming Visible: Women’s Presence in Late Nineteenth-​Century America, ed. Janet Floyd, R. J. Ellis, and Lindsay Traub (New York: Rodopi, 2010), 17–​40, esp. 26; Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Power, and Space in Boston, 1870–​ 1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Treva B. Lindsey, Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 86–​110. 54. “Suffragettes Win Wall St. Audience,” December 8, 1911, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 1, vol. 6, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 55. Lisa Keller and George Winslow, “Hell’s Kitchen,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 589–​90; Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, ed. David Leviatin, 2nd ed. (Boston: Bedford/​St. Martin’s, 2011), 208, 216. 56. Appletons’ Dictionary of New York and Its Vicinity (New York: D. Appleton & Company, Publishers, 1887), 201. 57. Eric Homberger, The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1998), 130–​31. 58. “Hell’s Kitchen Dazed,” September 1910, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 1, vol. 1, HSB Papers, LOC. 59. “What’s Doing in the Party,” TWV, August 1912; “Roughs Rout Meeting,” TWJ, July 13, 1912. 60. This summarizes Mary Ting Yi Lui, “Saving Young Girls from Chinatown: White Slavery and Woman Suffrage, 1910–​1920,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 18, no. 3 (September 2009): 393–​417; Mary Ting Yi Lui, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-​of-​the-​Century New York City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1–​51. 61. “What’s Doing in the Party,” TWV, August 1912. 62. Harriet Burton Laidlaw, “Rally in Chinatown,” TWJ, July 13, 1912. 63. This draws from Finnegan, Selling Suffrage, 1–​13, 16–​17, 69. 64. Liette Gidlow, The Big Vote: Gender, Consumer Culture, and the Politics of Exclusion, 1890s–​1920s (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 161–​93; Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 18–​61. 65. Lumsden has reached a similar conclusion. See Lumsden, Rampant Women,  23–​51. 66. These statistics were developed from Jane Hodson, ed., How to Become a Trained Nurse: A Manual of Information in Detail (New York: William Abbatt, 1898). 67. Susan M. Reverby, Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850–​ 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 95. 68. “Honor the Nurses,” TWJ, May 21, 1910; “Nurses Want the Vote,” TWJ, August 3, 1912; “Clara Barton,” TWJ, September 16, 1911; A. S. B., “Florence Nightingale for Woman Suffrage,” TWJ, August 20, 1910; “Nurses Hear Suffrage Call,”

194 

 

Notes to pages 88–89

New York-​Tribune, April 18, 1911, Reel 1, vol. 7, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Kind Male Suffragists,” New-​York Tribune, March 25, 1912; “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, December 1911. 69. Lavinia L. Dock, “Trained Nurses,” NYT, March 24, 1909; Katharine Houghton Hepburn, “Is Their Opposition to Woman Suffrage Merely Instinctive?,” NYT, April 18, 1909. 70. A Trained Nurse, “Alumnae Association, 14,000 Strong, Opposes Woman Suffrage,” NYT, March 6, 1909; Registered Nurse, “Trained Nurses and Suffrage,” NYT, March 27, 1909; Reverby, Ordered to Care, 46. 71. Reverby, Ordered to Care, 121–​42. 72. Mary Ann Bradford Burnam, “Lavinia Lloyd Dock: An Activist in Nursing and Social Reform” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1998), 174. 73. Reverby, Ordered to Care, 121–​42. 74. Suffragists’ articles in the Alumnae Association of the Presbyterian Hospital Training School for Nurses’ Quarterly Magazine also reveal a desire to focus on the profession’s leaders, since Presbyterian Hospital had one of the nation’s most eminent programs. Frances G. Ecob, “Woman Suffrage,” Quarterly Magazine, January 1911; Frances G. Ecob, “Woman’s Suffrage,” Quarterly Magazine, April 1911; Frances G. Ecob, “Woman’s Suffrage,” Quarterly Magazine, January 1912; “Various Suffrage Organizations in New York City,” TWJ, May 6, 1911; “Nurses Unite for Suffrage,” New-​ York Tribune, May 20, 1910; Reverby, Ordered to Care, 113. 75. Karen Buhler-​Wilkerson, “Bringing Care to the People: Lillian Wald’s Legacy to Public Health Nursing,” American Journal of Public Health 83, no. 12 (December 1993): 1778–​86. 76. Center List, 1910, January 24, 1910, Folder 2, Box 194, Visiting Nurse Service of New York Records, Archives and Special Collections, Columbia University Health Sciences Library, New York, New York. 77. For background, see Karen Buhler-​Wilkerson, No Place Like Home: A History of Nursing and Home Care in the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 45–​67, 98–​113. Doris Daniels pointed out this connection decades ago, although she focuses less on Henry Street’s nursing services and more on its settlement house work and Wald’s contributions. See Doris Daniels, “Building a Winning Coalition: The Suffrage Fight in New York State,” New York History 60, no. 1 (1979): 58–​80. 78. Letter, Kate M. Gordon to Lillian Wald, August 15, 1907, Reel 8, Lillian D. Wald Papers (hereafter LDW Papers), Manuscripts and Archives Division, NYPL; Letter, Lillian Wald to Kate Gordon, August 19, 1907, Reel 1, LDW Papers, NYPL; Letter, Carrie Chapman Catt to Lillian Wald, September 11, 1909, Reel 8, LDW Papers, NYPL; Letter, Lillian Wald to Carrie Chapman Catt, September 15, 1909, Reel 1, LDW Papers, NYPL. 79. “State Correspondence: New York,” TWJ, November 5, 1910; “The Great Parade,” TWJ, April 22, 1911. 80. Lillian D. Wald, “Arguments for Woman Suffrage,” TWJ, May 6, 1911. 81. Letter, Lillian Wald to George Foster Peabody, May 21, 1912, Reel 1, LDW Papers, NYPL; Letter, Sylvia Pankhurst to Lillian Wald, April 30, 1912, Reel 8, LDW

Notes to pages 89–91    195 Papers, NYPL; Letter, Lillian Wald to Sylvia Pankhurst, June 14, 1912, Reel 1, LDW Papers, NYPL; Telegram, Lillian Wald to Democratic National Committee, August 10, 1912, Reel 1, LDW Papers, NYPL. 82. “Equal Suffrage Pictures,” TWJ, February 25, 1911. 83. Adaline W. Sterling, ed., “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, April 1913. 84. Adaline W. Sterling, ed., “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, June 1913. 85. “Urge Suffrage on East Side,” NYT, October 30, 1915. 86. Lina D. Miller, New York Charities Directory: An Authoritative, Descriptive, and Classified Directory of the Social, Civic, and Religious Resources of the City of New York (New York: Charity Organization Society, 1912), 129; John William Leonard, ed., Woman’s Who’s Who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada, 1914–​1915 (New York: American Commonwealth Company, 1914), 392, 858. 87. Burnam, “Lavinia Lloyd Dock,” 14, 21, 41–​53, 68, 82–​83. 88. Letter, Lavinia Dock to Lillian Wald, December 1903, Box 3, Lillian D. Wald Papers (hereafter LDW Papers), Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. 89. For her retirement see Burnam, “Lavinia Lloyd Dock,” 233–​69. 90. “Suffragists Prove They Are Billposters,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 1, vol. 2, HSB Papers, LOC; “Hell’s Kitchen Dazed,” New-​York Tribune, September 14, 1910, Reel 1, vol. 1, HSB Papers, LOC. 91. Susan Rimby, Mira Lloyd Dock and the Progressive Era Conservation Movement (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 130–​31. 92. There was at least one incident where an Irish woman mistook the yellow suffrage color for orange and tried to attack the speaker. Augusta C. Kellogg, ed., “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, December 1912; Adaline Wheelock Sterling, “The Street Meeting,” TWV, August 1913. 93. “Suffrage on the East Side,” TWV, March 1911; “Equal Suffrage Pictures,” TWJ, February 25, 1911. 94. “Downtown Districts,” TWV, July 1911. 95. DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 134. 96. Dock also worked to convince professional organizations to support the vote. Teresa Cristy, “Equal Rights for Women: Voices from the Past,” American Journal of Nursing 71, no. 2 (February 1971): 288–​93; L. L. Dock, “The Suffrage Question,” American Journal of Nursing 8, no. 11 (August 1908): 925–​27. 97. “Why Women Leave Off Teaching,” TWJ, August 29, 1908. 98. Benjamin McArthur, Actors and American Culture, 1880–​1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 42, 123–​42. 99. Susan A. Glenn, Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 134–​35; Albert Auster, Actresses and Suffragists: Women in the American Theater, 1890–​1920 (New York: Praeger, 1984), 6; Finnegan, Selling Suffrage,  87–​88. 100. See Amy E. Hughes, Spectacles of Reform: Theatre and Activism in Nineteenth-​ Century America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 1–​12, 48; Scott Gac,

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Notes to pages 91–92

Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-​Century Culture of Reform (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 4–​18, 65. 101. Glenn, Female Spectacle, 139–​40. 102. “Actresses Send Regrets: Interest in Suffrage Doesn’t Go Beyond Publicity Stage,” New-​York Tribune, January 7, 1911. 103. Susan A. Glenn has suggested that Friganza’s participation was self-​ interested; she hoped her career would benefit from the publicity. “Trixie Friganza Is a Suffragette,” NY Telegraph, October 27, 1908, Reel 19, Robinson Locke Collection, *T-​ Mss 1924-​001, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (hereafter NYPL-​PA), New York, New York; Glenn, Female Spectacle, 139; “Trixie Friganza Is Dead at 84,” NYT, February 28, 1955. 104. “Please a Suffrage Play,” NY Sun, May 4, 1909, Reel 12, Robinson Locke Collection, NYPL-​PA. 105. A year later, Crossman described herself as a “militant suffragist,” although not a suffragette. “Fight for Suffrage, Miss Crossman Says,” NYT, May 5, 1909; “Miss Henrietta Crossman Calls Herself ‘a Militant Suffragist,’” NY Telegram, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 12, Robinson Locke Collection, NYPL-​PA. 106. WSP Minutes, February 7, 1910, WSANYS Papers, vol. 1 and Box 8, Columbia University; “State Correspondence: New York,” TWJ, March 26, 1910; “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, January 1912; Frances Diodato Bzowski, “Spectacular Suffrage; Or, How Women Came Out of the Home and into the Streets and Theaters of New York City to Win the Vote,” New York History 76, no. 1 (1995): 78; Mrs. Bannister Merwin, ed., “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, May 1912. 107. “Ethel Barrymore Is a Suffragist,” NY Telegraph, February 11, 1910, Reel 3, Robinson Locke Collection, NYPL-​PA; “Women Should Vote Says Lillian Russell,” Pittsburgh Leader, May 3, 1911, Reel 36, Robinson Locke Collection, NYPL-​PA; “New York Parade,” TWJ, November 2, 1912; “State Correspondence: New York,” TWJ, March 5, 1910; “Pageant of Great Women,” TWV, March 1911; “Actresses Talk on Suffrage,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 1, vol. 7, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “What One Leading Actress Thinks about the New Suffragette Play,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 37, Robinson Locke Collection, NYPL-​PA; “If All Women Voted One Way,” NY Telegraph, April 7, 1909, Reel 37, Robinson Locke Collection, NYPL-​PA; “Miss Maxine Elliott, Hardest Worked Actress Demands Votes for Women,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 15, Robinson Locke Collection, NYPL-​PA. 108. “What Kind of Men Want Women to Vote and Why: Senator Robert M. La Follette,” TWJ, October 28, 1911; “La Follette Again Urges Equal Suffrage,” TWJ, January 27, 1912; “A Glimpse of Miss La Follette,” TWJ, April 9, 1910; “Breezy Chat with Miss Fola La Follette,” 1911, I: E160, La Follette Family Papers, Manuscript Division, LOC; Bernard A. Weisberger, “Changes and Choices: Two and a Half Generations of La Follette Women,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 76, no. 4 (Summer 1993): 248–​70. 109. This builds on Finnegan’s insights. Finnegan, Selling Suffrage, 88. 110. She would continue to juggle commitment and financial need. In 1915, she explained to Harriot Stanton Blatch that she provided her “services outright” “as often as” she could afford and usually did work within Gotham for a reduced fee. Letter, Fola

Notes to pages 92–93    197 La Follette to Harriot Stanton Blatch, April 6, 1915, I: E25, La Follette Family Papers, LOC; Letter, Fola La Follette to W. B. Feakins, October 3, 1911, I: E25, La Follette Family Papers, LOC. 111. Michael M. Davis Jr., The Exploitation of Pleasure: A Study of Commercial Recreations in New York City (New York: Department of Child Hygiene of the Russell Sage Foundation, 1911), 21, 26, 28, 30, 37. 112. Finnegan notes that suffragists had been using dramatic performances for decades to try to gain support, but that they became more widespread in the early twentieth century. Finnegan, Selling Suffrage,  82–​83. 113. “Maxine Elliott Theater the First of a Proposed Chain,” Washington Post, December 6, 1908. 114. According to Linda Lumsden, pageants enabled suffragists to present their arguments publicly in a “socially acceptable way.” In the process, they made women the protagonists in history (a history that otherwise ignored them). Lumsden, Rampant Women, 99, 100–​101, 147. 115. Not all coverage was positive. A San Francisco newspaper ridiculed the event, leading a New York suffragist to respond with a letter defending it. See Sidney G. P. Coryn, “In the Cause of Suffrage,” Argonaut, January 28, 1911; Letter to Alfred Holman, February 4, 1911, Folder 138, Reel 6, HBL Papers, Harvard University; “Women in Historic Poses for Suffrage,” NYT, January 18, 1911; “Society in Tableaux Aid Suffrage Cause,” NYT, January 16, 1911; “Historic Tableaux To-​Day,” NYT, January 17, 1911; Annual Report of the Women’s Political Union, January 1911–​January 1912, Folder: 1.13, HSB Papers, Vassar College. 116. Zoe H. Beckley, “Sh! There’s a Mystery Man in Greek Suffrage Play,” February 10, 1912, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 6, HSB Papers, LOC. 117. “‘Lysistrata’ to Aid ‘Cause,’” New-​York Tribune, February 16, 1913, Reel 2, vol. 6, HSB Papers, LOC. 118. “Shepherd in Leopard Skin to Dance for Suffragists,” Herald, February 2, 1913, Reel 2, vol. 6, HSB Papers, LOC; “They’re Going to Circle around Mr. Ionans,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 6, HSB Papers, LOC. 119. “Suffragists Gasp as Iolaus Prances,” New-​York Tribune, February 18, 1913, Reel 2, vol. 6, HSB Papers, LOC. 120. Even though Maxine Elliott donated the theater, the play did cost them more than $1,200 to produce, leaving them with only a $250 profit. See Annual Report of the Women’s Political Union, January 1913–​January 1914, Reel 3, vol. 8, pp. 26–​27, HSB Papers, LOC; Draft, Folder 1:22, HSB Papers, Vassar College. 121. “Lysistrata for Suffrage,” Evening Post, March 1, 1913, Reel 2, vol. 6, HSB Papers, LOC; “Poor Young Shepherd a Lamb before Society Shepherdesses,” World, February 9, 1913, Reel 2, vol. 6, HSB Papers, LOC. 122. “Poor Young Shepherd a Lamb before Society Shepherdesses,” World, February 9, 1913, Reel 2, vol. 6, HSB Papers, LOC; “Shepherd in Leopard Skin to Dance for Suffragists,” Herald, February 2, 1913, Reel 2, vol. 6, HSB Papers, LOC. 123. A few months later, activists supported a play at the Maxine Elliott’s Theatre that criticized just such exploitation of the female body. The Women’s Political World advertised the play about “white slave[ry],” “The Lure,” as the “Greatest of

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Notes to pages 93–95

All Arguments for Equal Suffrage.” Ad, Women’s Political World, November 15, 1913; “Programme of Suffrage Events,” Women’s Political World, November 15, 1913. 124. Davis, The Exploitation of Pleasure, 21. 125. Glenn, Female Spectacle, 14; David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 19–​33. 126. Richard Butsch, The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750–​1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 114–​15; Glenn, Female Spectacle, 143. 127. Starting in 1904, the Victoria Theatre welcomed those caught up in the middle of newspaper scandals. Mary C. Henderson, The City and the Theatre: New York Playhouses from Bowling Green to Union Square (Clifton, NJ: James T. White & Company, 1973), 279; quoted in Ben Yagoda, Will Rogers: A Biography (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), 90; Robert W. Snyder, The Voices of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 90–​91. 128. Glenn, Female Spectacle, 143; Program, Hammerstein’s Victoria “Theatre of Varieeies [sic],” Reel 3, vol. 26, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 129. “Ready for Suffrage Week,” NYT, September 7, 1912. 130. “Male Suffragists Timid,” NYT, September 11, 1912; “New York Has Big Suffrage Week,” TWJ, September 14, 1912; “Suffrage at Hammerstein’s,” NYT, September 2, 1912; “To Make Imagination Count,” TWJ, September 28, 1912. 131. “New York Has Big Suffrage Week,” TWJ, September 14, 1912. 132. In November and December 1911, suffragists lectured and showed moving pictures at Proctor’s Harlem Theatre and Keith’s Union Square Theatre. “Suffragists in Vaudeville,” New-​York Tribune, November 24, 1911, Reel 1, vol. 6, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 133. “Suffrage Week Over,” TWJ, September 21, 1912. 134. “Cigarettes Start a Suffragist Row,” NYT, September 17, 1912. 135. “Suffrage Smoke Denser,” New-​York Tribune, September 17, 1912. 136. “Suffragettes’ Cigarettes Shock Oscar Hammerstein,” Sun, September 17, 1912; “Suffrage Smoke Denser,” New-​York Tribune, September 17, 1912. 137. Richard Koscarski, Hollywood on the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 6–​7, 8–​9; Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–​1915, History of the American Cinema (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990), 149; Charles Musser and David James, “Filmmaking,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 443–​45; James Sanders, Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 24–​36. 138. Robert Sklar, Movie-​Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 16; Andrea Friedman, Prurient Interests: Gender, Democracy, and Obscenity in New York City, 1909–​1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 26. 139. One scholar has aptly described it as “a Progressive-​era experiment in voluntarism and industrial self-​regulation, the purpose of which was to arrest the

Notes to pages 95–96    199 movement toward expanded state authority over the movies.” Friedman, Prurient Interests,  25–​36. 140. In 1911, one reformer praised the board, claiming that the “motion-​picture is now offering to the public a more positively desirable form of entertainment than can be found at any other type of indoor commercial recreation provided at popular prices, and at most types of the high-​priced as well.” Davis, The Exploitation of Pleasure, 34; Robert Fisher, “Film Censorship and Progressive Reform: The National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures, 1909–​1922,” Journal of Popular Film 4, no. 2 (January 1975): 143–​56. 141. Shelley Stamp has detailed how, at the same time that the film industry wooed middle-​class women, it also ridiculed them. Kathleen D. McCarthy has discussed the shift toward reform themes. Shelley Stamp, Movie-​Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 6–​7, 10–​40; Sklar, Movie-​Made America, 30; Kathleen D. McCarthy, “Nickel Vice and Virtue: Movie Censorship in Chicago, 1907–​1915,” Journal of Popular Film 5, no. 1 (1976): 49, 51–​52; Ben Singer and Charlie Keil, “Introduction: Movies and the 1910s,” in American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variations, ed. Ben Singer and Charlie Keil (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 16; Eileen Bowser, “1911: Movies and the Stability of the Institution,” in American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variations, ed. Ben Singer and Charlie Keil (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 52. 142. “The Suffragists Go Filming,” Moving Picture World, May 25, 1912. In this article, the film title is Suffrage Wins Herbert, but the description and timing suggest it is Suffrage and the Man. “Suffrage and the Man,” Moving Picture World, June 8, 1912. 143. Ad, Moving Picture World, May 25, 1912. 144. “Votes for Women,” Moving Picture World, June 29, 1912; “New Suffrage Play Now On,” TWJ, May 25, 1912; Ad, Moving Picture World, June 1, 1912; “Votes for Women,” Moving Picture World, June 1, 1912. 145. “Suffrage in 4 Reels,” New-​York Tribune, November 6, 1913, Reel 3, vol. 8, HSB Papers, LOC. 146. Ad, Billboard, November 8, 1913. 147. Eighty Million Women Want—​?, dir. by Willard Louis (1913). 148. For a careful reading of this film, see Shore, Suffrage and the Silver Screen, 119–​58. 149. “Pay Dime and See Suffrage Leaders in Picture Drama,” June 10, 1912, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 4, HSB Papers, LOC; “Votes for Women,” Moving Picture World, June 1, 1912; “Suffrage via Biograph,” New-​York Tribune, June 1, 1912. 150. Several scholars have analyzed Votes for Women. Amy Shore has thoughtfully applied Benedict Anderson’s concept of an “imagined community” to it. Since Jane Addams and Anna Howard Shaw were “stars” in the suffrage movement, individual audience members felt connected to them when they appeared on screen and through them to a larger, “national community.” Meanwhile, in her study, Shelley Stamp stresses the “cautious” nature of the plot—​it demanded the vote by depending on

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Notes to pages 96–99

traditional notions of femininity and virtue. Although scholars have written about this film, the parade footage remains underexplored. Kay Sloan, “Sexual Warfare in the Silent Cinema: Comedies and Melodramas of Woman Suffragism,” American Quarterly 33, no. 4 (Fall 1981): 416; “New Suffrage Photo Play to Be Produced,” TWJ, May 18, 1912; “New Suffrage Play Now On,” TWJ, May 25, 1912; Shore, Suffrage and the Silver Screen, 71–​118; Stamp, Movie-​Struck Girls, 177–​81. 151. Blatch and Lutz, Challenging Years, 129–​30; see Cobrin, From Winning the Vote to Directing on Broadway,  23–​61. 152. “Blaze of Light for Suffrage Parade,” NY Sun, June 29, 1912, Scrapbook of Suffrage Parade, New-​York Historical Society (hereafter N-​YHS), New York, New York; “Marching Women Will Fill Fifth Ave. with Light,” Scrapbook of Suffrage Parade, N-​ YHS; “20,000 Suffragists to Tramp Fifth Avenue,” Sun, November 8, 1912, Scrapbook of Suffrage Parade, N-​YHS. 153. “Suffrage Events,” Women’s Political World, January 6, 1913; “Moving Pictures to Aid Woman’s Cause,” Motography, August 1911; Richard Abel, “1912: Movies, Innovative Nostalgia, and Real-​Life Threats,” in American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variations, ed. Ben Singer and Charlie Keil (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 71. 154. The Women’s Political Union encouraged supporters in New York to show the “parade film,” presumably Votes for Women, at open-​air meetings. Harriot Stanton Blatch, Memo, Suggestions for Chairman and Committees of Senatorial Districts in Greater New York, Reel 1, vol. 2, HSB Papers, LOC; “New Suffrage Play Now On,” TWJ, May 25, 1912. 155. “Play Makes Hit,” TWJ, July 6, 1912. 156. “The Suffragists Go Filming,” Moving Picture World, May 25, 1912; “Pay Dime and See Suffrage Leaders in Picture Drama,” June 10, 1912, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 4, HSB Papers, LOC; Davis, The Exploitation of Pleasure, 26; Scott Simmon, “1910: Movies, Reform, and New Women,” in American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variations, ed. Ben Singer and Charlie Keil (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 28; “Suffrage via Biograph,” New-​York Tribune, June 1, 1912. 157. Abel, “1912: Movies, Innovative Nostalgia, and Real-​Life Threats,” 72; Simmon, “1910: Movies, Reform, and New Women,” 28; Bowser, “1911: Movies and the Stability of the Institution,” 52; Sklar, Movie-​Made America,  42–​44. 158. Henderson, The City and the Theatre, 206; “Put Suffrage in Movies,” NYT, November 6, 1913, Reel 3, vol. 8, HSB Papers, LOC; Mary C. Henderson and Alexis Greene, The Story of 42nd Street: The Theatres, Shows, Characters, and Scandals of the World’s Most Notorious Street (New York: Watson-​Guptill, 2008), 195. 159. Eighty Million Women Want—​? is remarkably still commercially available. 160. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 458–​59.

Chapter 5 1. “May 2nd in New York,” The Woman Voter (hereafter TWV), June 1914; Minutes of New York State Woman Suffrage Association (hereafter NYSWSA), February 9,

Notes to pages 99–101    201 1914, Woman Suffrage Association of New York State (hereafter WSANYS) Papers, vol. 8 and Box 7, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, New York; “20,000 Women in Suffrage March,” New-​York Tribune, May 4, 1913. 2. “Mayor Mere Man on Suffrage Day,” New-​York Tribune, May 1, 1914, Reel 3, vol. 9, Harriot Stanton Blatch (hereafter HSB) Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (hereafter LOC), Washington, DC; “Mayor Mitchel Stirs Ire of Women at May Day Suffrage Celebration,” NY Herald, May 3, 1914, Reel 3, vol. 9, HSB Papers, LOC. 3. Evening Sun, May 1, 1914, Reel 3, vol. 9, HSB Papers, LOC; “Big Suffrage Meetings,” NY Evening Post, March 8, 1914, Reel 3, vol. 9, HSB Papers, LOC; “Opens Park Mall for Suffrage Day,” New-​York Tribune, April 28, 1914, Reel 3, vol. 9, HSB Papers, LOC; Draft, Folder: 1.24, Harriot Stanton Blatch Papers (hereafter HSB Papers), Archives and Special Collections, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. 4. “Our Leaders Predict Success,” TWV, August 1915; “Six States Rejoice,” The Woman’s Journal (hereafter TWJ), February 27, 1915. 5. Mrs. Catt’s 1914 Report, Box 2, Carrie Chapman Catt Papers (hereafter CCC Papers), Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library (hereafter NYPL), New York, New York. 6. “Suffrage Status,” TWJ, December 19, 1914. 7. Harriet Burton Laidlaw, “Victory 1915 in Manhattan,” TWV, September 1913; Ethel E. Dreier, “Victory 1915,” TWV, November 1913; “Organized to Win!,” TWV, November 1914; Harriet T. Comstock, “Victory 1915 in Brooklyn!,” TWV, August 1913; Louis Heaton Pink, “Fair Field for Battle,” TWV, November 1913. 8. This draws from Ellen Carol DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 160. 9. Mrs. Catt’s 1914 Report, Box 2, Folder 9, CCC Papers, NYPL; Annual Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association Forty-​Seventh Annual Convention Hotel Astor New York City Nov. 30–​Dec. 2, 1915, 6. 10. Minutes of NYSWSA, October 31, 1913, WSANYS Papers, Box 7, Columbia University; Ida Husted Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6 (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922; New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1969), 469; DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 161–​63. 11. It was in upstate New York that the division created the most visible problems, according to Ellen Carol DuBois. “Suffrage Parties at Odds over State ‘Maps of Doubt,’” New-​York Tribune, June 10, 1914, National American Woman Suffrage Association (hereafter NAWSA) Records, Reel 1, vol. 8, Manuscript and Archives Division, New York Public Library (hereafter NYPL), New York, New York; DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 163–​68. 12. This summarizes DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 94–​101, 115–​21, 163. 13. TWV, September 1913; TWV, June 1915; TWV, September 1912. 14. “The Wage Earners’ League for Suffrage,” TWV, November 1911. 15. “The Wage-​Earners’ League,” TWV, September 1912; Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello, Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), 60.

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Notes to pages 101–103

16. In total, according to the New York World, 87 percent of those in this “professional category”—​doctors, lawyers, editors, writers, actresses, singers, artists, designers, “etc.”—​supported enfranchisement. See “Newspaper Poll in New York Shows Women Want to Vote,” TWJ, March 20, 1915. 17. Louise Closser Hale, “Why Suffrage Parades?,” The Woman Citizen (hereafter TWC), October 27, 1917. 18. “Our Dramatic Number,” TWV, February 1914. 19. “Why We Must Win,” TWV, February 1914; Edith Eliss, “The Woman’s National Theatre,” TWV, February 1914; Mary Shaw, “The Feminist Movement in Drama,” TWV, February 1914; Lillah Alsbury Pirie, “A Little Play House—​Why Not?,” TWV, February 1914. 20. “150 Matriculate with Mrs. Catt,” TWJ, September 20, 1913; “A School for Suffrage Workers,” TWV, December 1914. 21. “Bernhardt Visits the Suffragists,” Newspaper Clipping, NAWSA Records, Reel 2, vol. 9, NYPL; “Bernhardt Visits Suffragist Home,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), May 22, 1913. 22. Annual Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association . . . 1915, 61. 23. Minutes of NYSWSA, March 8, 1915, WSANYS Papers, vol. 8 and Box 7, Columbia University. 24. Minutes of WSP, December 29, 1913, vol. 4 and Box 8, WSANYS Papers, Columbia University. 25. Despite Aldrich’s passion, her cousin remained curious, but noncommittal, about enfranchisement. Letter, Louise Herkshaw (?) Leeds to Harriet Burton Laidlaw, September 20, 1913, Folder 142, Reel 6, H. B. (Harriet Burton) Laidlaw (hereafter HBL) Papers, 1851–​1958, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; “Mrs. Astor Says She Is Not a Suffragist,” NY Globe, February 24, 1914, Reel 3, vol. 9, HSB Papers, LOC. 26. Mrs. Henry O. Havemeyer, “Woman’s Right to Pay Taxes,” TWV, July 1915. 27. Kathleen D. McCarthy, Women’s Culture: American Philanthropy and Art, 1830–​1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 141–​42; Karen J. Blair, The Torchbearers: Women and Their Amateur Arts Associations in America, 1890–​1930 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 91. 28. Bulletin, NAWSA Press Bureau, July 31, 1915, NAWSA Records, Reel 2, vol. 12, NYPL. 29. The funding of the suffrage movement and its relationship to wealth is a burgeoning field within the scholarship. See Johanna Neuman, Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote (New York: NYU Press, 2017); Joan Marie Johnson, Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women’s Movement, 1870–​1967 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017); Lisa Tetrault, “The Incorporation of American Feminism: Suffragists on the Post-​bellum Lyceum,” Journal of American History 96, no. 4 (March 2010): 1027–​56. 30. “Scolds Rich Suffragists Penury,” New-​York Tribune, March 23, 1914, Reel 3, vol. 9, HSB Papers, LOC.

Notes to pages 103–105    203 31. DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 108. 32. Augusta C. Kellogg, ed., “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, February 1913, May 1913, June 1913; “Walks and Wins with Two-​Ft. Map,” TWJ, February 1, 1913; “Lavinia Dock Has Hebrew Sandwich,” TWJ, February 8, 1913; WSP Minutes, February 16, 1913, WSANYS Papers, vol. 4 and Box 8, Columbia University. 33. Harriet Burton Laidlaw, “Victory 1915 in Manhattan,” TWV, September 1913. 34. “Suffrage in Henry Street,” TWJ, October 9, 1915. 35. Adaline W. Sterling, ed., “Assembly District News,” TWV, July 1913; Augusta C. Kellogg, ed., “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, January 1913. 36. Adaline W. Sterling, ed. “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, March 1913. 37. “Nurses, Midwives and Doctors,” Women’s Political World, June 1, 1914. 38. “Newspaper Poll in New York Shows Women Want to Vote,” TWJ, March 20, 1915. 39. For more background, see Patricia Carter, “Becoming the ‘New Women’: The Equal Rights Campaigns of New York City Schoolteachers, 1900–​1920,” in The Teacher’s Voice: A Social History of Teaching in Twentieth Century America, ed. Richard J. Altenbaugh (Bristol, PA: Falmer Press, Taylor & Francis, 1992), 53–​57. 40. “Shall Mothers Teach?,” TWV, December 1914. 41. Ultimately, the state commissioner of education gave Peixotto and others their jobs back, and the Board of Education changed the by-​laws to provide two years of maternity leave without pay. “Teachers Must Be Childless,” TWJ, April 12, 1913; “A Premium on Race Suicide,” TWV, April 1913; “Penalizing Marriage and Motherhood,” TWV, August 1913; American Educational Review, October 1914; Information Quarterly, April 1915. 42. “New Fight to Save Teacher Mothers,” NYT, October 1, 1914. 43. TWV, December 1914. 44. Harriot Stanton Blatch, “The Mother Teacher,” New-​York Tribune, October 29, 1913, Reel 3, vol. 8, HSB Papers, LOC. 45. “Teachers Vote for Suffrage,” TWJ, July 18, 1914; “Pictures Victory in Convention,” TWJ, July 25, 1914; “The Campaign Rally,” TWV, December 1914; Annual Report of the NYSWSA, 1915, p. 85, Folder 7, Reel 15, Vira Boarman Whitehouse Papers, 1889–​1957, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 46. “Teachers to Enter Soapbox Campaign,” NYT, June 2, 1915; Kate Devereux Blake, “Signs of Victory,” TWV, August 1915; “Teachers to the Front,” TWV, July 1915. 47. Empire State Campaign Committee Report, February 10, 1915, Folder 10, Box 2, CCC Papers, NYPL; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 471; Kate Devereux Blake, “Signs of Victory,” TWV, August 1915. 48. “Newspaper Poll in New York Shows Women Want to Vote,” TWJ, March 20, 1915. 49. Intelligence Service Report, August 23, 1915, Folder 11, Box 2, CCC Papers, NYPL; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 472–​73. 50. Gertrude Foster Brown, “Suffrage and Music—​My First Eighty Years,” ed. Mildred Adams, pp. 160–​61, Gertrude Foster Brown Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Notes to pages 106–108

51. Empire State Campaign Committee, April 17, 1915, Box 2, Folder 10, CCC Papers, NYPL; “The Woman Suffrage Party,” TWV, May 1914. 52. I thank Sally Deutsch for suggesting this framing of electoral geography versus geography of affinity; “Organized to Win!,” TWV, November 1914. 53. “Canvassing Reduced to Science in Manhattan,” TWJ, July 3, 1915. 54. “Westerners to Aid Suffragists Here,” NYT, July 23, 1913. 55. Sarah R. Parks, “From a Canvasser’s Diary,” TWV, May 1915. 56. Marie Jenney Howe, “The Way to Win,” TWV, May 1915; “These Our Men,” Draft, Harper’s Bazaar, August 1915, HBL Papers, Folder 79, Reel 4, Harvard University. 57. Edith Lawson, “A Canvassing Night’s Entertainment,” TWV, July 1915; Adaline Sterling, “The Woman Suffrage Party,” TWV, June 1915. 58. Edith Lawson, “A Canvassing Night’s Entertainment,” TWV, July 1915. 59. Marie Jenney Howe, “The Way to Win,” TWV, May 1915; Mary Otis Wilcox, “The Staten Island Hike,” TWV, May 1915. 60. “Organization Which Has Made Possible the Great Suffrage Rally of 1914,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 9, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 61. Lavinia Dock, “Canvassing Foreign Voters,” TWV, May 1915. 62. Mary G. Hay, Report of the First Campaign District, Annual Meeting of the NYSWSA 1915, p. 31, Folder 7, Reel 15, Whitehouse Papers, Harvard University. 63. “Battle Grows Warmer in Four States,” TWJ, July 31, 1915; Report of Mrs. Oreola Haskell, Reel 6, Folder 144, HBL Papers, Harvard University. 64. Marcy S. Sacks, Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City before World War I (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 76; Eric Homberger, New York City: A Cultural and Literary Companion (Oxford: Signal Books, 2002), 225–​26. 65. “Storming ‘San Juan Hill,’” New-​York Tribune, February 22, 1915, Reel 2, vol. 11, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 66. That Alva Belmont placed her headquarters in Harlem only a few years earlier suggests the gradual shift northward of New York’s African American community. No evidence explains why the Woman Suffrage Party selected San Juan Hill over Harlem or Minetta Lane, a neighborhood of color in Greenwich Village that also saw occasional suffrage work. See Rosalyn Terborg-​Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850–​1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 101; Adaline W. Sterling, ed., “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, March 1914; Adaline W. Sterling, ed., “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, June 1914; Sacks, Before Harlem, 73; Elinor Lerner, “Immigrant and Working Class Involvement in the New York City Woman Suffrage Movement, 1905–​1917: A Study in Progressive Era Politics” (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1981), 201–​2. 67. 1920 US Census, Manhattan Assembly District 5, New York, p. 21B, Lyda Newman, digital image, ancestry.com, accessed August 10, 2015; 1910 US Census, Manhattan Ward 22, New York, p. 9B, Lyda Newman, digital image, ancestry.com, accessed August 10, 2015; “Last Two Months of Campaign Begin,” TWJ, September 4, 1915.

Notes to pages 108–109    205 68. Patricia Carter Sluby, The Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 130. 69. Letter to Ida Husted Harper, October 11, Box 72, George Foster Peabody Papers, Manuscript Division, LOC; David L. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868–​ 1919: Biography of a Race (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1994), 409. 70. Letter to Miss Nerney, April 30, 1915, Folder 133, Reel 6, HBL Papers, Harvard University; Mary Childs Nerney to Henry Kaufman, May 5, 1915, Folder 133, Reel 6, HBL Papers, Harvard University; Mary Childs Nerney to Henry Kaufman, May 7, 1915, Folder 133, Reel 6, HBL Papers, Harvard University; To N. B. Dodson, June 4, 1915, Folder 133, Reel 6, HBL Papers, Harvard University; Julie A. Gallagher, Black Women and Politics in New York City (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 22; for more on “racial uplift,” see Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). 71. Crisis, August 1915. 72. The New York Age, another black newspaper, also published pieces demanding political equality for women. “Vote for Suffrage,” New York Age, October 7, 1915; James W. Johnson, “Views and Reviews,” New York Age, October 21, 1915; “Expressions on Woman’s Rights,” New York Age, October 14, 1915; Minutes of WSP, Expenses and Receipts, January 20, 1915, to January 20, 1916, WSANYS Papers, vol. 6 and Box 9, Columbia University. 73. “Negroes in Protest March in Fifth Av.,” NYT, July 29, 1917. 74. Aileen Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement: 1890–​1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965; New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 166, 174. 75. Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello have recently detailed the contributions African American women made to suffrage in New York State; many did so via clubs committed to combatting racism in addition to sexism, such as the Empire State Federation of Women’s Clubs. Goodier and Pastorello, Women Will Vote, 71–​91; “New York Women in Huge Parade Demand Ballot,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 7, 1911. 76. “20,000 Women in Suffrage March,” New-​York Tribune, May 4, 1913; “Suffragists’ ‘Lady Cop’ a Counterfeit,” Sun, June 1, 1913. The New-​York Tribune mentioned a woman of color who donned a police uniform leading this contingent. However, that was the only paper to describe the woman as of color, and a later reporter realized she was not a police matron but an actress trying to gain publicity for herself. 77. Terborg-​Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 121–​23. 78. “The Character and Distribution of Immigration into the United States,” Market World and Chronicle, June 8, 1912. 79. Adaline W. Sterling, “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, January 1914. 80. Lerner, “Immigrant and Working Class Involvement,” 189, 229; “Our Leaders Predict Success,” TWV, August 1915. 81. Adaline W. Sterling, “The Woman Suffrage Party,” TWV, August 1915; Mason B. Williams, City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York

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Notes to pages 109–112

(New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), 22–​23; “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, September 1914; “From the Assembly Districts,” TWV, January 1915. 82. “The Woman Suffrage Party,” TWV, August 1915; Hasia Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 101. 83. “Suffragists Open Fete of Nations,” NYT, March 26, 1914; “Bake for Suffrage Prize,” Evening Post, March 27, 1914; “If Good Cooking Wins Votes for Women They Will Get the Franchise in 1915,” Evening World, March 26, 1914. 84. WSP Minutes, April 6, 1914, WSANYS Papers, vol. 5 and Box 9, Columbia University; WSP Minutes, January 5, 1913 [1914], WSANYS Papers, vol. 4 and Box 8, Columbia University. 85. Nora Blatch De Forest, “Would the New York Electorate Be Improved if Women Voted,” Women’s Political World, January 1, 1914. 86. Henrietta W. Livermore, “Women and New York State,” TWV, February 1915. 87. Adaline Sterling, “The Woman Suffrage Party,” TWV, October 1914; Adaline Wheelock Sterling, “The Street Meeting,” TWV, August 1913. 88. Adaline Sterling, “The Party and the Campaign,” TWV, October 1915. 89. Adaline Sterling, “The Final Drive,” TWV, December 1915; DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 154. 90. “New York Wants You,” TWV, August 1915. 91. See Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-​of-​the-​ Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 5–​8, 16, 21–​26. 92. There was at least one suffrage film, Your Girl and Mine, from outside of New York. Kay Sloan, “Sexual Warfare in the Silent Cinema: Comedies and Melodramas of Woman Suffragism,” American Quarterly 33, no. 4 (Fall 1981): 431–​34; Vitagraph Ad, New York Dramatic Mirror, October 6, 1915; “In the World of Motion Pictures,” Evening Telegram, October 3, 1915. 93. “Hopping for Suffrage,” TWV, July 1915; “Suffrage Hopperie at Luna Draws Crowd Despite Rain,” New-​York Tribune, June 28, 1915. 94. Michael S. Kimmel, The History of Men: Essays on the History of American and British Masculinities (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 37–​59. 95. “Baseball to Help Suffrage Cause,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 10, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 96. “Suffrage Leaders Get Their Innings,” NYT, May 19, 1915. 97. “Mrs. Whitman to Toss Ball,” NYT, May 11, 1915. 98. Lerner, “Immigrant and Working Class Involvement,” 221–​22; David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 96–​101. 99. “3,000 Suffragists See Chicago Cubs Beat Giants; Root and Eat Peanuts Just Like Regular Fans,” Sun, May 19, 1915. 100. “Suffragettes Seek Votes at Ball Game,” NYT, May 19, 1915. 101. Annual Report of NYSWSA, 1915, pp. 59–​60, Folder 7, Reel 15, Whitehouse Papers, Harvard University. 102. “Busy Suffragists as Licensed Pedlers [sic],” New-​York Tribune, April 29, 1915. 103. “Suffrage Leaders Get Their Innings,” NYT, May 19, 1915.

Notes to pages 112–116    207 104. “Giants Again Bob Out of the Cellar,” New York Press, May 20, 1915. 105. “Suffrage Day on the Diamond,” Evening News, May 28, 1915. 106. “Suffragists Lose in Ring Decision,” NYT, July 22, 1915. 107. Minutes of WSP, January 4, 1915, WSANYS Papers, vol. 5 and Box 9, Columbia University; Adaline Sterling, ed., “The Party and the Campaign,” TWV, October 1915. 108. Elliott J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-​Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 179–​206. 109. See “Feminism Invades the Fighting Ring,” World, July 25, 1915, NAWSA Records, Reel 2, vol. 10, NYPL. 110. See, for example, Margaret Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 1–​43. 111. For more on the “citizen-​consumer,” see Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). 112. “An Army of Peace,” TWV, October 1914. 113. “Women’s War Service,” TWV, April 1915; “Women and War,” TWV, December 1914. 114. Linda J. Lumsden makes the point about repression and inclusion versus destruction. Linda J. Lumsden, Rampant Women: Suffragists and the Right of Assembly (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 149. For an analysis of street meetings that shifts the discussion nationwide and foregrounds government permits, see ­chapter 2 of Lumsden’s book. 115. “Advertising Suffrage Ball,” NYT, December 13, 1912. 116. Draft, Folder 1:22, HSB Papers, Vassar College. 117. “Call Suffragist to Court,” NYT, December 29, 1912; Draft, Folder 1.22, HSB Papers, Vassar College. 118. Anna Constable, “Women’s ‘Voiceless Speech,’” NYT, January 5, 1913, Reel 2, vol. 6, HSB Papers, LOC; “Suffragist Dancers Hold Last Rehearsal,” New-​York Tribune, January 5, 1913, Reel 2, vol. 6, HSB Papers, LOC. 119. “Filled with Votes Orators Flash through Fifth Avenue,” Sun, May 3, 1914, Reel 3, vol. 9, HSB Papers, LOC. 120. “G.W.’s Statue Sees Jealous Tyrants ‘Shoo’ Suffragettes,” Tribune, June 17, 1914, Reel 3, vol. 10, HSB Papers, LOC. 121. “In the Business World,” NYT, June 26, 1913; “Suffragists Threaten Fifth Ave. Merchants,” Sun, April 10, 1913. 122. Lumsden, Rampant Women, 122. 123. Kristi Andersen, After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics before the New Deal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 142–​44. 124. For examples of polling place locations, see “Board of Elections,” NYT, October 15, 1904; Howard P. Chudacoff, The Age of the Bachelor: Creating an American Subculture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 122. 125. Report of the Police Department of the City of New York (New York: The Martin B. Brown Co., Printers and Stationers, 1900), 31; The Consolidated Laws of the State of New York, vol. 2 (Albany, NY: J. B. Lyon Company, State Printers, 1909), 970.

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Notes to pages 116–118

126. “The Kind of Politics We Must Face in 1915,” Women’s Political World, June 1, 1914. 127. “History of the Women Watchers,” Women’s Political World, April 1, 1914; “Horrid Sights at the Polling Places,” Sun, November 18, 1909. 128. DuBois briefly discusses this tactic. See DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 127–​28. 129. “Women Watchers at Polls,” Sun, November 3, 1909. 130. “Fair Sex on Guard,” New-​York Tribune, November 3, 1909. 131. “Suffragists Invade Hell’s Kitchen as Watchers and Four Are Arrested,” Newspaper Clipping, Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897–​1911, Scrapbook 8, p. 161, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, LOC, digitally accessed August 10, 2015. 132. This draws from and reapplies David Harvey’s interpretation of a “right to the city.” See David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (London: Verso, 2012), 4. 133. “Horrid Sights at the Polling Places,” Sun, November 18, 1909; “Women Counted the Votes,” Sun, November 4, 1909. 134. “Women Watchers at Polls,” Sun, November 3, 1909; “Women Counted the Votes,” Sun, November 4, 1909. 135. For examples, see Steven M. Buechler, The Transformation of the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illinois, 1850–​1920 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 169–​70; Shelley Stamp, Movie-​Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 154–​94. 136. I am grateful to Maureen Flanagan for this insight during her comment at the 2015 conference of the Organization of American Historians. 137. “Suffragists Alarmed,” NYT, June 2, 1911. 138. They took this victory very seriously—​even hosting a mock workshop where suffrage-​poll watchers practiced questioning men acting as “drunken voters” and responding to “ward heelers.” “A Warning,” Women’s Political World, June 1, 1914; “Voting School for Women,” NYT, July 22, 1915. 139. Kevin McGruder, Race and Real Estate: Conflict and Cooperation in Harlem, 1890–​1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 35. 140. Another conflict erupted when they had a rummage sale; some feared germs from the items. “Antis in Fear of Suff. Germs,” Morning Telegraph, May 20, 1913, Reel 3, vol. 7, HSB Papers, LOC; “Suffragists Pose in the ‘Antis’ Yard,” NYT, April 30, 1913, Reel 3, vol. 7, HSB Papers, LOC; “Suffragists Tread on Anti-​Suffrage Tulips,” New-​York Tribune, April 30, 1913, Reel 3, vol. 7, HSB Papers, LOC. 141. It seems that they were not released without penalties because the union ran an advertisement in its newspaper asking for someone to sublet the old headquarters, noting, “Any member securing a tenant for the three offices would be contributing generously to the fund of the Women’s Political Union.” “To Let,” Women’s Political World, September 1, 1913; “Sign of Trouble at W. P. U. Headquarters,” New-​York Tribune, October 30, 1913, Reel 3, vol. 8, HSB Papers, LOC.

Notes to pages 118–120    209 142. “New Headquarters for Women’s Union,” Telegraph, July 19, 1913, Reel 3, vol. 7, HSB Papers, LOC; “To You!,” Women’s Political World, September 15, 1913. 143. “Sign of Trouble at WPU Headquarters,” New-​York Tribune, October 30, 1913, Reel 3, vol. 8, HSB Papers, LOC. 144. “Landlord Sues Mrs. Blatch,” Sun, May 8, 1914, Reel 3, vol. 9, HSB Papers, LOC; Draft, Folder 24, Box 1, HSB Papers, Vassar College. 145. With the creation of the Empire State Campaign Committee in 1913, another organization needed to find a home. Ultimately, the state association decided to relocate to 1 East Forty-​First Street so that it could share offices with the committee. This placed the association near other suffrage headquarters, and also close to Grand Central Terminal and the New York Public Library. It is not clear why, but the Campaign Committee and the state association were forced out of their new headquarters in the middle of April 1914. With just a few weeks to find a new headquarters, they settled on 303 Fifth Avenue, on the twentieth floor of a “large office building” several blocks south and on the border of Murray Hill. Minutes of the NYSWSA, November 13, 1913, vol. 8, WSANYS Papers, Box 7, Columbia University; “New Suffrage Home,” NYT, November 26, 1913; TWV, January 1914; Minutes of the NYSWSA, March 23, 1914, vol. 8, WSANYS Papers, Box 7, Columbia University. 146. For this debate, see “The Prospect as Viewed by Different Trades,” Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, October 14, 1911. 147. Minutes of WSP, February 24, 1913, vol. 4, WSANYS Papers, Box 8, Columbia University. 148. Minutes of WSP, Expenses: January 20, 1913, to January 20, 1914, vol. 4, WSANYS Papers, Box 8, Columbia University; “The New Headquarters,” TWV, April 1913. 149. Adaline W. Sterling, “Suffrage Social Center,” TWV, September 1914. 150. “Wanted! Men and Women for the Suffrage Army,” TWV, June 1914. 151. Minutes of WSP, January 4, 1915, vol. 5, WSANYS Papers, Box 9, Columbia University; “Suffragists Start New Downtown Quarters,” NY Telegraph, April 16, 1914, Reel 3, vol. 9, HSB Papers, LOC. 152. “New York,” TWJ, January 23, 1915; Report of Mrs. Oreola Haskell, Folder 144, Reel 6, HBL Papers, Harvard University. 153. “New York,” TWJ, March 6, 1915. 154. The Men’s League for Woman Suffrage even opened headquarters at 26 Broadway. See TVW, December 1914. 155. “50,000 Are Expected in Suffrage Parade,” NYT, October 23, 1915; “Three Hours in Review,” NYT, October 24, 1915; “50,000 March in Gigantic Parade,” TWJ, October 30, 1915. 156. Photograph, Album 5, Folder 8, Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College Library, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Online Library. 157. African American women also marched in various contingents as well as led some companies. See “The Suffrage Parade,” New York Age, October 28, 1915. 158. “Three Hours in Review,” NYT, October 24, 1915.

210 

 

Notes to pages 120–122

159. Harriot Stanton Blatch, et al. to Carrie Chapman Catt, January 8, 1915, Folder 114, Reel 5, HBL Papers, Harvard University; DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 174. 160. Empire State Campaign Committee Report, April 6, 1915, Box 2, Folder 10, CCC Papers, NYPL; J. D. Zahniser and Amelia R. Fry, Alice Paul: Claiming Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 214–​24. 161. Empire State Campaign Committee Report, April 17, 1915, Box 2, Folder 10, CCC Papers, NYPL. 162. For a fuller analysis comparing how New York’s cities and rural districts voted in 1915 and 1917, see David Kevin McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood: Women’s Culture and the Politics of Suffrage in New York State, 1865–​1917” (PhD diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1987), 322–​445; Annual Meeting, NYSWSA, 1915, p. 42, Folder 7, Reel 15, Whitehouse Papers, Harvard University; Flyer for Suffrage Weeks in Putnam, Dutchess, and Columbia Counties, Folder 1:23, HSB Papers, Vassar College; Report of Jane Pincus, July 20th to July 26th, 1914, Folder 1.26, HSB Papers, Vassar College. 163. Report of Mrs. Raymond Brown, Annual Meeting, NYSWSA, 1915, p. 23, Folder 7, Reel 15, Whitehouse Papers, Harvard University; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 475. 164. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 464. 165. The Handbook of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and Proceedings of the Forty-​Seventh Annual Convention Held at Washington, D.C. December 14–​19 (Inclusive) 1915, ed. Susan W. Fitzgerald (New York: National Woman Suffrage Publishing Co., n.d.), 91–​97, 101–​2; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 422–​26. 166. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 425. 167. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 288, 557. 168. This summarizes Susan Goodier, No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-​Suffrage Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 67–​92. 169. “Suffragists of State Plan 1917 Campaign,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 1, 1915. 170. Carrie Chapman Catt to Leader, November 17, 1915, Folder 11, Box 2, CCC Papers, NYPL; Carrie Chapman Catt Speech at Harrisburg, PA, March 7, 1916, Folder 10, Box 4, CCC Papers, NYPL. 171. Peter J. Galie, Ordered History: A Constitutional History of New York (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996), 188; “Vote on Constitutional Convention by Counties,” NYT, April 8, 1914. 172. Peter J. Galie, “Constitutions and Constitutional Conventions,” in Encyclopedia of New York State, ed. Peter Eisenstadt (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005), 390. 173. Lerner, “Immigrant and Working Class Involvement,” 285. 174. Carrie Chapman Catt to Chairmen, November 4, 1915, Folder 11, Box 2, CCC Papers, NYPL. 175. DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 179–​80; Draft, Folder 1:31, HSB Papers, Vassar College. 176. Carrie Chapman Catt, Speech before Congressional Committee, 1915, Folder 9, Box 4, CCC Papers, NYPL; DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 179–​80.

Notes to pages 122–125    211 177. Abram Lipsky, “The Foreign Vote on Suffrage,” American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, November 26, 1915. 178. This discussion summarizes Elinor Lerner’s findings in Lerner, “Immigrant and Working Class Involvement,” 143–​44. 179. “Half a Million Votes Won,” TWV, December 1915. 180. These statistics are from McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood,” 367–​68. 181. “Defeat of Woman Suffrage,” NYT, November 3, 1915.

Chapter 6 1. “Elections in Eight States Next Tuesday,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 31, 1915. 2. Adaline W. Sterling, “United We Stand,” The Woman Voter (hereafter TWV), January 1916. 3. “Convention Week in Albany,” TWV, December 1916. 4. Ida Husted Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6 (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922; New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1969), 465. 5. Ronald Schaffer, “The New York City Woman Suffrage Party, 1909–​1919,” New York History 43, no. 3 (1962): 283; Frances Diodato Bzowski, “Spectacular Suffrage; Or, How Women Came Out of the Home and into the Streets and Theaters of New York City to Win the Vote,” New York History 76, no. 1 (1995): 87–​92; Ellen Carol DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 206. 6. David Kevin McDonald briefly notes how suffragists’ 1917 campaign and use of World War I built off of their earlier strategies—​though he is more concerned with organizational links among suffragists than their relationship to the urban environment. David Kevin McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood: Women’s Culture and the Politics of Suffrage in New York State, 1865–​1917” (PhD diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1987), 400, 436. 7. “How?,” TWV, January 1916; DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 184. 8. “The Illinois Suffrage Law,” Indianapolis Star, December 17, 1913; “Women Suffrage in Illinois,” Christian Science Monitor, December 1, 1913; “Status of Women Voters in Illinois,” Christian Science Monitor, June 28, 1913. 9. “How?,” TWV, January 1916. 10. For the conflict between the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the Congressional Union, see Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States, enl. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 255–​85; Harriot Stanton Blatch and Alma Lutz, Challenging Years: The Memoirs of Harriot Stanton Blatch (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), 239–​40, 257–​58. 11. DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 189–​90; Letter to the Chairmen of Senatorial Districts, Branches and members of the Women’s Political Union, Folder 1:30, Harriot Stanton Blatch Papers (hereafter HSB Papers), Archives and Special Collections, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York; “Suffrage Leaders Full of Confidence and

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Notes to pages 125–126

Hope,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 13, National American Woman Suffrage Association (hereafter NAWSA) Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library (hereafter NYPL), New York, New York. 12. Robert Booth Fowler and Spencer Jones, “Carrie Chapman Catt and the Last Years of the Struggle for Woman Suffrage: ‘The Winning Plan,’” in Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, ed. Jean H. Baker (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 174–​75. 13. The Hand Book of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and Proceedings of the Forty-​Eighth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association Held at Atlantic City, N.J. September 4–​10 (Inclusive) 1916, ed. Hanna J. Patterson (New York: National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company, n.d.), 182, 188, 189; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 290, 558. 14. Proceedings of the Forty-​Eighth Annual Convention, 191. 15. “Reorganization Convention,” TWV, December 1915; “Calls Suffrage to 2-​Year Fight,” New-​York Tribune, December 1, 1915, Reel 2, vol. 13, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Women Begin Anew Fight for Suffrage,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), December 1, 1915; Annual Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association Forty-​Seventh Annual Convention Hotel Astor New York City Nov. 30–​Dec. 2, 1915, 26. 16. Minutes of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association (NYSWSA), November 30, 1915, Woman Suffrage Association of New York State (WSANYS) Records, vol. 8 and Box 7, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, New York; Annual Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association . . . 1915, 5. 17. “Up-​State Shut Out of Suffrage Slate,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 13, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 18. For the relationship between the city movement and the rest of the state in the early twentieth century, also see McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood,” 139–​49, 330–​33. 19. “City Dominates Suffrage Ticket,” New-​York Tribune, December 2, 1915. 20. Trisha Franzen, Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 141–​63; Jacqueline Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1987), 55–​59, 130–​31; Sara Hunter Graham, Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 81–​90. 21. This summarizes insights from Robert Booth Fowler, Carrie Catt: Feminist Politician (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986), 143–​44; Fowler and Jones, “Carrie Chapman Catt and the Last Years of the Struggle for Woman Suffrage,” 174–​75. 22. Quoted in “Pickets Resume Their ‘Reign of Terror,’” New-​York Tribune, November 18, 1917. 23. Fowler suggests that it was experience with Blatch, not Malone, that prepared Catt for militant actions in 1917. Fowler, Carrie Catt, 145. 24. Dubois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 119; Social Register, New York (New York: Social Register Association, 1920), 766; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 468–​76; Johanna Neuman, Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote (New York: NYU Press, 2017), 76, 136.

Notes to pages 126–128    213 25. Gertrude Foster Brown, “Suffrage and Music: My First Eighty Years,” ed. Mildred Adams, p. 165 in Gertrude Foster Brown Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Social Register, New York, 582. 26. James P. Louise, “Mary Hay,” in Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, 1607-​1950, ed. Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), 163–​64; “Miss Mary G. Hay, Suffragist, Dies,” Sun, August 31, 1928. 27. “Suffragists Win Albany Skirmish,” New-​York Tribune, February 23, 1916; “Suffrage Bill Goes Before Assembly,” NYT, February 23, 1916; Harriot Stanton Blatch, “Women to Vote on Electors,” New-​York Tribune, January 14, 1916; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 476–​77. 28. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 476–​77. 29. “Suffrage ‘Shower Week,’” NYT, April 23, 1916, Reel 2, vol. 13, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 30. “Suffragists, Hunting Posies, Invade Country Greenhouses,” New-​York Tribune, May 21, 1916. 31. “Giants Aid Suffrage,” NYT, June 3, 1916. 32. Fola La Follette, “Will the Women Vote Together?,” TWV, July 1916; The Woman’s Journal (hereafter TWJ), May 13, 1916. 33. Minutes of Woman Suffrage Party (hereafter WSP), July 7, 1916, and August 25, 1916, WSANYS Papers, vol. 7 and Box 10, Columbia University; Minutes of New York State Woman Suffrage Party (hereafter NYSWSP), December 3, 1915, December 29, 1915, and August 7, 1916, WSANYS Papers, vol. 9 and Box 7, Columbia University. 34. “Outline for Organization Lecture,” March 7, 1916, Folder 147, Reel 6, H. B. (Harriet Burton) Laidlaw Papers (hereafter HBL Papers) 1851–​1958, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 35. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 464, 475. 36. “Press Comments,” TWV, May 1916. 37. Annual Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party Forty-​Eighth Annual Convention Eastern Star Hall, Albany, N.Y. November 21st, 22d, 23d (n.p.: N.W.S. Pub. Co., n.d.), 25. 38. “Six Reasons Why Farmers’ Wives Should Vote,” Suffrage Folder, Rokeby Archives, Barrytown, New York. 39. Nettie R. Shuler, “The Campaign in the Country,” TWV, August 1916. 40. “Mardi Gras Ball for Suffrage,” NYT, January 18, 1916; “‘Greatest Suffrage Ball,’” New-​York Tribune, February 11, 1916. 41. “Thousands Dance for Benefit of Suffrage Cause,” March 8, 1916, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 13, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Suffrage Bill and Ball To-​Day,” New-​ York Tribune, March 7, 1916, Reel 2, vol. 13, NAWSA Records, NYPL; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 477. 42. “Suffrage Dancers Overflow ‘Garden,’” NYT, March 8, 1916; “Suffrage Bill and Ball To-​Day,” New-​York Tribune, March 7, 1916.

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Notes to pages 129–130

43. Gretchen A. Condran, “Changing Patterns of Epidemic Disease in New York City,” in Hives of Sickness: Public Health and Epidemics in New York City, ed. David Rosner (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 31; David M. Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story, The Crusade That Mobilized the Nation against the 20th Century’s Most Feared Disease (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 5, 16, 19–​22. 44. Howard Markel, “Polio,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 1011; Oshinsky, Polio, 16, 19–​22; “Day Shows 12 Dead by Infant Paralysis,” NYT, July 2, 1916; “39 Die of Paralysis,” NYT, July 23, 1916; “Plague Grows in Manhattan,” New-​York Tribune, July 11, 1916. 45. Mary Dreier, Report of the Brooklyn Borough, Annual Report of the NYSWSP, 1916, p. 51, Folder 8, Reel 15, Vira Boarman Whitehouse Papers, 1889–​1957, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Mrs. Raymond Brown, Report of the 2nd Campaign District, Annual Report of the NYSWSP, 1916, p. 55, Folder 8, Reel 15, Whitehouse Papers, Harvard University; Mrs. William G. Willcox, Report of the Richmond Borough, NYSWSP Annual Report, 1916, p. 53, Folder 8, Reel 15, Whitehouse Papers, Harvard University. 46. Helen Reid to Harriet Burton Laidlaw, August 24, 1916, Folder 142, Reel 6, HBL Papers, Harvard University. 47. “New York—​1917,” TWV, October 1916. 48. Minutes of WSP, July 10, 1916, WSANYS Papers, vol. 7 and Box 10, Columbia University. 49. Ruth Crosby Dimmick, “Paralysis Spread Stops Suffragists’ Meetings,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 13, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 50. Minutes of NYSWSP, August 10, 1916, WSANYS Papers, vol. 9 and Box 7, Columbia University. 51. Minutes of WSP, August 25, 1916, WSANYS Papers, vol. 7 and Box 10, Columbia University. 52. Minutes of WSP, July 10, 1916, WSANYS Papers, vol. 7 and Box 10, Columbia University; “Infantile Paralysis in All Boroughs,” New-​York Tribune, July 9, 1916. 53. Ruth Crosby Dimmick, “Women Aid Efforts to Prevent Plague Spread,” Telegraph, July 11, 1916, NAWSA Records, Reel 2, vol. 13, NYPL. 54. Adaline W. Sterling, “The Woman Suffrage Party of New York City,” TWV, August 1916; “Jottings from the Boroughs,” TWV, August 1916; Ruth Crosby Dimmick, “Women Aid Efforts to Prevent Plague Spread,” Telegraph, July 11, 1916, NAWSA Records, Reel 2, vol. 13, NYPL. 55. Mary Dreier, Report of the Brooklyn Borough, Annual Report of the NYSWSP, 1916, p. 51, Folder 8, Reel 15, Whitehouse Papers, Harvard University. 56. This draws from Richard A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850–​1929 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 124–​58. 57. TWV, May 1916. 58. The Progressive Era government would prove especially responsive to arguments rooted in motherhood, nurturing, and domesticity. Even as it resisted

Notes to pages 130–133    215 paternalistic legislation like pensions and health insurance for men, government officials accepted claims about women’s ostensibly natural limitations and skills. See Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992), 155–​59, 314–​20, 368–​72. 59. “Threaten to Wreck Paralysis Hospital,” NYT, August 27, 1916; Oshinsky, Polio, 21. 60. Kathleen D. McCarthy, American Creed: Philanthropy and the Rise of Civil Society, 1700–​1865 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 203–​4. Also see Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, 321–​72. 61. Ruth Crosby Dimmick, “Women Aid Efforts to Prevent Plague Spread,” Telegraph, July 11, 1916, Reel 2, vol. 13, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 62. Ruth Crosby Dimmick, “This Is ‘Commuters’ Day’ in Big Suffrage Crusade,” Morning Telegraph, July 28, 1916, Reel 2, vol. 13, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “10,000 Gladly Swallow Suffragists’ Arguments,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 13, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 63. “Try Candy to Win Commuters’ Vote,” Herald, July 28, 1916, Reel 2, vol. 13, NAWSA Records, NYPL; Minutes of WSP, July 10, 1916, WSANYS Papers, vol. 7 and Box 10, Columbia University. 64. Ruth Crosby Dimmick, “Women Aid Efforts to Prevent Plague,” July 11, 1916, Telegraph, Reel 2, vol. 13, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 65. “In New York,” TWV, August 1916. 66. “New York—​1917,” TWV, October 1916. 67. “Suffs Plan Active Campaign in 1917,” The Sun, November 22, 1916, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Suffrage First Motto in State,” New-​York Tribune, November 22, 1916, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 68. Martha G. Stapler, ed., Woman Suffrage Year Book, 1917 (New York: National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company, 1917), 22, 191. 69. “Which Shall It Be?” TWV, January 1917. 70. “Which Shall It Be?” TWV, January 1917; “Outlook in the State,” TWV, January 1917; Mary Garrett Hay, “Looking Forward,” TWV, January 1917. 71. “Expect Action by Wilson Today,” NYT, March 19, 1917; “Washington Exposes Plot,” NYT, March 1, 1917; “War Summary,” Globe, November 18, 1916. 72. This paragraph summarizes Susan Goodier, No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-​Suffrage Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 93–​117. 73. Minutes of WSP, February 5, 1917, and February 13, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 7 and Box 10, Columbia University; Minutes of NYSWSP, February 6, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 9 and Box 7, Columbia University. 74. This was not unique to New York work. The National American Woman Suffrage Association pledged its assistance because it extended “into every precinct of our great cities and into the various counties of the states.” Minutes of WSP, February 9, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 7 and Box 10, Columbia University; Minutes of NYSWSP, February 6, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 9 and Box 7, Columbia University; Letter, Harriet Burton Laidlaw to George Foster Peabody, March 12, 1917,

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Notes to pages 134–136

Folder: Woman Suffrage, Box 72, George Foster Peabody Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. 75. “500,000 Woman Suffragists Offer Services to Whitman,” Sun, February 7, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 76. “Pledge to Aid U.S. Angers Pacifists,” World, February 9, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 77. “Pacifist-​Suffragists Fight War Aid Offer,” New-​York Tribune, February 9, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 78. “Pacifists Take Up Arms against Suffrage Camp,” Herald, February 9, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 79. “Suffrage Body Approves Offer of Aid in Crisis,” New-​York Tribune, February 28, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 80. “Patriot Women’s Pledge Is Upheld,” World, February 10, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 81. “Patriotism and Suffrage,” TWV, March 1917. 82. Annual Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party Forty-​Eighth Annual Convention, 35. 83. Minutes of NYSWSP, January 2, 1917, and February 27, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 9 and Box 7, Columbia University. 84. Harriet Burton Laidlaw, “Our Suffrage Amendment Passes,” TWV, April 1917; “State Will Vote on Suffrage Again,” NYT, March 13, 1917. 85. Harriet Burton Laidlaw, “Our Suffrage Amendment Passes,” TWV, April 1917. 86. “Suffrage Fight Renewed,” NYT, March 28, 1917. 87. “Must Exert All Our Power,” NYT, April 3, 1917. 88. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 478. 89. “First Victory of 1917,” TWV, February 1917. 90. Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt, 146; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 478. 91. “Is America to Lag Behind?,” The Woman Citizen (hereafter TWC), September 8, 1917. 92. Pamela Cobrin, From Winning the Vote to Directing on Broadway: The Emergence of Women on the New York Stage, 1880–​1927 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2009), 53. 93. The Woman Citizen, June 16, 1917. 94. See David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 66–​69. 95. Stanley Nadel, “Germans,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 505–​7; Minutes of NYSWSP, April 24, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 8 and Box 10, Columbia University. 96. Adaline W. Sterling, ed., “The Woman Suffrage Party of New York City,” TWV, May 1917; Minutes of WSP, April 24, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 8 and Box 10, Columbia University. 97. “City Suffragists Volunteer for War,” Sun, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Suffrage Summary,” TWC, October 20, 1917.

Notes to pages 136–140    217 98. “Mrs. Welzmiller, Bronx Suffragist to Plant Potatoes,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 99. “Suffrage Sale Continues,” NYT, May 27, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Suffragists’ Sale of Treasures Adds $2,000 to War Fund,” New-​ York Tribune, May 23, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Whitman Gives Cane to Suffrage Cause,” New-​York Tribune, May 24, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 100. Vira Boarman Whitehouse to Suffragists, April 17, 1917, Folder 140, Reel 6, HBL Papers, Harvard University. 101. Maud Nathan, “Woman’s Working Day in War Time,” TWV, May 1917. 102. Minutes of NYSWSP, February 6, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 9 and Box 7, Columbia University. 103. Goodier, No Votes for Women, 108; Bessie R. James, For God, for Country, for Home: The National League for Woman’s Service (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920). 104. Instead, suffragists were encouraged to work through their organization and the National Council of Women. Minutes of NYSWSP, March 20, 1917, April 3, 1917, and April 17, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 7 and Box 9, Columbia University; Goodier, No Votes for Women, 108. 105. The New York State Military Census and Inventory: A Report to Hon. Charles S. Whitman, Governor of the State of New York (Albany: J. B. Lyon Company, Printers, 1918). 106. Vira Boarman Whitehouse to Governor Whitman, March 22, 1917, Folder 140, Reel 6, HBL Papers, Harvard University. 107. “N.Y. State War Census in May,” April 12, 1917, Sun, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Women May Take War Census,” Sun, April 13, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 108. “A Mistake,” New-​York Tribune, April 16, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 109. “Suffragists’ Offer to Take Military Census Is Refused,” New-​York Tribune, April 12, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 110. “Women May Take War Census,” Sun, April 13, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL; also see Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, “War Service Activities of the New York Suffrage Party,” TWC, August 25, 1917. 111. Ultimately, house-​to-​house canvassing was used outside of Gotham. “Suffragists Will Offer 5,000 Houses for Census,” Tribune, April 18, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL; The New York State Military Census and Inventory, 29. 112. “Suffragists Pushing the New York Military Census,” June 24, 1917, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “To Take the Census,” TWV, May 1917. 113. “Woman Named to Aid Census Director in City,” Herald, May 18, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 114. The New York State Military Census and Inventory,  33–​68. 115. “Around the ‘National’s’ Press Table,” TWC, June 30, 1917. 116. “Men Laud City Party,” TWC, August 4, 1917.

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Notes to pages 140–142

117. Published in TWC, July 14, 1917. 118. Also see Annual Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party and Proceedings of the Forty-​Ninth Annual Convention Held at the Hotel Ritz-​Carlton New York City November 20th, 21st, 22nd, 1917, 105. 119. Flyer from NYSWSP, June 1917, “The State Military Census and Your Wife,” Suffrage File, Rokeby Archives. 120. They also did this via the stereopticon, using images of women’s war service in Europe. “War Pictures for Suffrage,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 16, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 121. “Entertainment and Propaganda,” TWV, April 1917. 122. Minutes of NYSWSP, June 5, 1917, and June 19, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 9 and Box 7, Columbia University. 123. It reportedly did so free of charge. “Suffragettes Use Film,” Motography, September 1, 1917. 124. Minutes of NYSWSP, August 30, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 9 and Box 7, Columbia University. 125. “New Suffrage Film,” Moving Picture World, September 15, 1917; “Short Features Gets Women Suffrage Pictures,” Motography, October 13, 1917. 126. “Items of Interest,” Moving Picture World, September 8, 1917; “Suffragists Launch Offensive This Week to Open Biggest Battle in ‘Votes’ War,” New-​York Tribune, August 26, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 127. Minutes of NYSWSP, September 18, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 9 and Box 7, Columbia University; “Short Features Get Official Woman Suffrage Pictures,” Moving Picture World, October 13, 1917. 128. “News of Corinth,” Saratogian, October 4, 1917; “Counter Attractions,” Putnam County Courier, November 8, 1917; “Showing the Work of the War,” Putnam County Courier, October 26, 1917; Minutes of WSP, October 1, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 8 and Box 10, Columbia University. 129. Leslie Midkiffe DeBauche, “1917: Movies and Practical Patriotism,” in American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variations, ed. Ben Singer and Charlie Keil (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 187–​90. 130. Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997), 117. 131. Brown, “Suffrage and Music,” 167, Gertrude Foster Brown Papers, Harvard University. 132. Brown, “Suffrage and Music,” 168, Gertrude Foster Brown Papers, Harvard University. 133. Harriet Lees Laidlaw, “Suffragists Opposed to Pickets Help Nation in War Work,” NYT, August 19, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 134. Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt, 143; Brown, “Suffrage and Music,” 168, Gertrude Foster Brown Papers, Harvard University. 135. “First Victory of 1917,” TWV, February 1917. 136. Minutes of WSP, June 26, 1917, and July 2, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 8 and Box 10, Columbia University.

Notes to pages 142–145    219 137. Suffragists ultimately settled on, according to one journalist, a “dingy, old house” tucked away at 3 East Thirty-​Eighth Street. Minutes of WSP, July 27, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 8 and Box 10, Columbia University; “Suffragists Planning Great Drive for Monday,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 138. Vira Boarman Whitehouse, “Campaign Problems in Wartime,” TWC, August 25, 1917. 139. “Suffragists Launch Offensive This Week to Open Biggest Battle in ‘Votes’ War,” New-​York Tribune, August 26, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 140. “500,000 City Suffs Demand Franchise,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “500,000 Women in City Demand Right to Vote,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 141. “Suffrage Meetings in Streets To-​Night,” September 17, 1917, New-​York Tribune, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Suffrage Drive Begins To-​Night,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Suffrage Appeals to Begin To-​Day in New York Churches,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 142. “Suffragists Planning Great Drive for Monday,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 143. Minutes of WSP, August 20, 1917, WSANYS Papers, vol. 8 and Box 10, Columbia University. 144. Minutes of WSP, n.d. (September? 1917), WSANYS Papers, vol. 8 and Box 10, Columbia University. 145. Brown, “Suffrage and Music,” 171, Gertrude Foster Brown Papers, Harvard University. 146. “The Woman’s Parade,” TWC, November 3, 1917, Folder 163, Reel 7, HBL Papers, Harvard University. 147. “Suffrage Petitions under Guard Awaiting Parade,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 148. “Marching Suffragists Cheered by Thousands,” Telegraph, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “20,000 March in Suffrage Line,” NYT, October 28, 1917. 149. “Service to the U.S. Is the Keynote of Great Suffrage Parade,” New-​York Tribune, October 28, 1917. 150. Flexner, Century of Struggle, 275–​79; Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt, 145–​46; Christine A. Lundarini, From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, 1910–​1928 (New York: NYU Press, 1986), 18–​31, 104–​22. 151. “Patriotism to Mark Parade for Woman Suffrage,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 152. “20,000 March as Living Plea for Suffrage,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 153. “Marching Suffragists Cheered by Thousands,” Telegraph, Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Country First Is Keynote of Suffragists,” New-​York Tribune, October 28, 1917. 154. “Suffragists Open Final Drive with 8-​Hour Rally Here,” New-​York Tribune, November 4, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “300 ‘Minute Women’

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Notes to pages 145–146

in Suffrage Parade,” New-​York Tribune, November 4, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 155. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 465–​66. 156. Another count suggested a much lower two thousand women working at and near the polls. “Watchers Find Polls Safe for Suffrage,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “5,000 Suffragists Work from Dawn till Polls Close,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 157. “Wild Joy Seen in Headquarters of Suffragists,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 158. “Cheers and Kisses for Suff Victory,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 159. “Wild Joy Seen in Headquarters of Suffragists,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 160. “Victory Makes All Women Kin on Day of Rejoicing in City,” New-​York Tribune, November 8, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 161. “Glory, Glory Halleluia!,” TWC, November 10, 1917. 162. “Victory Makes All Women Kin on Day of Rejoicing in City,” New-​York Tribune, November 8, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 163. “Suffrage Jubilee in New York City,” Christian Science Monitor, August 28, 1920. 164. “Pack Cooper Union for Suffragists,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Cooper Union Stormed for Suffrage Jubilee,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Women Pledge Vote to Service of the Nation,” NYT, November 8, 1917. 165. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 467, 475. 166. “Cheers and Kisses for Suff Victory,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. Also see The Hand Book of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and Proceedings of the Forty-​Ninth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association Held at Washington, D.C. December 12–​15 (Inclusive) 1917, ed. Nettie Rogers Shuler (New York: National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company, n.d.), 216–​17. 167. “Greater New York Carried State to Suffrage Victory,” New-​York Tribune, November 8, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL. 168. Elinor Lerner has discussed in detail who supported enfranchisement in New York City in 1917 and how suffragists framed this support. “A Tale of Two Cities,” TWC, December 1, 1917; Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 467; “Antis Hopes Dwindle as Returns Come In,” Newspaper Clipping, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL; “Suffragists Lost Up-​State by 3,856,” NYT, November 27, 1917, Reel 2, vol. 17, NAWSA Records, NYPL; Elinor Lerner, “Immigrant and Working Class Involvement in the New York City Woman Suffrage Movement, 1905–​1917: A Study in Progressive Era Politics” (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1981), 372. 169. Quote and information in Lerner, “Immigrant and Working Class Involvement,” 374. 170. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 464, 467.

Notes to pages 146–150    221 171. “To Intending Female Voters,” NYT, November 2, 1915. 172. “No Time for Experiments,” NYT, October 26, 1915. 173. “Two Constitutional Amendments,” NYT, November 6, 1917; “The Woman Suffrage Amendment,” NYT, November 3, 1917; “War and Anti-​war Suffragists,” NYT, September 18, 1917. 174. Statistics calculated from “Official Canvas of the Votes Cast in the Counties of New York, Bronx, Kings, Queens and Richmond at the Election Held November 6, 1917,” City Record, December 31, 1917. 175. Brown, “Suffrage and Music,” 174, Gertrude Foster Brown Papers, Harvard University. 176. A. S. B., “Our Greatest Victory,” TWC, November 10, 1917. 177. “Glory, Glory Halleluia!,” TWC, November 10, 1917. 178. “Pickets Are Behind the Times,” TWC, November 17, 1917. 179. Fowler and Jones, “Carrie Chapman Catt and the Last Years of the Struggle for Woman Suffrage,” 174–​75. 180. Address, Carrie Chapman Catt to the Executive Council, December 10, 1917, Reel 60, National American Woman Suffrage Association Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. 181. Proceedings of the Forty-​Ninth Annual Convention, 125. 182. Proceedings of the Forty-​Ninth Annual Convention,  57–​59.

Epilogue 1. “5,000 Women in Biggest of Suffrage Pageants,” Sun, March 4, 1913. 2. “Parade Protest Arouses Senate,” New York Times, March 5, 1913. 3. Both Eleanor Flexner and Susan Glenn have noted this different treatment. Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States, enl. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 256; Susan A. Glenn, Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 153–​54. 4. Susan Glenn rightly explains that “context was critical,” suggesting that Manhattan’s place as “the center of the nation’s theater industry” made New Yorkers more comfortable with dramatic spectacles than Washingtonians. Glenn, Female Spectacle, 153–​54. 5. For “feminized” city description and complaint, see Michael Monahan, “The American Peril,” The Reply: An Anti-​Suffrage Magazine (1914), 19–​21. 6. Elinor Lerner, in particular, has highlighted the role of immigrant and working-​ class New Yorkers. Frances Diodato Bzowski has stressed the importance of spectacle in New York. David Kevin McDonald has celebrated the “urban strategic repertoire”—​ publicity stunts, cross-​class alliances, and a suffrage political machine—​developed in Gotham and applied across the state in the 1910s. Elinor Lerner, “Immigrant and Working Class Involvement in the New York City Woman Suffrage Movement, 1905–​1917: A Study in Progressive Era Politics” (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1981), 11, 172, 289; Doris Daniels, “Building a Winning Coalition: The

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Notes to pages 150–152

Suffrage Fight in New York State,” New York History 60, no. 1 (1979): 59–​80; David Kevin McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood: Women’s Culture and the Politics of Suffrage in New York State, 1865–​1917” (PhD diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1987), 9, 13, 331–​32; Frances Diodato Bzowski, “Spectacular Suffrage; Or, How Women Came Out of the Home and into the Streets and Theaters of New York City to Win the Vote,” New York History 76, no. 1 (1995): 94. 7. Susan Goodier discusses this in more detail. Susan Goodier, No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-​Suffrage Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 204n7. 8. Goodier, No Votes for Women, 93–​117. 9. This is true of McDonald’s dissertation, which provides the best analysis of suffragists’ use of New York City. 10. This draws from the timeline created by Holly J. McCammon. However, because McCammon discounts the early 1908 unofficial parade in Gotham, that timeline claims Oakland as the home of the first suffrage parade. Holly J. McCammon, “‘Out of the Parlors and into the Streets’: The Changing Tactical Repertoire of the U.S. Women’s Suffrage Movements,” Social Forces 81, no. 3 (March 2003): 793–​94; “Suffrage Open Air Meetings,” Seattle Star, September 24, 1910; “Suffragists Hold Open-​Air Meetings,” Washington Herald, August 18, 1912. 11. Patricia A. Carter, “Everybody’s Paid but the Teacher”: The Teaching Profession and the Women’s Movement (New York: Teachers College Press, 1994), 82; Amy Shore, Suffrage and the Silver Screen (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 71–​75. 12. Steven M. Buechler, The Transformation of the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illinois, 1850–​1920 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 148–​ 82; Ida Husted Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6 (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922; New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1969), 145, 148; “Chicago Suffragists Want Public Sentiment,” Day Book, March 15, 1912; McDonald, “Organizing Womanhood,” 396–​98. 13. At least seven members of the House from the Empire State who opposed woman’s right to vote prior to the 1917 state referendum supported a federal amendment at the 1919 congressional vote. To develop these statistics I compared suffragists’ records of congresspersons’ votes/​positions in early 1917 to their votes in 1919. See Poll of House of Representatives, March 17, 1917, Reel 60, National American Woman Suffrage Association (hereafter NAWSA) Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (hereafter LOC), Washington, DC; Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the First Session of the Sixty-​Sixth Congress of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919), vol. LVIII, pt. 1, 93–​94. 14. Wadsworth, 1920, in Reel 48, NAWSA Records, LOC; “Wadsworth Still against Suffrage,” New York Times, January 1918, in Reel 48, NAWSA Records, LOC. 15. Congressional Record of the First Session of the Sixty-​Sixth Congress, June 4, 1919, 616–​17,  635. 16. For instance, Denver’s 134,000 residents could not compete with New York City’s 3,437,000, Chicago’s 1,698,000, Philadelphia’s 1,293,000, St. Louis’s 575,000,

Notes to pages 152–153    223 and even Boston’s 560,000 in 1900. Statistics from the Census Bureau, “Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1900,” US Bureau of the Census, June 15, 1998, accessed January 16, 2014, https://​www.census.gov/​population/​www/​documentation/​ twps0027/​tab13.txt; Beverly Beeton, Women Vote in the West: The Woman Suffrage Movement, 1869–​1896 (New York: Garland, 1996), 138. 17. Proceedings of the Twenty-​Eighth Annual Convention of the National-​American Woman Suffrage Association Held in Washington, D.C. January 23d to 28th, 1896, ed. Rachel Foster Avery (Philadelphia: Press of Alfred J. Ferris, n.d.), 67. 18. In 1890, Wyoming and Idaho had no cities large enough to be included in the one hundred most populated American metropolises; Colorado and Utah had only one city each within the top one hundred (Denver ranked twenty-​sixth, and Salt Lake City ranked sixty-​third). Census Bureau, “Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1890,” US Bureau of the Census, June 15, 1998, accessed January 16, 2014, https://​www.census.gov/​population/​www/​documentation/​twps0027/​tab12.txt. 19. Marjorie Julian Spruill, “Race, Reform, and Reaction at the Turn of the Century: Southern Suffragists, the NAWSA, and the ‘Southern Strategy’ in Context,” in Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, ed. Jean H. Baker (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 102–​17. 20. Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello, Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), 194. 21. This is informed by the idea of “standing”; see Judith N. Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 2–​3; JoEllen Lind, “Dominance and Democracy: The Legacy of Woman Suffrage for the Voting Right,” UCLA Woman’s Law Journal 5, no. 1 (1994): 3–​216. 22. Rob Bliss Creative, “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman,” YouTube video, 1:56, October 28, 2014, https://​youtu.be/​b1XGPvbWn0A. 23. Winnie Hu, “SheRides, a New York Taxi Company Aimed at Women, Finds a Loyal Following,” New York Times, November 11, 2014, http://​www.nytimes.com/​2014/​ 11/​12/​nyregion/​new-​york-​taxi-​service-​aimed-​at-​women-​finds-​loyal-​following.html?_​r=0. 24. Sarah Deutsch reminds us of the distinction between public visibility and empowerment. See Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870–​1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 23. 25. For more on ascriptive traditions, see Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997).

Selected Bibliography

Primary Sources Archival and Manuscript Collections Blake Family Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, New York, New York. Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College Library, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Online. Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, New-​York Historical Society, New York, New York. George Foster Peabody Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Gertrude Foster Brown Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harriet Burton Laidlaw Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harriot Stanton Blatch Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. Harriot Stanton Blatch Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Isabel Howland Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. La Follette Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

226 

 

Selected Bibliography

Lillian D. Wald Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, New York, New York. Lillian D. Wald Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, New York. Lillie Devereux Blake Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Missouri. Map Division, New York Public Library, New York, New York. Margaret Olivia Sage Collection, Emma Willard School, Troy, New York. Mariana W. Chapman Family Papers, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Mary Hillard Loines Papers in the Woman’s Rights Collection, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, Rare Books and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Online. National American Woman Suffrage Association Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, New York, New York. National American Woman Suffrage Association Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, New York, New York. Open Collections Program, Widener Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Oral History Collection, Columbia University, New York, New York. The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Editors Patricia G. Holland and Ann D. Gordon, Microfilm Edition, Scholarly Resources Inc., Wilmington, Delaware. Robinson Locke Collection, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York, New York. Rockefeller Family Archives, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Rosika Schwimmer Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, New York, New York, Online. Russell Sage Foundation Records, Rockefeller Family Archives, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Sage Archives, Russell Sage College, Troy, New York. Suffrage File, Rokeby Archives, Barrytown, New York. Susan B. Anthony Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. US Census, 1910 and 1920, ancestry.com. Vira Boarman Whitehouse Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Visiting Nurse Service of New York Records, Archives and Special Collections, Columbia University Health Sciences Library, New York, New York. Woman Suffrage Association of New York State Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, New York.

Selected Bibliography    227 Periodicals and Newspapers American Educational Review American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger American Journal of Nursing American Lawyer Argonaut Auburn Semi-​Weekly Journal Ballot Box Billboard Boston Daily Advertiser Boston Daily Globe Brooklyn Daily Eagle City Record Chicago Daily Tribune Christian Science Monitor Congressional Record Crisis Day Book Evening News Evening Post Evening Telegram Examiner Forum Globe Independent Statesman Indianapolis Star Information Quarterly Market World and Chronicle Morning Call Moving Picture World Motography National Citizen and Ballot Box

New York Age New York Dramatic Mirror New York Press New York Recorder New York Suffrage Newsletter New York Times New-​York Tribune New York World Quarterly Magazine Putnam County Courier Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide The Reply: An Anti-​Suffrage Magazine Revolution Salt Lake Herald Saratogian School Seattle Star Social Register Sun Syracuse Herald Telegram—​New York Town Topics Up-​To-​The-​Times Washington Herald Woman Citizen Woman’s Journal Woman’s Tribune Woman Voter Women’s Political World World  To-​Day

Published Works Abbott, Benjamin Vaughn, and Austin Abbott. A Digest of New York Statutes and Reports: From the Earliest Period. New York: Baker, Voorhis & Co., Law Publishers, 1884. Aldrich, Margaret Chanler. Family Vista: The Memoirs of Margaret Chanler Aldrich. New York: William-​Frederick Press, 1958. Annual Reports of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association. Anthony, Susan B., and Ida Husted Harper, eds. History of Woman Suffrage. Vol. 4. Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony, 1902; New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1969.

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Selected Bibliography

Anthony, Susan B., Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds. History of Woman Suffrage. Vols. 1–​2. New York: Fowlers & Wells, Publishers, 1881; New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1969. Anthony, Susan B., Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds. History of Woman Suffrage. Vol. 3. Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony, 1886; New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1969. Appletons’ Dictionary of New York and Its Vicinity. New York: D. Appleton & Company, Publishers, 1887. Appletons’ Dictionary of New York and Its Vicinity. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1898. Bardeen, C. W. A Dictionary of Educational Biography Giving More Than Four Hundred Portraits and Sketches of Persons Prominent in Educational Work. Syracuse, NY: C. W. Bardeen, 1901. Battershall, Fletcher W. The Law of Domestic Relations in the State of New York. Albany, NY: Matthew Bender & Company, 1910. Blake, Lillie Devereux. Fettered for Life Or Lord and Master, A Story of To-​Day. New York: Sheldon & Company, 1874; New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1996. Blatch, Harriot Stanton, and Alma Lutz. Challenging Years: The Memoirs of Harriot Stanton Blatch. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940. Brackett, Anna C., ed. Women and Higher Education. New York: Harper, 1893. Bromley, George W., and Walter S. Bromley. Atlas of the City of New York, Manhattan Island: From Actual Surveys and Official Plans. Philadelphia: G. W. Bromley, 1897. Bromley, George W., and Walter S. Bromley. Atlas of the City of New York, Borough of Manhattan. Vol. 2. Philadelphia: G. W. Bromley, 1920. Brooklyn Daily Eagle Almanac, 1900: A Book of Information General of the World, and Special of New York City and Long Island. Brooklyn: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1900. Brownlee, Jane. A Plan for Child Training. n.p. 1905. Catt, Carrie Chapman, and Nettie Rogers Shuler. Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969. The Consolidated Laws of the State of New York. Vol. 2. Albany, NY: J. B. Lyon Company, State Printers, 1909. The Convention Manual of Procedure, Forms and Rules for the Regulation of Business in the Sixth New York State Constitutional Convention, 1894. Pt. 1, vol. 2. Albany, NY: Argus Company, 1894. Cooke, Maud C. 20th Century Hand-​Book of Etiquette or Key to Social and Business Success. Philadelphia: Co-​Operative Publishing Co., 1899. Davis, Michael M., Jr. The Exploitation of Pleasure: A Study of Commercial Recreations in New York City. New York: Department of Child Hygiene of the Russell Sage Foundation, 1911. Dock, Lavinia L. Hygiene and Morality: A Manual for Nurses and Others, Giving an Outline of the Medical, Social, and Legal Aspects of the Venereal Diseases. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910.

Selected Bibliography    229 1894: Constitutional Campaign Year, Report of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, Twenty-​Sixth Annual Convention, Ithaca, NY, November 1–​15. Rochester, NY: Charles Mann Press, 1895. Eighty Million Women Want—​?. Film directed by Willard Louis. 1913. Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population. Vol. 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1931. Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley. The Rebel Girl, An Autobiography: My First Life (1906–​1926). Rev. ed. New York: International Publishers, 1973. General Statistics of Cities: 1915. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1916. Grau, Robert. The Stage in the Twentieth Century. Vol. 3. New York: Broadway Publishing Company, 1912. Harper, Ida Husted, ed. History of Woman Suffrage. Vols. 5–​6. New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922; New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1969. Harper, Ida Husted, ed. The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony; Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many from Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years. Vol. 2. Indianapolis: Bowen-​Merrill Company, 1898. Harrison, Mitchell C. Prominent and Progressive Americans: An Encyclopedia of Contemporaneous Biography. Vol. 1. New York: Tribune Association, 1902. Hill, Joseph Adam. Statistics of Women at Work: Based on Unpublished Information Derived from Schedules of the Twelfth Census, 1900. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907. Hill, Joseph Adam. Women in Gainful Occupations, 1870 to 1920: A Study of the Trend of Recent Changes in the Numbers, Occupational Distribution, and Family Relationship of Women Reported in the Census as Following a Gainful Occupation. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Print Office, 1929. Hodson, Jane, ed. How to Become a Trained Nurse: A Manual of Information in Detail. New York: William Abbatt, 1898. Ingersoll, Ernest. Rand, McNally & Co.’s Handy Guide to New York City. 16th ed. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 1904. Ingersoll, Ernest. A Week in New York. New York: Rand, McNally & Co., 1891. Insurance Maps: The City of New York, Borough of Manhattan. Vol. 4. New York: Sanborn Map Company, 1910. Jacobi, Mary Putnam. “Common Sense” Applied to Woman Suffrage. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894. Jacobi, Mary Putnam. Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacobi. New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925. James, Bessie R. For God, for Country, for Home: The National League for Woman’s Service. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920. King, Moses. King’s Handbook of New York City: An Outline History and Description of the American Metropolis. Boston: Moses King, 1892. King, Moses. King’s How to See New York: A Complete Trustworthy Guide Book. New York: Moses King, 1914. Laidlaw, Walter, ed. Statistical Sources for Demographic Studies of Greater New York, 1920. New York: New York City 1920 Census Committee, 1922.

230 

 

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Leonard, John William, ed. Woman’s Who’s Who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada, 1914–​1915. New York: American Commonwealth Company, 1914. Matthews, Shailer, ed. The Woman Citizen’s Library: Woman Suffrage. Chicago: Civics Society, 1913. Miller, Lina D. New York Charities Directory: An Authoritative, Descriptive, and Classified Directory of the Social, Civic, and Religious Resources of the City of New York. New York: Charity Organization Society, 1912. Mountjoy, Edgar E. Official Congressional Directory for the Use of the United States Congress. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Government Publishing Office, 1914. The New York State Military Census and Inventory: A Report to Hon. Charles S. Whitman, Governor of the State of New York. Albany, NY: J. B. Lyon Company, Printers, 1918. Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. 1894–​1917. Rand, McNally & Co.’s Handy Guide to Boston and Environs. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 1904. Report of the Police Department of the City of New York. New York: Martin B. Brown Co., Printers and Stationers, 1900. Revised Record of the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York: May 8, 1894 to September 29, 1894. Revised by William H. Steele. Vol. 2. Albany, NY: Argus Company Printers, 1900. Rider, Fremont, ed. Rider’s New York City and Vicinity, Including Newark, Yonkers, and Jersey City. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1916. Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. Edited by David Leviatin. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/​St. Martin’s, 2011. Roberts, Ina Brevort, ed. Club Women of New York, 1906–​1907. New York: Club Women of New York Company, 1906. Roberts, Ina Brevort, ed. Club Women of New York, 1913–​1914. New York: Club Women of New York Company, 1914. Seeing New York: The Metropolis of the Western World as Seen from Touring Car, Boat, Bridge and Skyscraper: A Descriptive Guide for the Tourist. Boston: John F. Murphy, 1906. Sherwood, Mary Elizabeth Wilson. Manners and Social Usages. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1884. Social Etiquette of New York. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1879. Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815–​1897. T. Fisher Unwin, 1898. Reprint, New York: Schocken Books, 1971. Stapler, Martha G., ed. Woman Suffrage Year Book, 1917. New York: National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company, 1917. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1894. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1895. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1900. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1901. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1910. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911.

Selected Bibliography    231 Statistical Abstract of the United States: The National Data Book. 119th ed. Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, 1999. Strachan, Grace. Equal Pay for Equal Work: The Story of the Struggle for Justice Being Made by the Women Teachers of the City of New York. New York: B. F. Buck & Company, 1910. US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. Regularity of Employment in Women’s Ready-​to-​Wear Garment Industries. Bulletin 183. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1915. Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. London: Macmillan & Company, 1899.

Secondary Sources Articles Abel, Richard. “1912: Movies, Innovative Nostalgia, and Real-​Life Threats.” In American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variations, edited by Ben Singer and Charlie Keil, 69–​91. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Alta, Virginia A. “New York State, the Leader in Nurse Registration: 1898–​1908.” Journal of the New York State Nurses Association 25, no. 1 (March 1994): 4–​7. Baker, Paula. “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–​1920.” American Historical Review 89, no. 3 (June 1984): 620–​47. Beeton, Beverly. “How the West Was Won for Suffrage.” In One Woman, One Vote, edited by Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, 99–​116. Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 1995. Bowser, Eileen. “1911: Movies and the Stability of the Institution.” In American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variations, edited by Ben Singer and Charlie Keil, 48–​68. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Boylan, Anne M. “Claiming Visibility: Women in Public/​Public Women in the United States, 1865–​1910.” In Becoming Visible: Women in View in Late Nineteenth-​ Century America, edited by Janet Floyd, Alison Eastman, and R. J. Ellis, 16–​40. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. Brucken, Carolyn. “In the Public Eye: Women and the American Luxury Hotel.” Winterthur Portfolio 31, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 203–​20. Buhler-​Wilkerson, Karen. “Bringing Care to the People: Lillian Wald’s Legacy to Public Health Nursing.” American Journal of Public Health 83, no. 12 (December 1993): 1778–​86. Butsch, Richard. “Bowery B’hoys and Matinee Ladies: The Re-​gendering of Nineteenth-​Century American Theater Audiences.” American Quarterly 46, no. 3 (September 1994): 374–​405. Bzowski, Frances Diodato. “Spectacular Suffrage; Or, How Women Came Out of the Home and into the Streets and Theaters of New York City to Win the Vote.” New York History 76, no. 1 (January 1995): 57–​94. Carter, Patricia. “Becoming the ‘New Women’: The Equal Rights Campaigns of New York City Schoolteachers, 1900–​1920.” In The Teacher’s Voice: A Social History

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of Teaching in Twentieth Century America, edited by Richard J. Altenbaugh, 40–​58. Bristol, PA: Falmer Press, Taylor & Francis, 1992. Clinton, Catherine. “‘Public Women’: And Sexual Politics during the American Civil War.” In Battle Scars: Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War, edited by Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, 61–​77. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Condran, Gretchen A. “Changing Patterns of Epidemic Disease in New York City.” In Hives of Sickness: Public Health and Epidemics in New York City, edited by David Rosner, 27–​41. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Cranz, Galen. “Women in Urban Parks.” Signs 5, no. 3 (Spring 1980): 579–​95. Cristy, Teresa. “Equal Rights for Women: Voices from the Past.” American Journal of Nursing 71, no. 2 (February 1971): 288–​93. Daniels, Doris. “Building a Winning Coalition: The Suffrage Fight in New York State.” New York History 60, no. 1 (1979): 59–​80. DeBauche, Leslie Midkiffe. “1917: Movies and Practical Patriotism.” In American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variations, edited by Ben Singer and Charlie Keil, 183–​203. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Doherty, Robert E. “Tempest on the Hudson: The Struggle for ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’ in the New York City Public Schools, 1907–​1911.” History of Education Quarterly 19, no. 4 (Winter 1979): 413–​34. Domosh, Mona. “Shaping the Commercial City: Retail Districts in Nineteenth-​Century New York and Boston.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80, no. 2 (1990): 268–​84. Domosh, Mona. “The ‘Women of New York’: A Fashionable Moral Geography.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19, no. 5 (2001): 573–​92. DuBois, Ellen Carol. “Working Women, Class Relations, and Suffrage Militance: Harriot Stanton Blatch and the New York Woman Suffrage Movement, 1894–​1909.” Journal of American History 71, no. 1 (June 1987): 34–​58. Edwards, Rebecca. “Pioneers at the Polls: Woman Suffrage in the West.” In Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, edited by Jean H. Baker, 90–​101. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Fisher, Robert. “Film Censorship and Progressive Reform: The National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures, 1909–​1922.” Journal of Popular Film 4, no. 2 (January 1975): 143–​56. Flanagan, Maureen A. “The City Profitable, the City Livable: Environmental Policy, Gender, and Power in Chicago in the 1910s.” Journal of Urban History 22, no. 2 (January 1996): 163–​90. Flanagan, Maureen A. “Gender and Urban Political Reform: The City Club and the Woman’s City Club of Chicago in the Progressive Era.” American Historical Review 95, no. 4 (October 1990): 1032–​50. Flanagan, Maureen A. “Women in the City, Women of the City: Where Do Women Fit in Urban History?” Journal of Urban History 23, no. 3 (March 1997): 251–​59. Fowler, Robert Booth, and Spencer Jones. “Carrie Chapman Catt and the Last Years of the Struggle for Woman Suffrage: ‘The Winning Plan.’” In Votes for Women: The

Selected Bibliography    233 Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, edited by Jean H. Baker, 167–​83. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Furer, Howard B. “The American City: A Catalyst for the Women’s Rights Movement.” Wisconsin Magazine of History 54, no. 4 (Summer 1969): 285–​305. Gilfoyle, Timothy J. “White Cities, Linguistic Turns, and Disneylands: The New Paradigms of Urban History.” Reviews in American History 26, no. 1 (March 1998): 175–​204. Goldberg, Michael L. “Non-​partisan and All-​Partisan: Rethinking Woman Suffrage and Party Politics in Gilded Age Kansas.” Western Historical Quarterly 25, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 21–​44. Graham, Sara Hunter. “The Suffrage Renaissance: A New Image for a New Century, 1896–​1910.” In One Woman, One Vote, edited by Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, 157–​78. Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 1995. Gullett, Gayle. “Constructing the Woman Citizen and Struggling for the Vote in California, 1896–​1911.” Pacific Historical Review 69, no. 4 (November 2000): 573–​93. Halttunen, Karen. “Groundwork: American Studies in Place—​Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, November 4, 2005.” American Quarterly 58, no. 1 (May 2006): 1–​15. Hoy, Suellen M. “‘Municipal Housekeeping’: The Role of Women in Improving Urban Sanitation Practices, 1880–​1917.” In Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870–​ 1930, edited by Martin V. Melosi, 173–​98. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980. Hyman, Paula E. “Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York City Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902.” American Jewish History 70, no. 1 (September 1980): 91–​105. Iversen, Joan. “The Mormon-​Suffrage Relationship: Personal and Political Quandaries.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 11, no. 2/​3 (1990): 8–​16. Kilde, Jeanne Halgren. “The ‘Predominance of the Feminine’ at Chautauqua: Rethinking the Gender-​Space Relationship in Victorian America.” Signs 24, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 449–​86. Leach, William R. “Transformations in a Culture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890–​1925.” Journal of American History 71, no. 2 (September 1984): 319–​42. Lind, JoEllen. “Dominance and Democracy: The Legacy of Woman Suffrage for the Voting Right.” UCLA Woman’s Law Journal 5, no. 1 (1994): 3–​216. Lobel, Cindy R. “‘Out to Eat’: The Emergence and Evolution of the Restaurant in Nineteenth-​Century New York City.” Winterthur Portfolio 44, no. 2/​3 (2010): 193–​220. Lui, Mary Ting Yi. “Saving Young Girls from Chinatown: White Slavery and Woman Suffrage, 1910–​1920.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 18, no. 3 (September 2009): 393–​417. Koven, Seth, and Sonya Michel. “Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of the Welfare State in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880–​1920.” American Historical Review 95, no. 4 (October 1990): 1076–​108.

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McCammon, Holly J. “‘Out of the Parlors and into the Streets’: The Changing Tactical Repertoire of the U.S. Women’s Suffrage Movements.” Social Forces 81, no. 3 (March 2003): 787–​818. McCammon, Holly J., and Karen E. Campbell. “Winning the Vote in the West: The Political Successes of the Women’s Suffrage Movements, 1866–​1919.” Gender and Society 15, no. 1 (February 2001): 55–​82. McCammon, Holly J., Karen E. Campbell, Ellen M. Granberg, and Christine Mowery. “How Movements Win: Gendered Opportunity Structures and U.S. Women’s Suffrage Movements, 1866 to 1919.” American Sociological Review 66, no. 1 (February 2001): 49–​70. McCann, Eugene J. “Space, Citizenship, and the Right to the City: A Brief Overview.” GeoJournal 58, no. 2/​3 (2002): 77–​79. McCarthy, Kathleen D. “Nickel Vice and Virtue: Movie Censorship in Chicago, 1907–​ 1915.” Journal of Popular Film 5, no. 1 (1976): 37–​55. Michel, Sonya, and Robyn Rosen. “The Paradox of Maternalism: Elizabeth Lowell Putnam and the American Welfare State.” Gender and History 4, no. 3 (September 1992): 364–​86. Monoson, S. Sara. “The Lady and the Tiger: Women’s Electoral Activism in New York City before Suffrage.” Journal of Women’s History 2, no. 2 (Fall 1990): 100–​135. Muncy, Robyn. “Gender and Professionalization in the Origins of the U.S. Welfare State: The Careers of Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott, 1890–​1935.” Journal of Policy History 2, no. 3 (July 1990): 290–​315. Newman, Louise M. “Reflections on Aileen Kraditor’s Legacy: Fifty Years of Woman Suffrage Historiography, 1965–​2014.” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 14, no. 3 (2015): 290–​316. Purcell, Mark. “Citizenship and the Right to the Global City: Reimagining the Capitalist World Order.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27, no. 3 (September 2003): 564–​90. Purcell, Mark. “Excavating Lefebvre: The Right to the City and Its Urban Politics of the Inhabitants.” GeoJournal 58, no. 2 (2002): 99–​108. Risk, Sharon M. “The Republic May Wear a Crown of True Greatness: The 1895 New York State Woman Suffrage Association Convention.” Hudson River Valley Review 23, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 17–​31. Santangelo, Lauren C. “City and Country: Margaret Chanler Aldrich and the Distance In Between.” Hudson River Valley Review 32, no. 1 (Autumn 2015): 15–​33. Santangelo, Lauren C. “‘The Merry War Goes On’: Elite Suffrage in Gilded Age Manhattan.” New York History 98, no. 3–​4 (Summer/​Fall 2017): 343–​66. Schaffer, Ronald. “The New York City Woman Suffrage Party, 1909–​1919.” New York History 43, no. 3 (June 1962): 262–​87. Schlesinger, Arthur M. “The City in American History.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 27, no. 1 (June 1940): 43–​66. Shore, Elliott. “Dining Out: The Development of the Restaurant.” In Food: The History of Taste, edited by Paul Freedman, 301–​32. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Selected Bibliography    235 Silva, Ruth. “Apportionment of the New York Assembly.” Fordham Law Review 31, no. 1 (1962–​1963): 1–​72. Simmon, Scott. “1910: Movies, Reform, and New Women.” In American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variations, edited by Ben Singer and Charlie Keil, 26–​47. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Singer, Ben. “Manhattan Nickelodeons: New Data on Audiences and Exhibitors.” Cinema Journal 34, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 5–​35. Sloan, Kay. “Sexual Warfare in the Silent Cinema: Comedies and Melodramas of Woman Suffragism.” American Quarterly 33, no. 4 (Fall 1981): 412–​36. Sneider, Allison. “Woman Suffrage in Congress: American Expansion and the Politics of Federalism, 1870–​1890.” In Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, edited by Jean H. Baker, 77–​89. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Spruill, Marjorie Julian. “Race, Reform, and Reaction at the Turn of the Century: Southern Suffragists, the NAWSA, and the ‘Southern Strategy’ in Context.” In Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, edited by Jean H. Baker, 102–​17. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Tetrault, Lisa. “The Incorporation of American Feminism: Suffragists on the Post-​ bellum Lyceum.” Journal of American History 96, no. 4 (March 2010): 1027–​56. Warner, Sam Bass, Jr. “If All the World Were Philadelphia: A Scaffolding for Urban History, 1774–​1930.” American Historical Review 74, no. 1 (October 1968): 26–​43. Weisberger, Bernard A. “Changes and Choices: Two and a Half Generations of La Follette Women.” Wisconsin Historical Society 76, no. 4 (Summer 1993): 248–​70. White, Jean Bickmore. “Woman’s Place Is in the Constitution: The Struggle for Equal Rights in Utah in 1895.” Utah Historical Quarterly 42, no. 4 (Fall 1974): 344–​69.

Books Abelson, Elaine S. When Ladies Go A-​Thieving: Middle-​Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Andersen, Kristi. After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics before the New Deal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Appier, Janis. Policing Women: The Sexual Politics of Law Enforcement and the LAPD. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. Auster, Albert. Actresses and Suffragists: Women in the American Theater, 1890–​1920. New York: Praeger, 1984. Beckert, Sven. The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–​1896. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Benson, Susan. Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890–​1940. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986. Berg, Barbara J. The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism: The Woman and the City, 1800–​1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Bittel, Carla. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-​Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

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Selected Bibliography

Blair, Karen J. The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–​1914. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980. Blair, Karen J. The Torchbearers: Women and Their Amateur Arts Associations in America, 1890–​1930. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Blake, Angela. How New York Became American, 1890–​1924. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Blake, Katherine Devereux, and Margaret Louise Wallace. Champion of Women: The Life of Lillie Devereux Blake. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1943. Bolotin, Norm, and Christine Laing. The World’s Columbian Exposition: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Bowser, Eileen. The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–​1915. History of the American Cinema. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990. Branson, Susan. These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Buechler, Steven M. The Transformation of the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illinois, 1850–​1920. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986. Buhler-​Wilkerson, Karen. No Place Like Home: A History of Nursing and Home Care in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Carter, Patricia A. “Everybody’s Paid but the Teacher”: The Teaching Profession and the Women’s Movement. New York: Teachers College Press, 2002. Chapman, Mary. Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture and U.S. Modernism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–​1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. New York: Random House, 1998. Chudacoff, Howard P. The Age of the Bachelor: Creating an American Subculture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Cobrin, Pamela. From Winning the Vote to Directing on Broadway: The Emergence of Women on the New York Stage, 1880–​1927. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2009. Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Craven, Wayne. Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. Crocker, Ruth. Mrs. Russell Sage: Women’s Activism and Philanthropy in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Cutler, William P., III. Parents and Schools: The 150-​Year Struggle for Control in American Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Daniels, Doris. Always a Sister: The Feminism of Lillian D. Wald. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1989. Deutsch, Sarah. Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870–​1940. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Selected Bibliography    237 Diner, Hasia. Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. Domosh, Mona. Invented Cities: The Creation of Landscape in Nineteenth-​Century New York and Boston. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Domosh, Mona, and Joni Seager. Putting Women in Place: Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World. New York: Guilford Press, 2001. DuBois, Ellen Carol, ed. The Elizabeth Cady Stanton—​Susan B. Anthony Reader: Correspondence, Writings, Speeches. Rev. ed. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992. DuBois, Ellen Carol. Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–​1869. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. DuBois, Ellen Carol. Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. Eisenstadt, Peter, ed. Encyclopedia of New York State. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005. Evans, Sara M. Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997. Farrell, Grace. Lillie Devereux Blake: Retracing a Life Erased. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. Faust, Drew Gilpin. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York: Vintage Books, 2008. Feinman, Claire. Women in the Criminal Justice System. 3rd ed. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994. Feld, Marjorie N. Lillian Wald: A Biography. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Finnegan, Margaret. Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Flanagan, Maureen A. Charter Reform in Chicago. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. Flanagan, Maureen A. Seeing with Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871–​1933. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Flexner, Eleanor, and Ellen Fitzpatrick. Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States. Enl. ed. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996. Fowler, Robert Booth. Carrie Catt: Feminist Politician. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986. Franzen, Trisha. Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Friedman, Andrea. Prurient Interests: Gender, Democracy, and Obscenity in New York City, 1909–​1945. New York: Columbia University, 2000. Frisken, Amanda. Victoria Woodhull’s Sexual Revolution: Political Theatre and the Popular Press in Nineteenth-​Century America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Gac, Scott. Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-​ Century Culture of Reform. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

238 

 

Selected Bibliography

Galie, Peter J. The New York State Constitution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Galie, Peter J. Ordered Liberty: A Constitutional History of New York. New York: Fordham University Press, 1996. Gallagher, Julie A. Black Women and Politics in New York City. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. Gidlow, Liette. The Big Vote: Gender, Consumer Culture, and the Politics of Exclusion, 1890s–​1920s. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Gilfoyle, Timothy. A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-​Century New York. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–​1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Ginzberg, Lori D. Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman’s Rights in Antebellum New York. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Glenn, Susan A. Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Goldberg, Michael Lewis. An Army of Women: Gender and Politics in Gilded Age Kansas. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Goodier, Susan. No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-​Suffrage Movement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013. Goodier, Susan, and Karen Pastorello. Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. Gorn, Elliot. The Manly Art: Bare-​Knuckle Prize Fighting in America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. Graham, Sara Hunter. Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Green, Elna. Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Gullett, Gayle. Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women’s Movement, 1880–​1911. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Haley, Andrew P. Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle-​ Class, 1880–​1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Hallet, Hillary. Go West, Young Women! The Rise of Early Hollywood. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Halttunen, Karen. Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-​Class Culture in America, 1830–​1870. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. Hammack, David C. Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1982. Harrison, Patricia Greenwood. Connecting Links: The British and American Woman Suffrage Movements, 1900–​1914. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. Harvey, David. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso, 2012. Henderson, Mary C. The City and the Theatre: New York Playhouses from Bowling Green to Union Square. Clifton, NJ: James T. White & Company, 1973.

Selected Bibliography    239 Henderson, Mary C., and Alexis Greene. The Story of 42nd Street: The Theatres, Shows, Characters, and Scandals of the World’s Most Notorious Street. New York: Watson-​Guptill,  2008. Hoffert, Sylvia. Alva Vanderbilt Belmont: Unlikely Champion of Women’s Rights. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. Homberger, Eric. The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1998. Homberger, Eric. Mrs. Astor’s New York: Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. Homberger, Eric. New York City: A Cultural History. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2003. Hughes, Amy E. Spectacles of Reform: Theatre and Activism in Nineteenth-​Century America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. Isenberg, Alison. Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. The Encyclopedia of New York City. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. James, Edward T., Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer, eds. Notable American Women, 1607–​1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Vols. 1–​2. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. James, Janet Wilson. A Lavinia Dock Reader. New York: Garland, 1985. Johnson, Joan Marie. Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women’s Movement, 1870–​1967. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Jones, Thai. More Powerful Than Dynamite: Radicals, Plutocrats, Progressives, and New York’s Year of Anarchy. New York: Walker & Company, 2012. Jowett, Garth. Film: The Democratic Art. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976. Kasson, John F. Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-​Century Urban America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1990. Kazin, Michael. American Dreams: How the Left Changed a Nation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. Kennedy, David M. Over Here: The First World War and American Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Kessner, Thomas. Capital City: New York City and the Men behind America’s Rise to Economic Dominance, 1860–​1900. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003. Kimmel, Michael S. History of Men: Essays on the History of American and British Masculinities. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Koscarski, Richard. Fort Lee: The Film Town. Rome: John Libbey Publishing, 2004. Koscarski, Richard. Hollywood on the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008. Kraditor, Aileen S. The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement: 1890–​1920. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965; New York: W. W. Norton, 1981. Kraus, Natasha Kirsten. A New Type of Womanhood: Discursive Politics and Social Change in Antebellum America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.

240 

 

Selected Bibliography

Kroeger, Brooke. The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017. Leach, William. Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Lewenson, Sandra B. Taking Charge: Nursing, Suffrage, and Feminism in America, 1873–​ 1920. New York: Garland, 1993. Lewis, David L. W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868–​1919: Biography of a Race. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1994. Lindsey, Treva B. Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Lui, Mary Ting Yi. The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-​of-​the-​Century New York City. Princeton. NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Lumsden, Linda J. Rampant Women: Suffragists and the Right of Assembly. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. Lundarini, Christine A. From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, 1910–​1928. New York: NYU Press, 1986. Lupkin, Pamela. Manhood Factories: YMCA Architecture and the Making of the Modern Urban Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Marilley, Suzanne. Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 1820–​1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Massey, Doreen. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Mayhall, Laura E. Nym. The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860–​1930. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. McArthur, Benjamin. Actors and American Culture, 1880–​1920. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984. McCarthy, Kathleen D. American Creed: Philanthropy and the Rise of Civil Society, 1700–​ 1865. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. McCarthy, Kathleen D. Women’s Culture: American Philanthropy and Art, 1830–​1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Mead, Rebecca. How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868–​1914. New York: NYU Press, 2004. Meckel, Richard A. Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850–​1929. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Meyerowitz, Joanne J. Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880–​1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. McGruder, Kevin. Race and Real Estate: Conflict and Cooperation in Harlem, 1890–​1920. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Montgomery, Maureen. Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith Wharton’s New York. New York: Routledge, 1998. Mottus, Jane. New York Nightingales: The Emergence of the Nursing Profession at Bellevue and New York Hospitals, 1850–​1920. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981.

Selected Bibliography    241 Muncy, Robyn. Creating A Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–​1935. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Nasaw, David. Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements. New York: Basic Books, 1993. Neuman, Johanna. Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote. New York: NYU Press, 2017. Oshinsky, David M. Polio: An American Story, The Crusade That Mobilized the Nation against the 20th Century’s Most Feared Disease. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Osofsky, Gilbert. Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, Negro New York, 1890–​1930. 2nd ed. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971. Patterson, Jerry. Fifth Avenue: The Best Address. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1998. Peiss, Kathy. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-​of-​the-​Century New York. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986. Rabinovitz, Lauren. For the Love of Pleasure: Women, Movies, and Culture in Turn-​of-​the-​ Century Chicago. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998. Ravitch, Diane. The Great School Wars: A History of the New York City Public Schools. New York: Basic Books, 1974; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Reverby, Susan M. Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850–​1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Rimby, Susan. Mira Lloyd Dock and the Progressive Era Conservation Movement. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. Robb, George. Ladies of the Ticker: Women and Wall Street from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Roberts, Joan I., and Thetis M. Group. Feminism and Nursing: An Historical Perspective on Power, Status, and Political Activism in the Nursing Profession. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995. Rodgers, Daniel T. Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998. Rosenberg, Rosalind. Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. Rosenberg, Rosalind. Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think about Sex and Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Rousmaniere, Kate. City Teachers: Teaching and School Reform in Historical Perspective. New York: Teachers College Press, 1997. Ryan, Mary P. Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825–​1880. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Sacks, Marcy S. Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City before World War I. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Sanders, James. Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. Sanders, Kathleen Water. Mary Elizabeth Garrett: Society and Philanthropy in the Gilded Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

242 

 

Selected Bibliography

Scherzer, Kenneth A. The Unbounded Community: Neighborhood Life and Social Structure in New York City, 1830–​1875. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992. Scobey, David M. Empire City: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002. Scott, Anne Firor. Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Scott, Joan W. Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Sewell, Jessica Ellen. Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890–​ 1915. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Shklar, Judith N. American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Shore, Amy Elizabeth. Suffrage and the Silver Screen. New York: Peter Lang, 2014. Singer, Ben, and Charlie Keil, eds. American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variations. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Sklar, Kathryn Kish. Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women`s Political Culture, 1830–​1900. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. Sklar, Robert. Movie-​Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies. Rev. ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Skocpol, Theda. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992. Sluby, Patricia Carter. The Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. Smith, Rogers M. Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. Smith-​Rosenberg, Carroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Sneider, Allison L. Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870–​1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Snyder, Robert W. The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Solomon, Barbara Miller. In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985. Spain, Daphne. How Women Saved the City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Stamp, Shelley. Movie-​Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Stansell, Christine. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–​1860. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Stevens, Helen Norton. Memorial Biography of Adele M. Fielde, Humanitarian. New York: Fielde Memorial Committee, 1918. Stott, Richard. Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-​Century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

Selected Bibliography    243 Streitmatter, Rodger. Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. Strouse, Jean. Morgan: American Financier. New York: Harper Perennial, 2000. Taylor, Clarence. The Black Churches of Brooklyn. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Terborg-​Penn, Rosalyn. African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850–​1920. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Tetrault, Lisa. The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848–​1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Thomas, Lately. The Astor Orphans: A Pride of Lions. Albany, NY: Washington Press Park, 1999. Urban, Wayne J. Why Teachers Organized. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1982. Van Voris, Jacqueline. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1987. Vicinus, Martha. Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–​ 1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Walkowitz, Judith. City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-​Victorian London. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Walkowitz, Judith. Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill. New Women in the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Wiebe, Robert H. The Search for Order, 1877–​1920. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967. Williams, Mason B. City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York. New York: W. W. Norton, 2013. Winston, Diane. Red-​Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of the Salvation Army. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Wood, Sharon E. The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship, and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Zaeske, Susan. Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women’s Political Identity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Zagarri, Rosemarie. Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Zahniser, J. D., and Amelia R. Fry. Alice Paul: Claiming Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Dissertations and Theses Braxton, Celia. “Fashioning Performance Careers in New York, 1869–​1899: How Female Performers Negotiated Changing Ideas of Womanhood.” PhD diss., City University of New York Graduate Center, 2011. Burnam, Mary Ann Bradford. “Lavinia Lloyd Dock: An Activist in Nursing and Social Reform.” PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1998. Goodier, Susan. “The Other Woman’s Movement: Anti-​suffrage Activism in New York State, 1865–​1932.” PhD diss., State University of New York at Albany, 2007.

244 

 

Selected Bibliography

Lerner, Elinor. “Immigrant and Working Class Involvement in the New York City Woman Suffrage Movement, 1905–​1917: A Study in Progressive Era Politics.” PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1981. Marino, Kelly L. “Votes for College Women: Women’s Suffrage and Higher Education in Modern America.” PhD diss., Binghamton University, State University of New York, 2016. McDonald, David Kevin. “Organizing Womanhood: Women’s Culture and the Politics of Suffrage in New York State, 1865–​1917.” PhD diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1987. Sewell, Jessica Ellen. “Gendering the Spaces of Modernity: Woman and Public Space in San Francisco, 1890–​1915.” PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 2000. Shanley, Catherine. “The Library Employees’ Union of Greater New York, 1917–​1929.” DLS thesis, Columbia University, 1992. Shore, Amy Elizabeth. “Suffrage and the Silver Screen.” PhD diss., New York University, 2003. Tritter, Thorin. “Paper Profits in Public Service: Money Making in the New York Newspaper Industry, 1830–​1930.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2000.

Index

Note: page numbers followed by f refer to figures; those followed by n refer to notes, with note number Abbe, Catherine, 23–​24, 38 Abbe, Robert, 23–​24 actresses difficulty of recruiting, 91 improved reputation by early twentieth century, 91 involvement in suffrage movement, 6–​7, 74–​75, 76, 77, 90–​92, 97, 101–​2, 120, 123, 127 suffrage work as publicity for, 91, 92, 196n.103 value to suffrage movement, 91 Addams, Jane, 40, 151 African Americans involvement in suffrage movement, 107–​9, 123, 205n.75, 205n.76 and Political Equality Association, 65 power in New York politics, 109 Aldrich, Margaret Chanler accusations of radicalism against, 62 and anti-​corruption activism, 38 background of, 24 and Colony Club debate (1908), 61–​62

fervent support of suffrage, 102 and New York State Constitutional Convention of 1894, 27–​28, 29 press and, 62, 141–​42 Anthony, Susan B. Catt and, 57, 106 death of, 33–​34 designation of successor for National American Woman Suffrage Association, 45, 48–​49 disputes with Blake over strategy, 37, 41–​42, 43, 44, 47, 106 on New York, as center of influence, 66 and New York State Constitutional Convention of 1894, 21, 23 and property rights for women, 16–​17 recruitment of teachers, 70–​71 and Revolution newspaper, 8 and split between New York City and State Suffrage Associations, 46 suffragists’ celebration of memory of,  18–​19 and Woodhull, 13

246 

 

Index

anti-​suffragists arguments of, 146–​47 and Colony Club debate (1908), 61–​62 at Constitutional Convention of 1894 (New York State), 29, 30 lobbying against suffrage amendment, 121 suffragists’ views on, 28–​29 World War I, 133, 138, 150​ See also Brooklyn Women’s Anti-​ Suffrage League; New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage Association of Men Teachers and Principals of the City, 71 Astor, Madeleine, 102, 112 authorities, suffragists and alliance with, in polio epidemic of 1916, 132 alliance with, in World War I, 7, 133–​34,  139–​40 brushes with, in lobbying for suffrage amendment,  114–​15 See also police Barnard College, 3, 12–​13 Barrymore, Ethel, 61, 76, 91 Bedford Political Equality League, 73 Belmont, Alva, 64–​67 background of, 64–​65 Malone and, 65 militancy of, 65 motives for joining suffrage movement, 64, 65 and nurses, recruitment of, 88 and office space for suffrage organizations, 66–​67, 80, 204n.66 and Political Equality Association, 65, 82 press and, 62 and segregation, 65 and Shirtwaist Strike of 1909, 69 shrewd use of publicity, 65 in suffrage parade, 76 and women teachers, support for, 71

Bernhardt, Sarah, 102 better babies movement, 130 Blake, Katherine Devereux, 105 Blake, Lillie Devereux on anti-​suffragists,  28–​29 background of, 10 and broadening of New York suffragists’ activism, 43 challenge to gender restrictions by, 55 and Civic and Political Equality Union, 43 and conventions regarding women in public spaces, 40–​41 on creation of Greater New York City,  42–​43 disputes with Anthony over strategy, 37, 41–​42, 43, 44, 47, 106 first address to open-​air meeting, 50 leadership in suffrage movement, 9–​ 10, 41, 178n.102 lobbying for women’s rights in new City charter, 42–​43 on mayoral election of 1901, 38–​39 mixed legacy of, 48–​49 and National American Woman Suffrage Association, 44–​47 and National Legislative League, 45–​46 and New York City Legislative League, 46 and New York State Constitutional Convention of 1894, 20–​22, 27, 29, 30,  41–​42 novel on urban dangers for women,  13–​15 retirement from suffrage activism, 33–​34,  46 and safety of city for women, 12, 39 and split between New York City and State Suffrage Associations, 46 and Stanton’s eightieth birthday fete, 33 and Statue of Liberty unveiling protest, 18 and suffrage parade, 53

Index    247 and use of prestigious venues to bolster legitimacy of suffrage, 36 and venues for large suffrage meetings, 16, 17 on women teachers’ voting rights, 70 Blatch, Harriot Stanton, 55–​56 background of, 55 and British suffragettes, alliance with, 56 challenge to restaurant gender restrictions, 55 departure from New York City, 59 and Equal Franchise Society, 63 and Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women, 48, 55 on failure of suffrage amendment in 1915,  121–​22 on immigrants and African Americans, 90 Malone’s influence on, 54, 55–​56 open-​air meetings and street protests,  55–​56 and organizational rivalries, 100 and partial suffrage option, 125, 127 and polling places, fight for access to, 116–​17,  118 as second-​generation leader, 50–​51 and Shirtwaist Strike (1909), 101 and socialite suffragists, 24, 61–​63, 103 and suffrage parades, 53, 76–​77 tactics of, 59, 74, 77 on teachers’ maternity leave, 104 and Wall Street meetings, 84–​85 on Women’s Political Union office location, 80 and women teachers, support for,  71–​72 and working-​class women, 101 British suffragettes Blatch’s alliance with, 56 influence on second-​generation U.S. leadership, 51 militancy of, 51 press naming as “suffragettes,” 51

rejection by more conservative U.S. suffragists,  56–​57 British Women’s Social and Political Union, 56 Brooklyn suffragists, and interborough rivalries, 78 Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Association,  70–​71 Brooklyn Women’s Anti-​Suffrage League,  28–​29 California locations of suffrage offices, 80 suffragists’ open-​air meetings, 84 vote on suffrage (1911), 77–​78 Canudo, Raimondo, 109 canvassing Blake and Anthony’s dispute over, 37, 41–​42, 43, 44, 47, 106 obstacles to, 107 reasons for focus on, 106–​7 strategies for encouraging canvassers,  106–​7 and suffragists’ aid in State wartime questionnaire,  139–​40 in support of suffrage amendment, 105–​7, 127–​28,  142–​43 Catt, Carrie Chapman, 57–​59 and Anthony, 57, 106 on cities’ role in suffrage amendment passage, 152 on Constitutional Convention of 1894, 32 and drive for federal amendment,  147–​48 and Equal Franchise Society, 63 on failure of 1915 suffrage amendment, 121–​22,  124 and International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 57 and Interurban Woman Suffrage Council, 47, 48, 57 as member of conservative suffragist wing, 57

248 

 

Index

Catt, Carrie Chapman (cont.) and open-​air meetings, 57 and organizational rivalries, 100 and passage of suffrage amendment, 145, 146 as president of National American Woman Suffrage Association, 44–​45, 47, 57, 126 rejection of radical tactics, 57, 61, 126 as second-​generation leader, 50–​51 and socialites, recruitment to movement,  61–​62 tactics of, 59, 74, 77 use of traditional meetings, 57 and Woman Suffrage Party, 57–​59 and women teachers, support for, 71–​72 and World War I, 135, 136 Chanler, Margaret. See Aldrich, Margaret Chanler Chapman, Charlotte, 70–​71 Chapman, Mariana, 33, 43, 46 Chicago city charter rewriting, suffragists and,  47–​48 suffrage activism in, 151 children’s health, tying of suffrage to, 130, 131f, 214–​15n.58 Chinatown, suffrage street meetings in,  86–​87 Choate, Joseph H., 30 cities dangers of, as ongoing issue, 153 influence on suffrage amendment’s passage,  152–​53 cities, nineteenth-​century views on dangers in, 8–​9, 10–​11, 12, 164n.46 as argument against women voting, 15 as constraint on outreach, 31 as constraint on venues for suffrage meetings, 15–​16, 31, 149–​50, 175n.56 Civic and Political Equality Union, 43–​44, 48, 176n.71 Collegiate Equal Suffrage League, 61, 82,  93–​94

Colony Club, 61–​62, 69, 70 Colorado, passage of women’s suffrage in, 33 Congressional Union focus on federal suffrage amendment, 125 National Woman’s Party and, 144 tensions with other groups, 120–​21, 126 Constitutional Conventions as potential route for achieving suffrage, 20 provisions for in New York State constitution, 20 See also New York State Constitutional Convention of 1846; New York State Constitutional Convention of 1894 Contagious Disease Act (Britain), 11–​12 contract rights suffrage venue rentals and, 16–​17 for women, establishment in New York,  16–​17 corporate leaders, early suffragists’ assumptions about, 10 corruption in New York City government,  37–​38 suffragists’ presentation of women’s vote as solution to, 38–​40, 48–​49, 117 corruption in New York City government, campaigns against suffragists condemning, as distraction, 38 suffragists involved in, 38 Woman’s Municipal League and, 38 Cosmopolitan Fete of 1914, 109–​10 Crisis, 108 Crossman, Henrietta, 91 Democratic Party, suffragists’ alliance with, in mid-​nineteenth century,  37–​38 depression of 1893, and popular anger at displays of wealth, 36 Dewey, John, 104 Dock, Lavinia, 89–​90, 103, 109, 144

Index    249 education for women, New York City institutions for, 3 Eighty Million Women Want —​ ? (1913 film), 95–​96, 97 Elliott, Maxine, 91, 92–​93, 197n.120 Empire State Campaign Committee canvassing by, 106 creation of, 100 office relocations, 118–​19, 209n.145 and push for suffrage amendment, 106,  120–​21 revised strategy after 1915 defeat,  125–​26 satellite offices, 119–​20 tensions with other groups, 120–​21 Equal Franchise Society activities of, 63–​64 and Empire State Campaign Committee, 100 founding of, 63 offices of, 63, 82 support for working-​class women,  63–​64 Equality League of Self-​Supporting  Women founding of, 48, 55 membership of, 55 nurses in, 89–​90 and polling places, fight for access to,  116–​17 renaming as Women’s Political Union, 55, 78, 80 and Shirtwaist Strike of 1909, 69 support for women teachers, 71, 73 Equal Suffrage League, 70 etiquette guides, on women in cities, 11, 13, 17 family, undermining of, as charge against suffragists, 16 federal suffrage amendment effect of New York amendment passage on, 147–​48,  151–​52 focus on, after 1915 defeat, 125, 126

Ferry, Thomas, 19 Fettered for Life (Blake), 13–​15 Fielde, Adele, 23–​24, 28–​29 films. See movies Flexner, Eleanor, 171–​72n.8 Four Hundred, the, 24, 168n.104 Friganza, Trixie, 91 Garnet, Sarah, 70 Gilder, Helena de Kay, 28 Gilder, Jeannette, 61 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 104 Goldman, Emma, 69–​70 Gould, Helen, 24 Grange, suffrage alliances with, 74–​75 Greenleaf, Jean Brooks, 41 Haggin, Lee, 23–​24 Hale, Louise Closser, 101–​2 Hale, Matthew, 170–​71n.154 Hammerstein, William, 93–​94 Harlem Equal Rights League, 51–​52 Havemeyer, Louisine, 102 Hay, Mary Garrett, 107, 126, 133, 134, 138, 145, 167n.97 Hazard, Alida B., 61–​62 headquarters. See offices of Manhattan suffrage organizations Hell’s Kitchen, suffrage street meetings in, 85–​86, 87 Henry Street Settlement, 88–​90 Hewitt, Sarah, 28 higher education for women, early-​ twentieth-​century expansion of, 12–​13 Hinchey, Margaret, 109 Hitchcock, Jane E., 89 Howe, Julia Ward, 36–​37 Howell, Mary Seymour, 165–​66n.73 Illinois partial suffrage in, 125, 151 suffragists’ use of open-​air meetings, 84 See also Chicago

250 

 

Index

Illinois Equal Suffrage Association,  47–​48 immigrants nativism in suffrage arguments, 28–​29,  110 New York City Woman Suffrage League’s canvassing of, 27–​28 number in New York City, 109 public health nurses’ outreach to, 6–​7, 74–​75, 77, 90, 97, 103, 109 and push for suffrage amendment, 109–​10,  123 suffragists’ assumptions about, 10, 77, 90 suffragists’ blaming of, for 1915 failure of suffrage amendment, 122 Interborough Association of Women Teachers, 71–​72, 73 International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 57 Interurban Woman Suffrage Council founding of, 47, 57 limited success of, 48 name change to Woman Suffrage Party,  57–​58 opposition to street protests, 54 Irwin, May, 102 Jacobi, Mary Putnam, 23, 24, 27, 29, 38, 167n.97 Kelley, Florence, 108 Keyser, Harriette, 29, 30 King, Susan B., 167n.92 Kraditor, Aileen, 175n.54 La Follette, Fola, 92, 104, 127, 196–​97n.110 League for Political Education, 31–​32,  34–​35 Lefebvre, Henri, 157n.3 leisure sites opening to both sexes, 111 suffragists’ lobbying in, 111 See also sporting events

Levine, Lottie, 109 Levy Bill of 1911, 117 Lipsky, Abram, 122 liquor interests, suffragists’ blaming of, 136, 146 lobbying for 1915 suffrage amendment,  100–​14 actresses and, 101–​2, 120, 123 African Americans and, 107–​9, 123 and attention-​getting tactics, 111 and brushes with authorities, 114–​15 canvassing in support of, 105–​7 in commercial leisure sites, 111 immigrants and, 109–​10, 123 in male spaces, 100 men’s backlash against, 123 nurses and, 103, 120 organizational rivalries and, 100,  120–​21 parade on Fifth Avenue, 120 reshaping of activism around election districts and, 106, 109 and “right to the city,” claiming of, 114 socialites and, 7, 102–​3, 120 teachers and, 104–​5, 120, 123 threatened Women’s Strike and, 105 urban focus of campaign, 120–​21 working-​class women and, 101, 120, 123 World War I and, 114, 133–​45 lobbying for 1917 suffrage amendment actresses and, 127 canvassing and, 127–​28 focus on disciplined activism, 127–​28,  135 impact of 1915 loss and, 124 legislature’s reapproval of amendment, 127 Mardi Gras Ball (1916) and, 128–​29 New York City as focus of, 128–​29 polio epidemic of 1916 and, 7, 124,  129–​32 and progress made by 1915 campaign, 122–​23, 124, 143 revision of strategies for, 126

Index    251 and rural voters, focus on, 128 suffrage films and, 140–​41, 145 See also World War I, and push for suffrage amendment Loines, Mary H., 39–​40 Lyons, Maritcha R., 108 Mackay, Katherine, 62–​64, 69, 80, 103 Madison Square, and suffrage activism, 59 Malone, Maud, 51–​54 arguments for suffrage, 54 arrests of, 54 background of, 51–​52 Belmont and, 65 claiming of physical prerogative to Manhattan,  53–​54 influence on Blatch, 54, 55–​56 open-​air meetings and street protests by, 51–​52, 53–​54, 55–​56, 61, 62, 126 and press, 54 radical tactics of, 52, 59, 61 and suffrage parade, 53 tactics vs. other leaders, 74 Manhattan as home to national and state suffrage organizations, 1, 5, 66–​68, 74 suffrage organizations in, 74, 156, 189n.179 suffragists’ understanding of potential influence of, 10, 66, 67–​68 Mardi Gras Ball (1916), 128–​29 Martin, Bradley and Cornelia, 36 Massachusetts defeat of suffrage in 1915, 121 locations of suffrage offices, 80 suffrage strategies in, 121 Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association,  36–​37 Maxine Elliott’s Theatre, 92–​93, 197n.120 McAllister, Ward, 168n.104 meetings. See street protests and open-​ air meetings; venues for suffrage meetings

Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, 93–​ 94, 100, 108 Mills, Harriet May, 67 Mitchel, John Purroy, 99 Monahan, Michael, 3 Morgan, Anne, 61 Morgan, Frances Tracy, 28 Mott, Lucretia, 9 movies early concerns about immorality in, 95 number of city theaters in early twentieth century, 95 suffrage films, 6–​7, 76–​77, 94–​97, 140–​41,  145 municipal housekeeping rhetoric and polling places, suffragists’ fight for access to, 117 and push for suffrage amendment, 147 and tying of suffrage to children’s health, 130, 131f, 214–​15n.58 Wald on, 89 and women as solution to political corruption, 40–​41, 72 Murray Hill headquarters for suffrage organizations, 79–​84, 81f landlords’ acceptance of, 77, 83, 97 prestige of, 79 suffrage district, benefits of, 83–​84 suffrage district created by, 79, 80, 83 symbolic value of, 79 and turn to street-​level offices, 79, 80, 119f National American Woman Suffrage Association Anthony’s retirement from presidency,  44–​45 Blake’s quitting of, 45–​46 Blake’s run for president of, 44–​46 Catt as president of, 44–​45, 47, 57, 126 distancing from radical suffragists, 126 and drive for federal amendment, 125, 126,  147–​48

252 

 

Index

National American Woman Suffrage Association (cont.) headquarters locations, 45–​46, 66–​68, 74, 80, 82–​83, 151 and racism, 108–​9 refocusing of campaign on southern and western states, 45 removal of Blake from Legislative Advice Committee, 44 second-​generation leadership, focus on public acceptance, 59 suffrage film by, 95 and tension between state organizations for funding, 20–​21 Woman Suffrage Party as model for, 58 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),  107–​9 National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 133 National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures, 95, 199n.140 National College Equal Suffrage League, 73 National Education Association, 105 National League for Women’s Service, 138 National Legislative League, 45–​46 National Woman’s Party (Washington, DC) aggressive tactics of, 115, 144 challenging of National American Woman Suffrage Association, 144 New York suffragists’ distancing from,  144–​45 National Woman Suffrage Association, 19 nativism, in suffrage debates, 28–​29, 110 New England Woman Suffrage Association,  36–​37 New Jersey defeat of suffrage in 1915, 121, 125 suffrage strategies in, 121 Newman, Lyda, 107–​8 New York City businesses and amenities in, 2–​3 as center of suffrage movement, 1, 2, 51, 120–​21,  128

as “feminized” city, 3, 149 fragmented elite in, 2 population growth, 2–​3 See also suffragists in New York City New York City, merging of Manhattan and surrounding counties and increased complexity of suffrage activism, 78 suffragists’ responses to, 42–​43 New York City Legislative League, 46, 48 New York City Woman Suffrage League canvassing of immigrants, 27–​28 founding of, 1, 6, 9–​10 leadership of, 9–​10 lobbying for women’s rights in new City charter, 42–​43 name change to New York City Legislative League, 46 and New York State Constitutional Convention of 1894, 22 original name of, 161n.7 progress made during State Constitutional Convention of 1894,  31–​32 protests at public celebrations, 18–​19 public headquarters, establishment of, 22 separation from New York State Woman Suffrage Association, 46–​47 tense collaboration with Volunteer Committee,  27–​28 testimony at New York State Constitutional Convention of 1894, 29, 30 New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 133 New York State Constitutional Convention of 1846, 9 New York State Constitutional Convention of 1894, 20–​21 anti-​suffrage speakers at, 30 debates preceding, 28–​29 failure of suffrage in, 9, 30–​31 ongoing activism following, 34–​35 press coverage of, 26f

Index    253 and socialites’ suffrage activism, 6, 9, 20,  22–​28 and squabble with Kansas activists over funding,  20–​21 suffrage activism in, as model for future efforts, 32 suffrage and anti-​suffrage testimony at, 29 suffragists’ hopes for, 20, 165–​66n.73 suffragists’ progress made during,  31–​32 suffragists’ strategy for, 21 women lobbying against suffrage, 28 New York State Woman Suffrage Association and Empire State Campaign Committee, 100 focus on issues outside New York City, 43, 46–​47, 66 founding of, 9–​10 leadership of, 10 move of headquarters to Manhattan, 66–​67, 74,  125–​26 move to Murray Hill location, 80 office relocations, 118–​19 officers of, in 1915, 126 and push for suffrage amendment, 132 rise of Brooklyn influence in, 46 separation of New York City Woman Suffrage League from, 46–​47 use of open-​air meetings, 84 New York State Woman Suffrage Party founding of, 125–​26 Mardi Gras Ball (1916), 128–​29 and New York State questionnaire for residents, 139 and push for suffrage amendment, 128 and World War I, activism during, 133–​34,  138 New York Suffrage Newsletter, 65 Nineteenth Amendment, effect of New York State suffrage amendment on,  151–​52

nurses involvement in suffrage movement, 7, 76, 103, 120 licensing as issue for, 88 pay gap as less salient issue for, 88 resistance to suffrage, 88 suffragists’ efforts to recruit, 88, 90 nurses, public health Henry Street Settlement and, 88–​89 involvement in suffrage movement, 88–​90,  101 and suffrage outreach to immigrants, 6–​7, 74–​75, 77, 90, 97, 103, 109 suffragists’ efforts to recruit, 89 nursing as female profession, 87 nursing schools in New York City, 87 offices of suffrage organizations awareness of symbolic value of, 80 Belmont’s funding of, 66–​67 concerns and advantages, 67–​68, 74, 186n.42 cost of, 67–​68 frequent relocation of, 118–​19, 120 prestige of, 60f, 66–​68, 68f, 74 satellite offices, 119–​20 use in suffrage films, 96 wartime difficulty in maintaining, 142 See also Murray Hill headquarters for suffrage organizations; specific organizations open-​air meetings. See street protests and open-​air meetings Palmer, Courtlandt, 23–​24 Panic of 1893, 25 Pankhurst, Emmeline, 56–​57, 84–​85 Pankhurst, Sylvia, 89–​90 parades African American women in, 109, 205n.76 decline in impact of, 99, 143 footage of, in suffrage films, 96–​97, 151

254 

 

Index

parades (cont.) patriotism-​themed wartime parade (1917),  143–​45 suffrage protest at Columbus Day parade (1892), 18–​19 as suffrage tactic, 1, 53, 76–​77, 96 Washington, DC parade (1913), violence at, 149 Parkhurst, Charles, 38, 56 partial suffrage in Illinois, 125, 151 as option for New York, 125 Paul, Alice, 125 Peixotto, Bridget, 104, 203n.41 Pennsylvania defeat of suffrage in 1915, 121 suffragists’ change of strategy after 1915 defeat, 125 suffragists’ strategies in, 121 Philadelphia suffragists, use of open-​air meetings, 84 Pilgrim Mothers’ Dinners, venue for, 36 police suffragists’ brushes with, 114–​15 suffragists’ requests for protection from, 85, 86, 87 and suffragists’ work on New York State wartime questionnaire,  139–​40 polio epidemic of 1916 efforts to curb, 129 number of cases and fatalities, 129, 130 and push for suffrage amendment, 124,  129–​32 and suffragists’ alliance with government, 7, 132 Political Equality Association founding of, 65 move to Murray Hill location, 82 nurses’ branch of, 88 and outreach to African Americans, 108 and Shirtwaist Strike of 1909, 69

subgroups of, 65 working-​class members of, 65 polling places location in male spaces, 115–​16, 116f, 117, 118 suffragists’ fight for access to, 115–​18 press on actresses in suffrage movement, 91 on failure of 1915 suffrage amendment, 123, 124 Malone’s courting of, 54 and perceived dangers of city, 11, 12 on suffrage activism at sporting events,  112–​13 on suffrage amendment passage, 145,  146–​47 on suffrage parades, 76 on suffrage open-​air events, 51–​52 on suffrage protests at public events, 18, 19 on suffrage theater benefits, 93 and “suffragettes” moniker, 51 on suffragists’ patriotism-​themed wartime parade (1917), 143 and suffragists’ publicizing of brushes with authorities, 115 on suffragists’ reorganizations after 1915 loss, 125–​26 and Volunteer Committee, coverage of,  24–​27 on wealthy suffrage activists, 20, 26f, 35, 61, 62–​63 professional women, and women’s rights movement, 5 See also actresses; nurses; teachers, female property rights for women, establishment in New York, 16–​17 prostitution, New York City proposal to license, 9–​10,  11–​12 public celebrations latitude for women’s participation in,  17–​18 suffrage protests at, 17–​20

Index    255 Rankin, Jeannette, 146–​47 real estate market, and offices of suffrage organizations, 118–​19, 120 referendums on woman suffrage. See lobbying for 1915 suffrage amendment; lobbying for 1917 suffrage amendment; suffrage amendment, New York State Reid, Helen, 126 Republican Party, suffragists’ post-​Civil War rejection of, 37–​38 respectability conventions as argument against women’s voting, 15 early suffragists’ reluctance to breech, 13 and “right to the city,” early activists’ reluctance to claim, 17, 40–​41 suffragists’ battle against, 4, 5–​6, 76–​77 suffragists’ manipulation of, 5–​6 and venues available for suffrage meetings,  15–​16 See also “right to the city” restaurants, suffragists’ challenges to gender restrictions in, 43–​44, 55, 181n.40 Revolution newspaper, 8, 12, 37–​38 “right to the city,” suffragists’ claiming of vs. actual achievement of, 153 Blake and, 14 components of, 157n.3 as cultural victory, 150–​51 early reluctance to claim, 17 in lobbying for suffrage amendment, 114, 124, 147, 150 second-​generation activists and,  78–​79 and women’s lobbying in male spaces, 100 Rockefeller, John D., 24 Rockefeller, Laura Spelman, 24 Rosen, Zelda, 109 Runkle, Lucia Gilbert, 23–​24 Russell, Lillian, 91

Sage, Olivia, 24, 44–​45, 62, 63, 80, 102–​3 Sage, Russell, 24 Sanders, Eleanor Butler, 23–​24 Sanders, Henry M., 23–​24 Schurz, Carl, 167n.97 Scott, Francis M., 30–​31 second-​generation leadership focus on public acceptance, 59 success in building mass movement for suffrage, 105 turn-​of-​the-​century leadership changes,  33–​34 second-​generation leadership in New York City, 6–​7 influence of British suffrage movement on, 51 jockeying for prominence, 59 key figures in, 50–​51 revival of socialites’ involvement in suffrage movement under, 61–​64 transition to, 48, 50–​51 use of street protests, 50, 51 varying conceptions of City, 51 varying strategies of, 59, 74 Seneca Falls Convention (1848), 9 Shaw, Anna Howard, 2, 84–​85, 126, 145 Shaw, Mary, 76, 91, 127 Sherry’s restaurant, 25–​27, 31–​32, 35, 66 Shirtwaist Strike (1909), 69, 101 socialists accusations of suffrage ties to, 62,  146–​47 and Wage Earners’ League for Woman Suffrage, 101 socialites in suffrage movement, 5 benefits to movement, 22–​23, 63, 69 and class tensions, 69–​70 and Colony Club debate (1908), 61–​62 criticism of, for inadequate commitment, 103 departure after New York State Constitutional Convention of 1894, 31–​32,  34–​35 and financial support, 63

256 

 

Index

socialites in suffrage movement (cont.) and funding of office space, 66–​67 involvement in suffrage movement, 6, 7, 9, 20, 22–​28, 31–​32, 34–​35, 101, 102–​3,  120 limited impact of, 32 motives for, 63–​64, 167n.92 press’s interest in, 20, 26f, 35, 61,  62–​63 resurgence under second-​generation leadership, 50–​51,  61–​64 rivalries among, 64, 65 and working-​class women, support for,  63–​64 See also Belmont, Alva; Mackay, Katherine; Volunteer Committee Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, 126 Southern U.S. African American men disenfranchisement in, 109 and drive for federal amendment,  147–​48 and suffrage amendment campaign, 152 sporting events, suffragists’ lobbying at, 111–​14, 113f, 123, 127 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady on anti-​corruption activism as distraction, 38 on anti-​suffragists,  28–​29 death of, 33–​34 eightieth birthday fete, 33–​34 and election of president of National American Woman Suffrage Association (1890), 44–​45 and Revolution newspaper, 8 and Seneca Falls Convention, 9 suffragists’ celebration of memory of,  18–​19 and Woodhull, 13 Statue of Liberty in suffrage ad campaigns, 136, 137f suffrage protest at unveiling ceremony, 18

Stillman House, 89 Strachan, Grace, 71, 73, 104, 105 street protests and open-​air meetings, 53f Blake’s first address at, 50 Blatch’s use of, 55–​56 and brushes with police and authorities,  114–​15 in Central Park (1914), 99 in Chinatown, 86–​87 conservative suffragists’ resistance to, 50, 54, 64 early suffragists’ reluctance to use,  19–​20 in Hell’s Kitchen, 85–​86, 87 in hostile neighborhoods, 84–​87, 97 influence on other suffrage groups, 151 Malone’s use of, 51–​52, 53–​54, 55–​56, 61, 62, 126 other groups employing, 114 police protection for, 85, 86, 87 polio epidemic of 1916 and, 129–​30 in push to pass suffrage amendment, 142–​43,  145 second-​generation suffragists’ use of, 50, 51, 84–​87 suffragists’ refusal to be cowed by violence, 85, 86–​87 and suffragists vs. suffragettes, 51 violent responses to, 84–​85, 86 Voiceless Speech events, 114–​15 in Wall Street, 84–​85, 87 and winning attention vs. winning converts, 87 suffrage, partial, as option for New York enfranchisement, 125 suffrage amendment, New York State alternative paths to suffrage considered after 1915 defeat of, 125 celebrations of passage, 145 and drive for federal amendment, 147–​48,  151–​52 failure of, in 1915, 7, 121–​23, 124

Index    257 importance of passing, 7, 78–​79, 99–​100,  151 legislature’s acceptance of, 97–​98, 99–​100, 127, 134 obstacles to passage of, 99–​100 passage of, 145 reasons for passage of, 146, 150–​51 surprising levels of support in New York City, 145–​46 See also lobbying for 1915 suffrage amendment; lobbying for 1917 suffrage amendment suffrage amendments, role of cities in passage of, 152–​53 Suffrage and the Man (1912 film), 95, 96 Suffrage Day, 99–​100 suffrage organizations in Manhattan, 74, 156, 189n.179 suffragettes, as term for radical suffragists, 51 suffragists celebration of earlier activists and notable women, 18–​19, 36 turn-​of-​the-​century leadership changes, 33–​34, 171–​72n.9–​ suffragists in New York City and city life, tensions between opportunities and dangers of, 13–​15 decline of role in national movement,  45–​46 and interborough rivalries, 78 opportunities available for suffragists in,  78–​79 suffragists of late nineteenth century activism of, 9–​10 mixed legacy of, 48–​49 period of transition to second generation of leaders, 49 See also New York State Constitutional Convention of 1894 suffragists of late nineteenth century, and dangers of city life, 8–​9, 10–​11, 12 as constraint on outreach, 31, 48–​49 as constraint on venues for meetings, 15–​16, 31, 149–​50, 175n.56

Tammany Hall and passage of suffrage amendment, 150 See also corruption in New York City government teachers, female involvement in suffrage movement, 70–​71, 73, 104–​5, 120, 123 maternity leave for, 104, 203n.41 number in New York City, 70 opposition to activism of, 71 pay gap for, 71, 72 suffragists’ recruitment of, 7, 70, 72, 74, 101 suffragists’ support for, 70, 71–​72 value as conduits for suffrage movement, 73 theaters’ support for suffrage, 92–​94, 97, 197n.120 Tuxedo, The, 35, 172n.13 Tweed, William “Boss,” 37–​38 Vanderbilt, William K., 64–​65 venues, elite increase in, with New York wealth, 37 turn-​of-​the-​century opening to middle-​ class patrons, 35 venues for suffrage meetings City dangers as constraint on, 15–​16, 31, 149–​50, 175n.56 cost of, 172n.13 for larger meetings, 16–​17 limiting of, by respectability conventions,  15–​16 and prestige vs. elitist image, 36, 37 and rights gained from rental contracts,  16–​17 symbolism, awareness of, 36–​37, 48 use of prestigious venues to legitimize movement, 33, 35–​37, 59, 63 See also street protests and open-​air meetings Victoria Theatre, Suffrage Week at, 93–​94 Villard, Frances Garrison, 108 Villard, Oswald Garrison, 108

258 

 

Index

Voiceless Speech protests, 114–​15 Volunteer Committee arguments to counter anti-​suffrage claims,  28–​29 and balance of exclusivity and publicity,  24–​25 change into League for Political Education,  31–​32 and draw of social status, 26–​27 founding of, 23–​24 headquarters of, 25–​27 membership of, 23–​24 press coverage of, 24–​27 and suffrage as fashionable, 24–​25 tense collaboration with New York City Woman Suffrage League, 27–​28 testimony at New York State Constitutional Convention of 1894, 29 Votes for Women (1912 film), 95, 96, 97, 199–​200n.150, 200n.154 Votes for Women (newspaper), 89 Votes for Women Restaurant, 119–​20 voting rights for women arguments against, 28, 30, 31, 170–​71n.154 innate morality of women as argument for, 38–​40,  63–​64 limited effect of, 153–​54 Malone on, 54 shift from “justice” to “expedient” arguments for, 175n.54 states allowing votes in presidential elections (1917), 132–​33 tax payments by women as argument for, 61–​62,  63–​64 Western states as first adopters of, 5 See also suffrage amendment, New York State Wadsworth, James, Jr., 151–​52 Wage Earners’ League for Woman Suffrage, 93–​94, 101 Wald, Lillian D., 88–​89, 103, 134

Waldorf-​Astoria  Hotel and popular anger at displays of wealth, 36 suffrage meetings at, 35–​36, 37 Wall Street satellite suffrage offices in, 119–​20 suffrage street meetings in, 84–​85, 87 Washington, DC, suffrage parade (1913), violence at, 149 Waters, Yssabella, 89 wealthy women. See socialites in suffrage movement Wells, Bettina Borrman, 52, 53 White House, radical suffragists’ picketing of, 126, 144, 146–​47 Whitehouse, Vira Boarman call for elite women’s support for suffrage, 103 as chair of New York State Woman Suffrage Party, 126 on failure of suffrage amendment in 1915, 124 and strain of both wartime service and suffrage work, 142 strategy, revision of, 124 and World War I, 133–​34, 137–​38, 139 Wilson, Woodrow, 133, 135, 143–​44 Wise, Stephen, 104 Woman Citizen, The, 145 Woman’s Journal, The, 39, 40–​41, 45–​46, 54, 57–​58, 67, 72, 88, 89, 96–​97,  119–​20 Woman’s Municipal League, 38, 118–​19 Woman’s Protest magazine, 133 Woman Suffrage Party Bernhardt’s visit to, 102 canvassing by, 106 Catt as head of, 58 citywide convention of 1909, 57–​58 and Cosmopolitan Fete (1914), 109–​10 and Crisis issue on enfranchisement, 108 and Empire State Campaign Committee, 100 founding of, 57–​58, 66

Index    259 headquarters in Metropolitan Tower, 59, 60f image management by, 58–​59 and interborough rivalries, 78 move to Murray Hill offices, 80 and nativism, 110 and New York State questionnaire for residents, 139 nurses in, 89–​90 office relocations, 119 open-​air meetings by, 84, 85–​86 and polio epidemic of 1916, 130 political focus of, as model for other groups, 58 and push for suffrage amendment, 106, 132 reshaping of activism around election districts, 57–​58, 106, 109 satellite office for African Americans, 107–​8, 204n.66 socialites supporting, 102 store run by, 82 and Suffrage Day, 99 and Suffrage Week at Victoria Theatre,  93–​94 in Upper West Side, trouble finding rental space, 83 Wald and, 89 and The Woman Voter, 99–​100, 104 and working-​class women, 101 Woman’s Work in War Time (1917 film),  140–​41 Woman Voter, The, 86, 90, 99–​100, 101–​2, 103, 104, 106–​7, 122–​23, 130, 134, 135, 139 women in New York City danger of city as ongoing issue, 153 pull factors attracting, 3 See also cities, nineteenth-​century views on dangers in; “right to the city,” suffragists’ claiming of women of color, participation in women’s rights movement, 5–​6 See also African Americans

Women’s Political Union dissolving of, 125 Equality League of Self-​Supporting Women’s renaming as, 55, 78, 80 move to Murray Hill offices, 80 and nativism, 110 on nurses and women’s rights, 103 office relocations, 118–​19, 208n.141 and partial suffrage option, 125 and push for suffrage amendment,  120–​21 suffrage films by, 95–​96, 200n.154 and Suffrage Week at Victoria Theatre,  93–​94 tactics of, 77 tensions with other groups, 120–​21 theater benefits for, 93 Wall Street meetings by, 84–​85 Women’s Strike, threat of (1915), 105 Woodhull, Victoria, 13 working-​class  women participation in women’s rights movement,  5–​6 and push for New York State suffrage amendment, 101, 120, 123 suffrage associations for, 101 wealthy suffragists support for, 63–​64 World War I and anti-​suffragists, distraction of, 150 early U.S. neutrality, 133 and German immigrants, Catt condemnation of, 136 and New York State questionnaire for residents,  139–​40 pacifist-​suffragists’ opposition to, 133–​34 and push for suffrage amendment, 124,  133–​45 and questioning of suffragists’ patriotism, 133, 142 and strain of both wartime service and suffrage work, 142 and strategic value of suffragists’ war support, 135–​36, 137–​38, 138f, 140–​43,  146–​47

260 

 

Index

suffragists’ activities in support of war effort, 7, 133–​34, 136, 138f suffragists’ ambivalent views on, 114 suffragists’ ongoing activism during, 133–​36, 137–​38,  142–​43 suffragists’ patriotism-​themed wartime parade (1917), 143–​45

support for U.S., 133, 138 U.S. entry into, 135 Wyoming, passage of women’s suffrage in, 33 Young Men’s Christian Association, on dangers of city, 11