Women’s Suffrage

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‘When Women Rule”(Vanity Fair, 1918)

Some well-chosen words by L.L. Jones, one of the many forgotten Suffragettes of yore, who looked longingly to new day:


So far as political equality is concerned I believe I could adjust myself quite readily to a society governed by United States presidentesses, State governesses, and city mayorines, alderwomen, chairwomen, directrices, senatresses, and congresswomen, and I believe I should be just as happy if clergywomen preached to me, doctrices prescribed for me, and policewomen helped me across the street, and chuffeuresses ran the taxis which on rare occasions I can afford to take.


Read a 1918 article about the women’s city.

The State of Women’s Suffrage in 1907
(Harper’s Weekly, 1907)

This 1907 article refers to a report made by journalist and suffragist Ida Husted Harper (1851 – 1931), concerning the status of the suffrage movement as it could be found throughout the Western world. A number of interesting issues and seldom remembered concerns are sited throughout this article on the matter of the bullying and boorish ways of those wishing to hamper the advancement of women’s suffrage.

Inequality For Female Barflies
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

This column concerns a 1937 bill sponsored by New York State Senator Edward Coughlin. The senator’s bill provided for the arrest of any woman who stood at or in front of the bar of any club, hotel or restaurant licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. Coughlin held that any woman found guilty of this pastime should be charged with disorderly conduct. A few other states were also attracted to this legislation; it passed a year later only to be repealed in the early Sixties.


Click here to read about that moment in 1920 when American Women attained the vote.

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Nancy Langhorne Astor, M.P.
(Literary Digest, 1922)

Lady Nancy Astor (1879 – 1964) is remembered as the first woman to take a seat in the British House of Commons (she was not the first woman to be elected, but she was the first woman to serve in the House of Commons). Born in Virginia, she was the daughter of a former Confederate officer who refused to send her to college, thereby sparking her interests in the Suffrage movement. Following the divorce from her first husband in 1903, she set sail for Britain and met Waldorf Astor (1879 – 1952) while on board ship. The two were wed in 1906 and soon developed and interest in British politics. She became a Member of Parliament in 1919 and served in the House of Commons until 1945.

1970: #ME TOO
(Coronet Magazine, 1970)

If you were a woman with leftist inclinations during the 1960s and wanted to join one of the many revolutionary groups that promised to burn it all to the ground, you wouldn’t be required to bring a lighter – that was for the male hippies only – the women were required to bring coffee percolators and feather dusters:

In the New Left, some people – men – are more equal than others. The revolutionary girl is distinguished from her male counterpart by one significant difference. The male can cut his hair, shave his beard and step back into the society he condemns. In trying to help the oppressed, the girls found they wear a uniform that they can’t remove anymore than the Blacks can remove their skin. They can’t remove their sex – and the men make use of it only too well.


More on this topic can be read here…


These men were big on reading the blather of the underground press and you can read about their journalistic tastes here…

Women Candidates Win Higher Offices
(The Literary Digest, 1924)

The majority of women being natural-born housekeepers, why shouldn’t the infinite details of a Governor’s office appeal to the female of the species?

This deep thought was put to the public by the inquisitive souls at The Birmingham News just four years after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote.


The attached article concerns the 1924 elections which saw many American women swept into high political offices all across the fruited plain; it lists all significant offices that would soon be held by women and clearly indicates that the year 1924 ushered in a new era in American political history.


Click here to read further about women in national politics.


In 1933 FDR named one of these women to serve as Director of the U.S. Mint…

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The Mind of Susan B. Anthony
(Literary Digest, 1894)

For those Victorian phrenologists who made it their life’s work to map out the brains of American Suffragettes, Susan B. Anthony proved to have been the least complicated:

This is a brain in which there was no waste – no superfluous expenditure. This is a woman with a purpose from which she never swerves.


Click here to read about that moment in 1920 when American Women attained the vote.

Modern Women for a Modern Age
(Vanity Fair, 1921)

Contained within the confines of the attached PDF is an excerpt from the review of the New York production of the 1921 play, A Bill of Divorcement by Clemence Dane (born Winifred Ashton 1888-1965) – with much enthusiasm, the reviewer wrote:

We know of no better expression of the creed of the new generation than that which Clemence Dane has drawn up….

What followed was a very short soliloquy which beautifully summed up not only the philosophy of the modern woman, but the philosophy of much the Twentieth Century.

Two Million Dead Men and the Advance of Feminism
(Delineator Magazine, 1921)

What was keenly felt in the Great Britain of the 1920s was the distinct absence of two million men as a result of the First World War. This short article points out clearly that this was fertile ground for suffrage advancements, as well as any number of other social changes.

England is the great human laboratory of our generation – England with her surplus of two million women, her restless, well-equipped, unsatisfied women.

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Forty Years of Women Voting
(Pageant Magazine, 1960)

In the fourth decade of women’s suffrage, researchers had discovered that there were more women than men listed on the voting registries. Republican Party executive Clare Williams noted:

Women now hold the balance of power.

Dr. Anna Howard Shaw
(Literary Digest, 1913)

A 1913 profile of Dr. Anna Howard Shaw (1847 – 1919), president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and leader in their struggle to secure American women their right to vote. This article primarily deals with her meeting with President Woodrow Wilson and his inability to commit to the question of women’s suffrage.

Having helped to fight the good fight, Dr. Shaw died in 1919, weeks after the U.S. Congress voted to ratify the 19th Amendment.

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The Women Voter in Her First Five Elections
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

This is an interesting article that indicates just how profoundly elections had changed after 1920, when women began to vote. Previously, when the voting booth was a gender-specific domain, the victory margins were seldom greater than 10%; yet, beginning with the 1920 presidential election and continuing through the election of 1936, dramatic differences could be seen between the winners and losers that had never existed in prior contests.


The journalist believed that the advent of radio broadcasting also played a contributing factor in these elections.


Read a 1951 profile of a future First Lady: the young Nancy Reagan.

Her Next Task
(Life Magazine, 1919)

An excellent cartoon that serves to illustrate the difficulty that the American suffragettes had to overcome in post World War I America. Following the demobilization of so many women who played vital roles during the course of the war, the next task at hand was to see to it that her fathers, brothers and uncles understood that these veterans of the war expected greater opportunity and would not reside gladly in the same world of low-expectations that saw them off at the docks in 1917

Suffragettes Attack President Wilson
(NY Times, 1918)

Here are two remarkably brief letters that were addressed to the editors of THE NEW YORK TIMES commenting on a seldom remembered assault that was launched on President Wilson during the Summer of 1918 by a group of Washington, D.C. suffragettes.

Click here to read about the WAC truck drivers of W.W. II.

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