This sign from 1920 was designed to be placed in the window of a home so that all who passed would know that the woman within had exercised her right under the 19th amendment and registered to vote. It also served as a reminder to other women to do the same.
I have cleaned it up and made a nicely printable version that will fit on a standard (US) Letter size page.
Sign, “A Woman Living Here Has Registered to Vote,” ca 1920.
Here is an incident which, to be appreciated, needs a glance at the sweet womanly face of the young Mrs. Stanton.
Mrs. Stanton was summering at Saratoga, eagerly enjoying the delights of that fascinating young watering place half a century ago – a merry young mother, in great demand for her agreeable manners and sparkling conversation, as well as for her talented performances upon the guitar.
Chatting with a friend one day, the woman question – that bugbear of the moment – was brought up.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“Isn’t it dreadful,” he remarked, “to think of a woman so unsexing herself as actually to appear before the legislature at Albany?”
Naturally enough, the heroine of this very shocking procedure protested against this interpretation of woman’s sphere; yet, amused by her friend’s faux pas, mischievously she led him on.
“What kind of a woman is this Mrs. Stanton?” she inquired.
“Oh, a dreadful kind of a woman!” was the reply. “Just the kind of woman one would expect would do such a thing.”
“Do describe her,” pleaded his tormentor. “Tell me more about her.”
And he, nothing loath, went on: “Well, she’s a large, masculine-looking woman, with high cheek-bones and a loud, harsh voice don’t you know just one of those regular woman’s rights women.” (more…)
By Alva Belmont for
Ladies Home Journal, September 1922
TWENTY-FOUR hours after the dedication of the Woman’s Parliament in Washington a representative of THE LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL asked me what I really meant when I said that henceforth women are to be dictators. She was the fortieth or fiftieth person who had put the same question to me in that very limited space of time.
I meant then, and mean now, exactly what I said.
The end of the dictatorship of the world by men alone is in sight. We women have lived long enough in the cramped confines of a misfit social structure. We have been forced to sit still too long. We have been powerless for such an endless time that we have accumulated enough stored-up energy to shape any structure to our will.
We know we can manage the house. We can reconstruct it. We can put on a left wing and a right wing. We can add a sun porch to let in the light. We could even tear the house down if we liked-and I think men know that too.
The time has come to take this world muddle that men have created and strive to turn it into an ordered, peaceful, happy abiding place for humanity. In its present condition, the world is its own worst indictment against the sole dictatorship of men. Men have always obstructed and suppressed the intellect of one-half of the human race. They have always worked for themselves. That is not sufficient. The error lies here. (more…)
The suffragettes are planning to start a college course to teach the youth of America the value and justice of votes for women.
The course as outlined will include instruction on the evolution of womankind; of the wooing with rocks in the Stone age; of the chattel days of the Middle ages; of her present condition in most states where, equipped with learning, finish, brains, integrity and conscience, she is denied a vote.
The idea is fine. It should be broadened, the course widened, with every woman an instructor.
The greatest crusaders to the real cause of woman’s rights will not be found in the school room.
On November 12, 1815, the pioneering American suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in Johnstown, New York. Stanton was a leader in 19th century activism for women’s suffrage. She often worked with Susan B. Anthony as the theorist and chief writer for the movement while Anthony acted as the public spokesperson for women’s rights.
Holding fast to her belief in true equality, when Elizabeth Cady married abolitionist Henry Brewster Stanton in 1840 she insist that the word obey be dropped from the ceremony.
While she is is best known for her lifelong contributions to the woman suffrage struggle, she was effective in winning property rights for married women, equal guardianship of children, and liberalized divorce laws that all helped to make it possible for women to leave marriages that were harmful to the wife, children, or economic health of the family.
Mrs. Stanton died in New York on October 26, 1902 – 20 years before American women won the right to vote.
The wonderful work of archivists have preserved far more material than we usually see. Our goal here is to unearth and present some of the stuff we never saw in school.