by JD Thomas | Oct 7, 2015
There were women and men who opposed the suffrage movement for different reasons and by different means, but are collectively referred to as Anti-suffragists, or just “Antis” in newspapers and magazines.
Many ‘Antis’ based their opposition on the idea that women’s natural role, or womanly duty, was to exercise influence and reform through other means – through the example of her behavior and her gentle influence on men for the greater good.
But sometimes they took things too far and got caught:
ANTIS CHARGED WITH USING FORGED NAMES
Telegrams’ Protesting to White House
Denied By New Jersey People.
Opponents of woman suffrage In New Jersey, forging the names of prominent persons of Trenton and other cities, are sending telegrams to the White House protesting against the President’s (Wilson) announcement in favor of votes for women in his home state.
These telegrams signed with the names of Richard Stockton, and other prominent New Jersey people were received at the White House last night. Secretary to the President Tumulty replied and received indignant denials from the persons whose names had been signed to the original telegrams protesting that they had sent no messages of any kind whatsoever.
Hundreds of other telegrams from persons favoring woman suffrage have been received at the White House.
Source: The Washington Times, October 07, 1915
by JD Thomas | Oct 6, 2015
Between the World War I years when many men were serving overseas and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, the years 1910-1925 were full of firsts for women. Some firsts represented major changes in the opportunities open to women in American society and some were just stunts or examples of woman flexing their growing independence.
From military service to civil service to new occupations, these women were of interest to the American population at large. Women taking on new roles made the news nationwide.
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by JD Thomas | Sep 30, 2015
Jeannette Pickering Rankin was the first woman to hold high government office in the United States when she won a seat in the United States Congress in 1916.
Rankin, born 1880, was the eldest daughter of a rancher and a schoolteacher near Missoula, Montana, on June 11, 1880. She graduated from Montana State University in 1902 and moved on to the New York School of Philanthropy (later the Columbia University School of Social Work). After working briefly as a social worker in Spokane, Washington, she entered the University of Washington in Seattle.
Rep. Jeanette Rankin of Montana, right with muff, reading The Suffragist (1917)
It was there that Rankin joined the local woman suffrage movement that achieved its goal in Washington State in 1910. She eventually became a professional lobbyist for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Her speaking and organizing efforts helped Montana women gain the vote in 1914.
Rankin decided in 1916 to run for a House seat from Montana. Some woman suffrage leaders feared she would lose the race and hurt the cause nationally, but Rankin secures a GOP nomination for one of Montana’s two At-Large House seats on August 29, 1916.
She campaigned as a progressive, pledging to work for a woman suffrage amendment and emphasizing social welfare issues. A long time pacifist, Miss Rankin did not shy away from letting voters know how she felt about U.S. participation in the European war that had, by then, been raging for two years: “If they are going to have war, they ought to take the old men and leave the young to propagate the race.”
Rankin came in second place statewide so won one of Montana’s seats.
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by JD Thomas | Sep 5, 2015
The Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) began as a collaboration of working class and well-off women that began in 1903 to support the efforts of women to organize labor unions and to eliminate sweatshop conditions.
The WTUL played an important role in supporting many strikes in the first two decades of the 20th century. They also played an important role in establishing the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.
The Women’s Trade Union League began to work actively for women’s suffrage. The organization worked in coalition with the National American Woman Suffrage Association in the years before passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
The WTUL saw suffrage as a way to gain protective laws and regulations for women to better provide them with the dignity and other (less tangible) benefits come with political equality.
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Opponents of woman suffrage In New Jersey, forging the names of prominent persons of Trenton and other cities, are sending telegrams to the White House protesting against the President’s (Wilson) announcement in favor of votes for women in his home state.
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.