Today in 1915: Suffragists Across the East Coast Are Ready to Fight for the Vote
Today in 1915: Suffragists Across the East Coast Are Ready to Fight for the Vote
Mount Holyoke students getting ready to march for the cause in Springfield, Massachusetts.
October 24, 1915: With just nine days left until three big Eastern States vote on woman suffrage referenda, the battle for women’s equality at the polls goes on in large cities as well as small towns, and is being waged by both women and men.
From Boston, Massachusetts, to Biglerville, Pennsylvania, there has been a great deal of activity, as suffragists in all States enjoy increased respect and feel more confident after the success of yesterday’s stunning pageant on Fifth Avenue in New York.
In Boston this evening, there was a suffrage rally in Tremont Temple in which California’s most notorious anti-suffragist, Col. Irish, was the target of much humor. According to Samuel J. Elder: “A California colonel who has been making anti-suffrage speeches hereabouts says, if quoted correctly, that politics degrades women and makes them vulgar; if he means that the women of California have been degraded and vulgarized, I pity him when he goes home.” (California women won the vote four years ago.)
Elder himself was an anti-suffragist just a year ago, but has since been converted to the cause, and thinks that thousands of other Massachusetts men have also changed their minds: “The idea that a man should not know more today than he did a year ago is intolerable. That is what makes the suffrage cause a hopeful one.”
Mr. Elder said that those who think a woman’s place is in the home should consider the fact that: About nine-tenths of the legislation relates to the home. Why should not women, who ‘belong in the home’ and have to stay in the home have an equal share in deciding the nature of that legislation? Have women got to wait until all the old duffers are dead and a new generation of men has grown up to liberate their mothers, sisters and wives?
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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/10/24/today-in-1915-suffragists-across-the-east-coast-are-ready-to-fight-for-the-vote/