Today in Herstory: New York City Suffragists Begin Final Election Push Marching by Torchlight

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Today in Herstory: New York City Suffragists Begin Final Election Push Marching by Torchlight






October 28, 1915: Standing in the large, cheering crowd at 59th Street and 8th Avenue tonight watching the torchlight suffrage parade, it’s hard to imagine how the New York campaign could possibly get more intense that it has been up until now.
But that’s exactly what’s about to happen in the five days remaining until Election Day on November 2nd. Tomorrow is when the unprecedented push actually begins, and today all the major suffrage groups were busy making sure that everything goes just as planned when the final offensive is launched.

There is a quite impressive alliance of organizations arrayed on the pro-suffrage side in New York: The National American Woman Suffrage Association, Empire State Campaign Committee, Woman Suffrage Party, Women’s Political Union, Equal Franchise Society, and the Political Equality Association. All of them have been working hard for months, but far more ambitious plans are now being finalized for everything from huge rallies in the city’s largest halls to actions in the subways.

Improvisation brought about the subway event. Originally, suffrage groups wanted to simply post conventional subway ads by buying space and using some other space donated to them by a business that has a long-standing contract to post its own ads. But Ward & Gow, the advertising firm that places ads in subways refused to sell space to suffrage groups, or allow them to use the space donated by one of the company’s regular clients. The Public Utilities Commission has just ruled that it has no power to compel Ward & Gow to allow the ads. So instead, women will ride around all day tomorrow holding big placards in their laps for their fellow passengers to read, in order to counteract the numerous anti-suffrage ads the company has allowed to be displayed in
the cars. Not all sign-carriers will be underground, however. Tomorrow, from 2 p.m. until 7:30 p.m., women wearing “sandwich boards” front and back, advertising that night’s huge rally in Carnegie Hall, will be walking around town. And just to be certain they’ll be noticed by as many people as possible, they’ll be preceded by a bugler.

Though small in comparison to events to come or the massive pageant five days ago, tonight’s parade was still quite impressive, with large, colorful banners, band music, decorated automobiles, and at the end of the parade route even a cartoonist, Lou Rogers, turning out drawings lampooning the opposition. A “Victory” banner led the procession, with four U.S. flags following. The best float showed “Miss New York” bound to “Ignorance,” “Prejudice,” and “Vice” due to women not having the vote. At various points along the route, individual automobiles would drop out, park, then speakers would stand up in them and hold street corner rallies for the spectators.

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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/10/28/today-in-herstory-new-york-city-suffragists-begin-final-election-push-marching-by-torchlight/