Today in Herstory: Will New York Choose Suffrage?

[niyad]

Today in Herstory: Will New York Choose Suffrage?




October 30, 1915: The last Saturday before Election Day is traditionally a time of frenzied activity, and this one was no exception as New York suffragists expressed confidence about victory on Tuesday while working around the clock to attain it. From elevated stages to down in the subways, “Votes for Women” advocates seemed to be everywhere, as did the color of “suffrage yellow.”

The 24 and 26-hour street corner speech marathons in Times Square and Columbus Circle have successfully concluded, and the enthusiasm and eloquence of the speakers were the same regardless of whether the audience was someone pausing briefly while on milk delivery rounds at dawn, or a large throng when the streets were crowded with those on their way to or from a restaurant or theater.
The suffrage orators at these marathons are usually found in threes, assigned two-hour shifts. One is an experienced veteran acting as a kind of chaperone as well as a senior speaker, accompanied by two younger suffrage speakers. It has been estimated that at the 24-hour rally almost 20,000 stayed long enough to listen to the principal arguments being made. Attendance and enthusiasm was also high at the “Yellow Rally,” a concert in Madison Square this evening with speeches made between the musical selections.

New volunteers are still coming in to the Woman Suffrage Party’s headquarters asking for work to do on Tuesday. Since there are already enough poll-watchers to staff every polling place in the city, the new recruits will be assigned electioneering duties, and stand the legally required 100 feet from the polls to answer any questions and give out sample ballots to voters. The official poll-watchers inside will be well-qualified, because the Party has been giving formal, mandatory training sessions for them since April.

One thousand women were in the Hotel Astor today at the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Centennial Luncheon, where they pledged themselves to victory. Then, as the event ended, they quickly rushed back to the various campaign offices to fulfill their pledges. Stanton was born on November 12, 1815, and it is hoped that women in her home State of New York will have the ballot by the time it would have been her 100th birthday. Harriot Stanton Blatch, head of the Women’s Political Union and daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, said:
Our race is nearly run. Now, as we are approaching November 2nd and victory, we may well look back for 100 years and realize how, step by step, we have built up the organization of today. We have done this, too, of ourselves, for unlike every other disenfranchised class, we have not had one great group of men to fight our battles for us. With the exception of the aid of a few brilliant men, we have all these years been fighting our battle unaided.

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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/10/30/today-in-herstory-will-new-york-choose-suffrage/