Today in Herstory: Suffragists Stage Open-Air Rally in Manhattan (13 may 1909)

[niyad]

Today in Herstory: Suffragists Stage Open-Air Rally in Manhattan

May 13, 1909: Clearly not reluctant to venture into hostile territory in search of converts, Edith Bailey, Harriot Stanton Blatch and several other suffragists held a rally today near the church of militant anti-suffragist Rev. Dr. Charles Henry Parkhurst on Manhattan’s Madison Square.


Edith Bailey

At 12:30, a big red automobile carrying the speakers drove up, was turned into a rostrum immediately after being parked, then after a large yellow “Votes for Women” banner was unfurled, the rally began. The speakers, all prominent members of the Equal Franchise League, were there strictly as individuals. But though this was not an officially sanctioned rally, the arguments in favor of woman suffrage were as effective as those at any well-planned, fully-authorized meeting.

Blatch first explained why the open-air forum was chosen: “You men are so shy that you will not come to a hall to hear us speak and we must come to you.” She then expounded on one of every suffrage speaker’s pet peeves – the question of why they aren’t at home taking care of their children:
You never think to ask the actress who amuses you why she doesn’t stay at home and mind the kids, or the factory girl who makes your hats, why she doesn’t. You do not ask either if the woman speaker may not be a grandmother, as I am, whose kids have all left her, or if she may be an unmarried woman.

At the end of her remarks, Blatch introduced Edith Bailey, noting that she “has kids to mind, but who is a better mother for having something outside her four walls to think of.” Bailey, author of a suffrage tract entitled “Some Ideals of Suffrage,” which was being enthusiastically distributed to the crowd by poet Rosalie Jones, said that women who are suffragists were simply housekeepers who “do not want to confine our housekeeping to our own homes. We feel that there is housekeeping for us in the streets, in the prisons, and on our School Boards. There are old and young bachelors on the School Boards and there ought to be a mother or two.”

Bailey noted that “it used to be considered unwomanly for women to get equal pay with men,” (and 106 years later, we are still hearing that same nonsense) indicating that some progress had been made in that area. However, she thinks there are still too many men like Secretary of State Elihu Root who believe “women should be protected by their husbands and brothers,” but who fail to provide them with either. “Women must have the right to take care of themselves, and then there will always be some one out to see that they are protected.”
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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2015/05/13/18946/