Women’s Suffrage Blog, Part 6: Twentieth Century
By Abby Tuomala, Blue Ridge Chapter,
National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR)
In celebrating the monumental—and consequential—American woman’s right to vote, with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, we have tried to show that it did not happen in isolation of countless cultural influences, nor was it accomplished by means of just a few discreet (albeit pivotal) events. We have also tried to show that resistance to women’s suffrage was not necessarily due to male chauvinism, although it is arguably present in the narrative. It helps us in understanding history, and now history in the making, that many issues converge in what may be too easily thought of as a single issue. Property rights, human enslavement[1] , educational equity, the blight of alcohol abuse and all manner of abuses that came with industrialization, are just some of the cultural issues that were intertwined with women’s suffrage.
Women Casting Ballots in NY, ca. 1917, Library of Congress
We asked how or why it took so long to achieve what we so take for granted today. We rehearsed the millennia-old understandings of the family, and of the representative headship of the family being the father in the civil sphere, as evidenced in Scripture. We saw our forebears’ working out these principles in framing our state and national governments, tying proof of good stewardship, namely property, to civic duty, namely the voting franchise.
During this centennial celebration, there is such an abundance of historical benchmarks and anecdotes about the pioneers of the women’s movement, we need not repeat them here. To refresh your memory, see the timeline that the National Women’s History Museum helpfully provided: https://www.womenshistory.org/resources/timeline/womans-suffrage-timeline
It is worthwhile to repeat that the issue of property ownership has been central to the crusade for women’s suffrage. Unmarried women and widows have been vulnerable from time immemorial with regard to property. A careful analysis of the long evolution toward women having an equal say in matters of civil government will show its inexorable connection to property ownership. As recently as 1988, women needed male co-signers for business loans.[1] Other examples of women needing men to exercise property ownership and entrepreneurship are legion.[2]
What may be a classic window into the mind of skeptics and opponents of women’s suffrage through the years may be found in an 1890 article in the Atlantic Monthly.[3] In it, the writer, Charles Worcester Clark, capsulizes the arguments against the voting franchise for women, of which the following is only a small part:
The argument for [women’s suffrage] is based on two very plausible fallacies: (1) that the right to vote is a natural right, and (2) that the unit of society is the individual. The truth is that the unit of society is not the individual, but the family; and that the right to vote is not a natural right, but is only contingent upon the natural right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” For the sake of these, men organize society; and that such organization may be possible it is necessary—as on the principle of securing the greatest good to the greatest number it is right—to insist that every individual shall be included in this society; and further, as each must of very necessity have his full share of its benefits, that each shall also bear his share of its burdens.
[…]
In fact, it would be amusing, if it were not pitiful, to observe how those who most vaunt the importance of woman are the very ones who seek most to imitate man and to belittle true womanhood.
[…]
A division of the duties of life between the sexes is the necessary result of the physical difference which incapacitates woman for a considerable period for public life or hard labor. As an accompaniment, if not as a result, of this physical difference, we find also the peculiar qualities of heart and head which distinguish woman from man, and which must have recognition in considering the probable effect of her participation in the government.
[…]
Of the three views taken by suffragists as to woman’s relation to man, — that of the enthusiasts that she is his superior, that of the unwomanly that she is the same, and that of the reasonable that she is his complement, — the first keeps itself unfortunately prominent in this country, at present; but the last is held by a slowly increasing number, and it is only fair to judge a cause by the best that can be said for it. […] Those women who imagine that their highest sphere of usefulness is in the school-room and at the polls need to learn that, in promoting the progress of the human race, education cannot take the place of heredity, nor the ballot do the work of the home. It is safe to say that when a majority of the mothers in our land wish for the ballot they will obtain it. The danger just now is of the opposite sort. The wrong of withholding the privilege of voting from the few who ask it is a slight matter in comparison with the injustice of imposing the duty on the many who neither seek nor wish it. For this reason, those men who distrust the desirableness of woman suffrage beg leave to plead “not guilty” to the charge of brutality and tyranny. Temporary questions may be decided by man, but the future is in the power of woman. In honor to her, it can never be admitted that her present place in the world is less important or less worthy than his. In accordance with this view, if woman receives the ballot, it will not be given to establish her equality, not to satisfy the importunity of any special class, not to carry any particular legislation, but, in her evident desire to accept the additional duty, it will be given in the belief that society as a whole will be the gainer for woman’s active participation in its government. [Emphasis added.]
Men and Women at the Voting Poll, 1920, Library of Congress
Thirty years (one generation) past this Atlantic article—after the initiation of the income tax,[4] the popular election of Senators,[5] the “War to End All Wars,”[6] and the prohibition of the sale and distribution of alcohol[7]—the states finally ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing American women the right to vote.
A lot happened during those thirty years. Western states were adopting voting rights for women state by state. Elsewhere suffragists were becoming more activist, with picketing, protests, and “campaigns against opposing senators and representatives, many of whom ended up losing their seats in states where women already had the vote.”[8] A suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., in 1913 on the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration turned violent. Alice Paul, was notoriously jailed (along with hundreds of other women) for various protests. Public sympathies eventually turned toward the women.
President Wilson reversed his stance on suffrage in 1918 and publicly urged Congress to pass the amendment […] “Shall we admit them only to a partnership of sacrifice and suffering and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?” he asked senators, who went on to defeat the amendment again by two votes a month before the Armistice.[9]
After another cliff-hanging defeat early in 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment finally passed the House and Senate in June. The ratification process was no less grueling. States were passionately divided over the issue, as were many women. Many anecdotes from the time make for high drama. Political machinations of every description almost jettisoned the Amendment again. But “the official paperwork arrived in Washington, D.C., for certification on August 26, 1920, a date now commemorated as Women’s Equality Day.”[10]
This year we commemorate the hundredth anniversary of this significant landmark. Important characters in this story lived and died for hundreds of years leading up to 1920. They are truly too numerous to mention. One lesson that we can learn from those who came before us is that of the sacred duty of the ballot. It is our national scandal and impoverishment that so many who are eligible to vote do not. Perhaps we can now sympathize with our forefathers and our foremothers in their centuries-long working out of the principles of the voting franchise.
ERA Flier ca. 1976, Library of Congress
The debate over women’s participation in all jurisdictions of human life continues—witness the renewed interest in resurrecting the failed Equal Rights Amendment. It helps us to consider such important ideas through the lens of the ages to better appreciate the ramifications for the future.
“Full citizenship” means full duties. Full duties logically mean Selective Service registration and the military draft for all young American women, followed by active military service during the next international emergency or war. Those who have struggled over the stations of men and women through the ages deserve our attention and respect, even as we remember this 100th Anniversary.
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[1] The Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988 was “a landmark piece of legislation that—among other things—put an end to state laws that required women to have male relatives sign business loans.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/25-years-since-women-need_b_4164299.
[2] https://www.directlendingsolutions.com/women_and_credit.htm.
[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1890/03/woman-suffrage-pro-and-con/523629/.
[4] U.S. Const. amend. XVI.
[5] U.S. Const. amend. XVII.
[6] https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/war-to-end-all-wars?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1.
[7] U.S. Const. amend. XVIII.
[8] Emily McMackin Dye, “A Century of Suffrage,” American Spirit Magazine, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, Washington, D.C.
[9] Emily McMackin Dye, “A Century of Suffrage,” American Spirit Magazine, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, Washington, D.C.
[10] Emily McMackin Dye, “A Century of Suffrage,” American Spirit Magazine, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, Washington, D.C.