Suffrage victory

Produced by Virginia Maynard and Charles Levy.

On the battle for women's suffrage.

From Pop Up Archive »Pacifica Radio Archives - see https://www.popuparchive.com/collections/925/items/6793 for audio + an automatically generated transcript

♪I've been down to Madison
To see the folks and sights;♪

♪You'd laugh, I'm sure, to hear them talk
About the women's rights.♪

♪Now it's just as plain as my old hat,
That's plain as plain can be♪

♪That if the women want the vote,
They'll get no help from me.♪

♪Not from Joe, not from Joe;
If he knows it...♪

Looking back today,
it's somewhat difficult to understand

the violence of the opposition
to woman's suffrage.

Conservative opinion in the country was
of course almost universally opposed

to the idea of women voting.

The Church was divided in its position.

While some denominations
and individual clergymen

were among the most zealous
advocates of the movement,

others took the stance that women's
political emancipation would be

the beginning of the end
of the social morality

which constituted
the moral strength of the nation.

The enfranchisement of women,
it was feared

would result in the dissolution
of the home and family

and the destruction
of the institution of marriage.

The most pessimistic of the prophets
predicted that the very act of

women's going to the polls and mingling
with the rough crowds on election day

would plunge the country into moral chaos.

Professional politicians and certain
powerful big business interests

were just as violently opposed
to vote for women,

if for very different reasons.

Political leaders felt that they knew
how to manipulate men for party purposes

but manipulating women
was an unknown quantity

which they wished to avoid
as long as possible.

The organized liquor industries,
with their fear of women's influence

on the prohibition issue, spent
countless thousands of dollars

lobbying against women's suffrage, which
they felt threatened their very existence.

Add to these elements the fact that
most men of the country

were understandably reluctant to forego

their traditional position
of sex superiority,

which was in a sense symbolized
by their power to vote

and the fact that many women were quite
as unwilling to give up

the protected position in which men's
chivalry had placed them

and perhaps we can understand why
the battle for woman's suffrage

was inevitably a long and stormy one.

After the disheartening failure to obtain
the franchise by federal amendment

at the close of the Civil War, when the
Negro was admitted to the vote,

the suffragists changed their tactics and
began to concentrate their main strength

on a policy of winning the suffrage
state by state.

By the turn of the 20th century the
National Woman Suffrage Association

was a powerful organization with
headquarters in New York

and an efficiently functioning machine in
almost every state of the Union.

Four states in the far West had already
granted women full suffrage as a result of

the Association's work and by 1914 almost
all the states west of the Mississippi had

joined the ranks of the suffrage states
and the Association was turning its forces

to the conquest of the traditionally more
conservative East.

Sinclair Lewis in the novel 'Ann Vickers',
published in 1932, has left an amusing

account of one of these state suffrage
campaigns during this period.

In the following incident from this work
one Dr Melvina Wormser of New York,

purportedly Chief Surgeon of the Manhattan
Hospital for Women,

President of the Better Obstetrical League,
author of 'Emancipation in Sex',

Doctor of Science of Yale and Vassar and
an officer in all known birth control
organizations,

is interviewed by the press in advance of
her scheduled speech at a suffrage rally

in a city called Clateburn, Ohio.

The professional suffragist, says Lewis,
had been cautioned about talking to the

press since the reporters, or at least
their editors, were always on the alert

for something scandalous from suffrage
headquarters, some hint that it was a

free love colony or (what was nearly as
good, says Lewis) a frenzied zoo of

manhaters, anarchists, atheists,
spiritualists or anything else

eccentric or discreditable.

The workers for the cause might attack the
water or gas departments,

the city orphanages, President Wilson or
even the Allies in the Great War,

but they must do so only as Christian
gentlewomen and solid taxpayers.

They must convince others that the vote
will not lead to moral laxity

but would immediately end prostitution,
gambling and the drinking of beer.

But Dr Melvina Wormser of New York,
as guest speaker,

was outside headquarters discipline and a
law unto herself.

Here the young suffrage workers in
'Ann Vickers' stand by in shocked silence

as Dr Wormser delivers her opinions
to the delighted reporters:

[Dr Wormser, do you believe in free love?]

Do I believe in free love? What do you
mean by that, young lady?

How can love be anything but free? If
you mean, do I believe that any authentic

passion, not just a momentary itch in the
moonlight, is superior to any ceremony

performed by some preacher, why of course,
don't you?

[What do you think about birth control?]

[Do you think women are brighter
than men?]

[Do you think there's any field women
should not enter?]

Oh, one at a time please! Let's see: do I
believe that women are brighter than men?

Tut tut, what a question! Not brighter --
just less mean. But don't try to get me to

riding men. I'm a folorn old maid, but I
adore 'em, the darlings.

What do you suppose men doctors would ever
do without their women nurses

and secretaries? I know! I was a nurse
myself, before I became a doc.

And now my chief satisfaction in life is
that I don't have to stand up when a

surgeon enters the room!

Silly customs like that -- just what a man
WOULD institute -- poor lambs, we have

to take care of 'em and their little egos!
That's why we need the vote, for THEIR
sake!

[Do you think there will ever be a woman
President?]

How do I know, young man? But let me point
out that women rulers -- Queen Elizabeth,

that lovely rakehell Catherine of Russia,
the last Chinese Empress,

Maria Theresa of Austria, Queen Anne, and
Victoria -- were better rulers than any

equal number of kings OR Presidents!

[How soon do you predict women's suffrage
will be the law of the land?]

You boys and girls might as well know that
I don't believe in hedging and pussyfooting.

This is going to be a long struggle. Not
just getting the vote.

That's a matter of a couple of years.
Then we've got to go on.

Birth control. Separate apartments for
married couples, if they happen to like them.

What women need is not merely the vote but
something more up here, in the head.

Don't need just exterior opportunity but
something interior, with which to grab the

opportunity when we get it, and use it.

Freedom's no good to a pussycat, only to a
tigress!

And women have got to stick together. Men
always have had the sense to -- drat 'em --

Sex loyalty. We ought to lie for one
another and sneak off and have a good drink

together, like the men.

[Do you want to rival men?]

[Do you think there's any field that should
be closed to women?]

I believe that there is no field that men
control now that women can't enter,

completely. Medicine, law, politics,
physics, aviation, exploring, engineering,

soldiering, prize-fighting, writing sweet
little rondels -- only I hope women'll be

too sensible for either the prize-fighting
or the rondels, which are both forms of

male escapism, and singularly alike if you
look at 'em!

Only I don't expect women to imitate or
try to displace men in any of these fields.

I'm not one of the gels who believes that
the sole difference between males and

females is in conception. Women have
special qualities which the human race has

failed to use for civilization.
I know a woman can be as good an architect

as any man -- but she may be a different
sort of architect. I bring something to

medicine that no man can, no matter how
good he is.

[Well, how about the army?]

Well, if you think women can't go to war,
remember what the Teuton tribes, marching

with their women along, did to the
beautiful, virile, professional men

soldiers of Rome! But the pig-headed
masculine world forgot that lesson for

fifteen hundred years and never discovered
it till Florence Nightingale happened in

and bullied the masculine British War
Office into some of the common sense that

any normal girl would have at seven!

[Do you want to rival men?]

No, I don't want to rival men. But I don't
want to be kept by the tradition of

feminine subjection from the privilege of
working eighteen hours a day.

I'm not much of a democrat. Believe
inferiors ought to be subjected,

if they ARE inferiors! But if a girl
secretary is smarter than her male boss,

let HIM be HER secretary.

Listen! In 1945, maybe you'll have to go
to England -- that's where they invented

this Inferior Women myth, so men could
have their clubs -- maybe you'll have to

go to England to find anybody so benighted
that he'll even know what you're talking

about when you speak of considering
candidates for a job as male and female,

or on any other basis except
their ability!

[Why 1945, Dr Wormser?]

I speak of 1945 because I have a hunch
that after we get the vote we'll be less

ardent feminists. We'll find that work is
hard. That jobs are insecure. That we must

go much deeper than woman suffrage --
maybe to Socialism; anyway, to something

that fundamentally represents both men and
women, not just women alone.

And a lot of suffragists that pretend to
hate men will find the dear brutes are

nice to have around the house. We'll slump.
But then we'll come back -- not as shadows

of men, or as noisy professional females,
but, for the first time since

Queen Elizabeth, as human beings! There!
You ought to be able to get sufficient out

of what I've said to make trouble enough
for me to satisfy even a suffrage speaker!

Good-day.

[Oh, thank you, Dr Wormser!]
[Goodbye, Doctor, and thank you!]