New York Battles for Equal Suffrage 95 Years Ago

Part 2

2012 marks the 95th anniversary of New York women winning the right to vote on November 6, 1917. Here is the second part of a brief summary of what New York suffragists actually did to win in 1917, adapted from the text of “Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement” by Robert P. J. Cooney, Jr.

“A Million New York Women Want the Vote”

An enormously ambitious house-to-house canvass was the main feature of the 1917 campaign in New York. The tactic was diplomatically chosen, Mary Peck noted, because “it demanded service from every worker, did not offend sensitive patriots as more spectacular efforts would have done, and reached into individual homes as meetings never could.”
To answer charges by opponents that most women did not want to vote, suffragists spent more than a year going door-to-door in nearly every city and town in the state, collecting the signatures of over one million women who said that they wanted to vote.
Organizers climbed thousands of tenement stairs, walked country lanes, and visited the homes of the rich and poor. The result was the largest individually-signed petition ever assembled, eventually totaling 1,030,000 names, a majority of the women in the state. For comparison, there were 1,942,000 registered male voters. Suffragists then publicized their remarkable feat as widely as possible.

New York suffragists climaxed their wartime campaign by taking to the streets on October 27, 1917, carrying placards listing the names of over 1,000,000 state women who said they wanted to vote.  It was a compelling refutation of opponents’ claim that “most women didn’t want to vote.”  Male voters in New York approved woman suffrage on November 6, 1917 by 54% – over 100,000 votes.  New York’s political weight helped carry the 19th Amendment through Congress to ratification on August 26, 1920. 

A Patriotic “Woman’s Parade”

On October 27, in a powerful show of pre-election strength, a Woman’s Parade of 20,000 filled New York’s Fifth Avenue led by officers of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and honored guests carrying American flags.
The parade dramatically reflected the impact of the war and the depth of women’s involvement. Divisions of wives and mothers of servicemen marched along with women doing war related work, industrial workers, professional women, and male supporters. Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Catt led the parade, which included 40 marching bands and took three hours to pass.
The dignity and grandeur of the wartime demonstration made a powerful impression on bystanders. “The men on the sidewalks were visibly moved,” Mary Peck remembered. “It was not half as long as the mammoth parade of 1915; it did not have to be. Women had taken on a value which nothing but war seems to confer on human beings in the eyes of men.”

An emotional Procession of the Petitions served as the centerpiece of the Woman’s Parade. After collecting over a million signatures of women who wanted to vote, Woman Suffrage Party members mounted the petitions on huge pasteboards and carried them up Fifth Avenue, putting the plea of women for democracy directly in front of voters.

Each placard was carried by two women marching eight abreast while banners gave the totals in all the upstate districts. The petitions from New York City were transported in 62 ballot boxes, each one representing an Assembly district and resting on a decorated platform carried by four women. The petition section alone covered more than half a mile and involved over 2,500 women.

City Voters Put New York Over the Top

Huge street banners were hung in all the large cities before the November election. Suffragists held an estimated 11,000 meetings across the state and distributed some eighteen million leaflets, posters, buttons, and novelties. A burst of newspaper advertising climaxed the final weeks with suffrage arguments appearing almost daily in over 700 morning and evening papers, including many in foreign languages.

On November 6, 1917, with over 6,300 women serving as poll watchers, New York voters passed woman suffrage by a 102,353 majority, 703,129 to 600,776. Outside of New York City, the measure lost by 1,510 votes but city voters more than made up the difference. Suffragists were overjoyed and felt confident that winning New York would open the way to certain victory in the U.S. Congress.

Suffragists’ “Big Victory” in New York shared front page headlines on November 7 with other election and war news. One factor contributing to the victory was the decision shortly before the election to keep “hands off” the measure by Tammany Hall politicians, many of whose wives and daughters had become active in the Woman Suffrage Party.

In addition, New York suffrage leaders spent more campaign funds in 1917 than ever before. While in 1915 they had less than $90,000 for the entire state, two years later they raised almost $700,000. “This, at a time when the country was at war, was an achievement which can scarcely be measured. To it suffragists everywhere contributed,” noted Gertrude Brown.

During the campaign, Woman Suffrage Party head Vera Whitehouse and treasurer Helen Rogers Reid decided to raise money the way political parties did – from wealthy men. They succeeded in convincing ten men, including Men’s League stalwarts James Lees Laidlaw and Samuel Untermeyer, to give $10,000 each, and won pledges for lesser sums from many others. In addition, the first payment from the endowment left by publisher Miriam Leslie came in February 1917, adding $50,000 to the campaign fund.

The Political Landscape Transformed

Suffragists across the country were ecstatic that metropolitan, influential New York, with its 43 electoral votes and 43 representatives in Congress, had actually been won. National enfranchisement was finally in sight because of the tremendous energy and resources devoted to the New York campaign.

The number of full suffrage states had not actually changed since 1914, but with presidential suffrage the total electoral votes women had a say in had increased from 91 to 172. New York added another 43. Seven states had passed presidential suffrage during the year, adding to the new sense of momentum.

The night after the election, a Victory meeting in the Cooper Union was “jammed to suffocation with an ecstatic multitude,” according to Mary Peck. When Carrie Catt opened with the words “Fellow Citizens,” the crowd went wild and it was some time before she could continue. Then she urged the state organization to turn without pause to supporting the Federal amendment.

Following the meeting, a New York Times editorial blasted women for “bulldozing Congress to pass the Federal Amendment at once.” An unrelenting opponent, the Times criticized suffragists for going to Washington to lobby for their rights because it “interfered with the vital work of the nation.” Failing to distinguish the moderate Woman Suffrage Party from the National Woman’s Party, the paper further claimed that “it is but a more dangerous form of picketing which these sorely misguided women are about to undertake. . . . Power brings to them no sense of responsibility. They win this state only to browbeat Congress and to seek to impose suffrage on unwilling states.”

Regardless, suffrage lobbyist Maud Wood Park immediately noted a different feeling in Washington D.C. “The carrying of New York was accepted by the politically wise as the handwriting on the wall,” she observed. Politicians as well as suffragists realized that a major turning point had been reached. The enfranchisement of women had become a national issue which even the war could not entirely overshadow.

In two short years, suffragists had helped secure dramatic changes in the political landscape. With new power and renewed hope, NAWSA focused its attention on Congress to finally take up the Federal amendment.

Using similar political skills at the national level, suffragists leveraged their state victories into passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution on August 26, 1920.

© 2012 Robert P. J. Cooney, Jr.

Adapted from Chapter 15 of “Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement,” by Robert P. J. Cooney, Jr. (American Graphic Press: 2005). This excellent, profusely illustrated history was named one of the “Five Best Books” on the subject by The Wall Street Journal. Order from the National Women’s History Project, www.nwhp.org. The author can be reached at agp@ebold.com.