“The Right of Suffrage Has Been Thrust on Me”: The Reluctant Suffragists of the American West

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-622
Author(s):  
Sunu Kodumthara
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
American West ◽  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
American Family ◽  
The West ◽  
Pivotal Moments ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Right

AbstractFrom nearly the moment the woman's suffrage movement began at Seneca Falls in 1848, anti-suffragists actively campaigned against it, claiming that woman suffrage would only destroy both American politics and the American family. However, despite their best efforts, states in the American West passed equal suffrage laws. Interestingly, once it passed in their states, anti-suffragists in the American West—albeit begrudgingly—exercised their right to vote. As equal suffrage continued to expand, the Western anti-suffragist strategy became the strategy of anti-suffragists everywhere. This essay examines three states that represent pivotal moments in the development of the anti-suffrage movement: Colorado, California, and Oklahoma. Shortly after Colorado passed equal suffrage in 1893 and California passed equal suffrage in 1911, anti-suffragists organized state and national associations. By the time Oklahoma passed its equal suffrage law in 1918, anti-suffragists were not only voting—they were also willing to run for office. Anti-suffragist strategy and rhetoric relied on how suffrage worked in the West, or at least anti-suffrage perceptions of it. In other words, women's suffrage in the West served as a catalyst for the anti-suffragist movement.

Following the Money

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Marie Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
College Degree ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Economic Independence ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Way ◽  
Wealthy Women

Chapter 1 examines how suffragists recruited wealthy women to the woman suffrage movement, who these donors were, and why they decided to give their money—and sometimes their time—to fight for political equality. This chapter argues that focusing on their feminism highlights a strand of suffragism that called for gender equality rather than emphasized maternalism, the belief that women as mothers (or potential mothers) had the right and the duty to vote in order to protect children and clean up government. Having experienced both the power of money and its limitations influenced the way women linked economic independence and political equality, which they believed were necessary whether one earned wages in a factory, was a professional with a college degree, or inherited a large fortune. Susan B. Anthony had understood that their donations were necessary, and Alva Belmont and Katharine McCormick gave donations essential to winning the right to vote for women.

Women Vote in the West: The Woman Suffrage Movement, 1869-1896

1987 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 1045
Author(s):  
Sandra L. Myres ◽  
Beverly Beeton
Keyword(s):  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
The West ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
Woman Suffrage Movement

scholarly journals 100 Years after Suffrage: Just How Far Have Women Come?

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Laura Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Women Of Color ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Women In Politics ◽  
Great Success ◽  
Public Office ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Right ◽  
Jim Crow South

Women earned the right to vote 100 years ago with the ratification of the 19th Amendment, effectively ending the suffrage movement that had transpired over generations. Their hard-won victory doubled the American electorate and provided women with an essential right of citizenship of which they had long been deprived. Not all women were welcomed at the polling place, though, and the exclusion of women of color, particularly in the Jim Crow South, revealed yet another barrier to eventually be struck down. In the 100 years since women earned their right to vote, they have begun “outvoting” their male counterparts and emerged as candidates for office in every branch and at every level of government. Despite great success, women are still underrepresented in public office, however. This article examines the role of women in politics from the decades prior to suffrage to the months leading up to the 2020 election and reminds us that although women have made tremendous strides, there is still a long way to go.

scholarly journals Manuel L. Quezon and the Filipino women’s suffrage movement of 1937

Plaridel ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Alporha
Keyword(s):  
Print Media ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
The Real ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
Patronage Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Right ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

Manuel L. Quezon is often credited by historians like Encarnacion Alzona (1937) as a staunch advocate of women’s right to vote. Indeed, the history of the struggle for women’s suffrage often highlights the role that Quezon played in terms of supporting the 1937 plebiscite as the president of the Philippine Commonwealth. Various print media of the period like dailies and magazines depicted him, and consequently, the success of the women’s suffrage movement, in the same light (e.g., Philippine Graphic, Manila Bulletin). However, closer scrutiny of Quezon’s speeches, letters, and biography in relation to other pertinent primary sources would reveal that Quezon was, at best, ambivalent, on the cause of the suffragists. His appreciation of the women’s suffrage’s merits was tied and anchored on certain political gains that he could acquire from it. In contrast to the appreciation of his contemporaries like Rafael Palma, Quezon’s appreciation of the women’s right to vote was based on patronage politics and not on the view that the right to suffrage is a right of women and not a privilege. His support for the cause was aimed at putting himself at the forefront of this landmark legislation and thus the real champions of the cause—the women—at the sidelines

scholarly journals Rainwater Harvesting in Colorado and the Quandary of a Taking

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 165-192
Author(s):  
Stephen N. Bretsen
Keyword(s):  
American West ◽  
Rainwater Harvesting ◽  
Water Rights ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Water Law ◽  
The West ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Rural Farmers ◽  
State Statutes ◽  
The Right

Although rainwater harvesting would appear to be a win-win solution to the problem of developing new sources of water, implementing rainwater harvesting in the American West has been fraught with tensions that have pitted rural farmers and other agricultural interests against urban and suburban homeowners. The water law of the western states is based on the prior appropriation doctrine, which creates a “first in time, first in right” system of water rights tied to when a user diverts surface water for beneficial use. Since water rights are property rights, state statutes and regulations that “go too far” in affecting them risk giving senior appropriators a takings claim. Based on the nature of rainwater harvesting and judicial interpretations of federal and state constitutional takings clauses, the most likely claims by downstream agricultural irrigators in the West are that state statutes authorizing rainwater harvesting are per se physical takings. Such takings require compensation, even though they do not result in the total loss of the right to use water or have a minimal economic impact on a senior appropriator. To avoid a taking, state legislatures need to draft these statutes in ways that take advantage of how existing state laws implement the prior appropriation doctrine. Colorado’s most recent rainwater harvesting statute leverages how the no-injury requirement placed on junior appropriators ultimately limits the scope of the senior appropriators’ water rights and avoids a taking.

The Organization by Nations at Constance

1932 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 191-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise R. Loomis
Keyword(s):  
Cost Of Living ◽  
The West ◽  
Church Administration ◽  
Robber Barons ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Considerable Period

The Council of Constance, like any other serious event involving many people and lasting over a considerable period of time, can be studied from many points of view. It started out as a gathering for purely ecclesiastical purposes. But some twenty or thirty thousand persons from every class of society, except, perhaps, the lowest, cannot come and remain together for almost four years to discuss one set of difficult and complicated questions without, intentionally or unintentionally, raising many other questions, social, religious, philosophic, economic and political, and forming for the moment, as it were, a microcosm of the forces of the age. Most of the issues that agitated Europe five hundred years ago cropped up sooner or later at Constance, the cost of living, the obnoxiousness of robber barons and private warfare, the right and wrong of tyrannicide, the conflict between Germans and Poles in the East and between English and French in the West, to say nothing of the special issues with which the Council was expected to deal, the claims of three popes to be the only true successors of St. Peter, the perilous teachings of Wiclef and Hus and the worldliness and corruption of church administration.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier ◽  
Karen Pastorello
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
Jefferson County ◽  
York State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Turmoil

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the woman suffrage movement in New York. Across the seven decades between 1846, when a few Jefferson County women publicly claimed the right to vote, and the passage of the New York State referendum in 1917, thousands of women—and some resolute men—engaged in the irrepressible fight for woman suffrage. The movement crossed class, race, ethnic, gender, and religious boundaries during periods of great upheaval in the United States. At the same time, the movement itself caused social and political turmoil. Three generations of New York State women fought a complicated, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately rewarding battle to obtain the right to vote. In the process, women opened for themselves new opportunities in the social and political spheres.

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