Memory Monday: The Men Who Fought for Women's Votes, and Fourth Week in March 1918
by meep
While reading through 1918 issues of the Brewster Standard, I’ve started seeing pieces in the local papers on women’s suffrage, as the 19th amendment (saying that voting couldn’t be restricted by sex) was adopted in 1920, and it was originally started its process in 1918.
Here’s something interesting:
The little-known story of the men who fought for women’s votes
The “Suffragents” took the backseat, and showed what support looks like
On May 6, 1911, under perfect blue skies, 10,000 spectators lined both sides of Fifth Avenue “from the curb to the building line” for the second annual New York Suffrage Day parade. Somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 marchers strode in a stream of purple, green, and white, from 57th Street to a giant rally in Union Square. Bicolored banners demarcated the groups by their worldly work, as architects, typists, aviators, explorers, nurses, physicians, actresses, shirtwaist makers, cooks, painters, writers, chauffeurs, sculptors, journalists, editors, milliners, hairdressers, office holders, librarians, decorators, teachers, farmers, artists’ models, “even pilots with steamboats painted on their banners.” Women’s work was the point.
To draw broad attention for this spectacle, the women had help from a single troupe of men in their midst — 89 in all, by most accounts — dressed not in the Scottish kilts of the bagpipers or the smartly pressed uniforms of the bands, but in suits, ties, fedoras, and the odd top hat. They marched four abreast in the footsteps of the women, under a banner of their own.
These men were not random supporters but representatives of a momentous, yet subtly managed, development in the suffrage movement’s seventh decade. Eighteen months earlier, 150 men of means or influence or both had joined together under their own charter to become what their banner proclaimed them, the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage. Since the end of 1909, they had been speaking, writing, editing or publishing, planning, and lobbying New York’s governor and legislators on behalf of the suffrage cause.
They did so until the vote was won.
Obviously, it required men’s votes to gain votes for women. There were women and men on both sides of the women’s suffrage movement. As I noted last week, I’m expecting to see more items in the paper regarding the U.S. Constitutional amendments for women’s suffrage and Prohibition, as there were active campaigns for both during this period in 1918.
So let’s see what was going on in 1918, fourth week of March — the 22 March 1918 edition of The Brewster Standard (Brewster, New York).
WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE
I’m going to lead with the Women’s Suffrage movement (the above wasn’t random.)
Women gained suffrage in New York in 1917, before the U.S. Constitutional Amendment was ratified. So there were stories like this:
1918 was not a Presidential Election year, but there were many other races to be decided — Congressional, obviously, as well as many local races.
I have no clue what to make of the following:
There was actually more past that bit, and it simply confused me further.
Finally, did the women vote?
Perhaps that sheds light on the earlier item, but you can see in this one a dig at those who thought women wouldn’t value voting, and thus would not show up.
This relates to voting – more specifically, soldiers voting – some kind of accusations of fraudulent ballots:
Again, I have no clue. There’s all sorts of items in the paper where I realize I’m missing some very important context.
DEATH FROM ABOVE
I did not realize that there had been some bombardment of England by the Germans in World War I (of course, the Blitz in WWII is well-known). It was mainly Zeppelins early on, and switched over to planes later on.
There was a notice of one person who was killed in such raids:
Here’s some info on the song Mrs. Ford wrote, and a bit on Ford’s death:
Ford and her thirty-year-old son Walter were the first United States citizens to become fatalities of a German air raid on London, their home being hit by one of eighteen bombs that fell on the city on the night of 7/8 March 1918.1 [2]Mrs. Brown, Ford’s mother, was only hurt in the bombing. Their remains were returned to and interred in the United States.
And here’s a performance in England from 2012:
…and because of the YouTube comments, I learned that this song is what’s at the end of extended video for Metallica’s ONE.
That’s it for this week!
