Volume 17 , Issue 28

(1894) Equal Suffragists Busy

Monday, 1 October 1894, The Sun, page five headlines read: "Equal Suffragists Busy." The Women, though baffled oft, kept up freedom's battle. They were going to bombard the legislature next with petitions bearing names additional to 600,000 sent to the convention.

Found on Newspapers.com

The women suffragists of this city regarded their defeat in the Constitutional Convention as their Bunker Hill, not their Waterloo. They were concentrating their forces for another long and vigorous campaign. On the evening of Thursday, Oct. 4, the New York City Woman Suffrage League will make a beginning by holding a meeting at the home of Mrs. Lovell, at 4 Lexington Avenue. Lillie Devereux Blake, Harriet A. Keyser, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Hannah Allen, Emille S. Van Beil, and other bright lights will shine. Messrs, Lauterbach, Frank, Gilbert, Vedder, and McDonough, the members of the Constitutional Convention who stood for political equality, would be eulogized, and the ladies would have some strong things to say about the members of the Convention who spoke against the movement.

Every day finds Miss Harriet A. Keyser, the indefatigable "organizer" of the league, at the suffrage headquarters, East Fourteenth street. Saturday afternoon Miss Keyser was busy planning for the circulation of new petitions, which this time would be read to the legislature.

"I am following the advice of Jean Brooks Greenleaf, the Chairman of the State committee on Suffrage, in taking up the petition work." said Miss Keyser. "To this new petition to the Legislature no signatures will be solicited that were affixed to the petition sent to the Convention. We will seek only new names to add to the 600,000 already obtained. All the new petitions will be sent to the State headquarters at 17 Madison street, Rochester."

Miss Keyser was asked, "How will you carry on the petition work?"

"The committee which formerly existed in the Assembly districts will be reorganized into Political Equality Clubs. The clubs will meet in private houses until there is money enough for a permanent headquarters in each district. These organizations will be secret to a very large extent. We will flaunt no flags, but exert all the influence we can 'on the quiet,' as might say. We will talk over the local candidates and see which one of the two parties comes nearer being suffragists, and work for the election of the candidate who befriends us."

"Do the suffragists lean toward the Democrats or the Republicans at present?"

"The suffragist belongs to no party. She gets the most she can out of both. The woman suffragist looks to the Democrat more than to the Republican, however, for Republicanism killed political equality in the convention, I believe. Last election the Democrats inserted a suffrage plank in their platform, but this year the Democratic platform contains no equality plank. Still the women suffragists, I believe, feel inclined toward the Democrats."

"How do women suffragists as reformers feel toward Dr. Pankhurst and his movement?"

"I expect there are some individuals in the league who believe that the women of the city should aid in his movement for moral reform, but as a body women suffragists do not believe in Dr. Pankhurst. To me Dr. Pankhurst does not appear consistent. During our spring campaign Dr. Parkhurst came out strongly against woman suffrage. He said the place for the woman is her home, and the should exert her influence for good in the home circle. Now he comes out and asks women to lend him their influence in his fight for moral reform. Dr. Pankhurst has said that women should not have political influence, yet he wants women now to help him influence the present status of political affairs in this city. If Dr. Pankhurst were consistent I could understand him; but he is not consistent, and that is why he need not look for much help from the league of woman suffragists in this city.

The Society for Political Study would enter upon its third year with a meeting at the new headquarters, 144 Madison Avenue, on the evening of Tuesday, October 16. The object of the society was to furnish its members, which were all women, with information on prevailing political and social questions. The Society for Political Study had been called the "public school for women suffragists." The members were most of them members of the New York City Woman Suffrage League.
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