Volume 14 , Issue 11

Lucy Price - Youngest Anti-Suffrage Worker (1915)

In a news article dated April 11, 1915, that appeared in The Pittsburgh Press, Miss Lucy Price was youngest anti-suffrage worker. She was working in Western Pennsylvania under auspices of National Association opposed to Woman suffrage. Miss Price had debated often with Miss Fola LaFollette. LaFollette and Price were also considered best of friends.

It was reported that of all the women speaking for anti-suffrage, Lucy Price was regarded the most effective, yet she was the youngest platform talker on either side of the suffrage controversy and still in her twenties. Miss Price had earned the reputation of being one of the most brilliant women in debate on the American platform. It was impossible to rattle her. Price frequently volunteered to debate in Cooper Union, New York, with Max Eastman, Giovannetti and others. Miss Price is said to have remained smiling, calm under a torrent of heckling. Miss Price debated publicly with Fola LaFollette, daughter of United States Senator LaFollette, of Wisconsin.

Fola LaFollette and Lucy Price were the most intimate friends, but on the platform they were widely apart as the poles. Mrs. Inez Milholland-Boissevain, the suffragist and feminist, recently expressed the hope that Miss Price would be converted to suffrage, because of her winning platform presence and her clearness and force in debate.

Miss Price was a newspaper woman in Cleveland, Ohio, before becoming interested in the anti-suffrage movement. Price was considered a "regular reporter," on the reportorial staff and was not engaged in writing society, fashions or any of the other departments in newspaper work handled by women.

In 1913 when Ohio voted on adopting a new constitution submitted to the voters, containing a clause giving the ballot to women, Miss Price handled the fight against it and did it so effectively that suffrage was defeated in Ohio in a conclusive manner.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---