Rosalie Jones (far left in hat) and other activists participated in suffrage hikes that helped garner press coverage for the cause.

Transcription

1 12 Rosalie s Army Rosalie Jones (far left in hat) and other activists participated in suffrage hikes that helped garner press coverage for the cause. NEW YORK archives FALL 2017

2 13 Y Hudson The press and a wealthy young woman helped sell the idea of woman suffrage in New York State. BY VICKI WEISS LIBRARY OF CONGRESS At the dawn of the 20th century, Harriot Stanton Blatch, the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, declared the movement for woman suffrage was completely in a rut in New York State. Advancing the cause would require new methods and tactics, as the current methods bored its adherents and repelled its opponents. By comparison, the woman suffrage movement in Great Britain looked like a fire raging out of control. American newspapers routinely reported on the activism of British suffragettes, somewhat mesmerized and maybe even fearful their militant methods would cross the Atlantic. Rosalie Gardiner Jones was among a cohort of New York City suffragists who worked to revive the movement with new methods of attack. They included: Maud Malone, who held the first open-air meeting in December 1907 and organized the first suffrage parade in February 1908; Carrie Chapman Catt, who created the Woman Suffrage Party in 1909; and Sarah (Mrs. Gus) Ruhlin, who organized a prizefight in 1911 to raise money for the cause.

3 14 NEW YORK STATE LIBRARY By 1912, several New York City newspapers were avidly covering woman suffrage. Editorial cartoons were an effective medium for ridiculing or supporting the movement. Suffrage Agitator The first mention of Rosalie as a woman suffrage activist appeared in the November 10, 1911, issue of the Huntington Long Islander. In a four-sentence item, the newspaper reported: Miss Rosalie G. Jones is very much interested in the cause and has been agitating recently among the ladies of the community. At a meeting to organize a woman suffrage society, attended by nearly fifty women, Rosalie was elected president of the Huntington vicinity woman suffrage movement. (The fact that Rosalie s mother was opposed to suffrage may or may not have influenced Rosalie s stance on the issue.) The Cause In May 1912, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that Rosalie and Elizabeth Freeman would visit villages and towns in Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island over the next couple of weeks, trying to convert Long Islanders to the cause by selling tea, cake, postcards, and suffrage buttons and literature to raise money for campaign expenses in Ohio, where a vote on woman suffrage was scheduled for September 3. Rosalie and Elizabeth set off in a horsedrawn cart that resembled a milk-delivery wagon. The cart was painted a vivid yellow and was covered with signs painted in black letters: A woman has as much right to vote as to pay taxes. The ballot helps working men, why not working women? A woman leaves her home to go to market, why not to vote? It takes less time. The women carried a table with detachable legs. When they want[ed] to make NEW YORK archives FALL 2017

4 NEW YORK STATE LIBRARY 15 a speech, they screw[ed] on the legs and use[d] it for a platform, taking it to pieces and putting it back in the wagon when they [were] ready to move on. Pleased with their efforts on the island, Rosalie shipped the cart to Ohio and she and Elizabeth spent July and August campaigning for the franchise there. By 1912, several New York City newspapers recognized that stories about woman suffrage sold newspapers. Headlines with inflammatory words caught people s eyes. Editorial cartoons were worth a thousand words whether they ridiculed or supported the movement. When American women began emulating the radical tactics of British suffragettes, newspapers began covering the activities of local suffrage groups more diligently, hoping that an open-air meeting might lead to window-smashing, that the presence of women at a political meeting might involve heckling anything that might provide good copy. Suffrage News Several New York City daily newspapers also published stories meant to appeal to the suffragists. In February 1912, the New York Evening Post boasted that it published Suffrage News on Fridays, Club News on Wednesdays, and Household Economics and Fashion Drawings on Saturdays. From September through November 1912, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published a series of suffrage Mother Goose rhymes. The New York Herald held a woman suffrage letter contest, offering $100 each for the best letter advocating for and the best letter opposing woman suffrage. Rosalie Gardiner Jones recognized the power of newspapers to advance the cause, and so, early in December 1912, she called a press conference to announce a pilgrimage for woman suffrage. Joining Rosalie would be fifty-two-year-old Ida Augusta Craft who had been a suffragist since she first heard Susan B. Anthony speak at the Chicago World s Fair in 1893; Lavinia Lloyd Dock, fifty-four, a nurse and charter member of the Henry House Settlement in New York City; and about three dozen New York City suffragists. Ida summed up the reason for the march: House-to-house canvass. It s the only way to get in touch with the women outside New York [City] to educate the up-state people. Walk to Albany Jones developed the itinerary for the 140-mile walk from New York City to Albany. The participants would stay at a series of inns and attend two balls. She also secured the services of Alphonse Major, founder of the Major [Rubber] Cement Company and a member of the Bedford Political Equality League of Brooklyn, who offered to travel along in his automobile and carry the reserve supply of suffrage literature and the trampers suitcases. Their objective was to deliver a petition to Governorelect William Sulzer. The petition called on Sulzer to endorse woman suffrage in his inaugural address to the New York State Legislature on January 1, The text was inscribed on a 12-inchby-10-inch piece of paper that had been carefully removed from a hand-bound book of similar pages. Around the edge was a border design of tiny forget-me-nots on a gold background and, at the bottom, a peacock flaunted its train. Fitted into the left side of the design was the letter G, which was used for the word Governor in the petition, which read: The Suffrage Hosts of the Empire State send greetings and The petition text was inscribed on a 12 x 10 piece of paper and handsomely illustrated. The petition called on Sulzer to endorse woman suffrage in his inaugural address to the New York State Legislature on January 1,

5 16 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Just four days after the pilgrimage ended, a woman suffrage bill was introduced in the New York State Legislature. renewed congratulations to Governor William L. Sulzer and express the earnest hope that his administration may be distinguished by the speedy passage of the Woman Suffrage Amendment. The words were set down in black ink by a not very accomplished calligrapher. It was signed by five women and one man: Harriet May Mills, Nora Blatch de Forest, Katrina Ely Tiffany, James Lees Laidlaw, Mary Garrett Hay, and Helen C. Mansfield. These individuals represented the Co-öperative Committee, an umbrella group of six of the larger suffrage organizations in New York City, which had been formed in September Nothing about the pilgrimage was new or unique. In 1846, six women from Depauville (Jefferson County), New York, had sent a petition on behalf of woman suffrage to the delegates of the New York State constitutional convention. In November 1912, advocates of woman suffrage had completed a 400-mile walk from Edinburg, Scotland, to London, England, to deliver a petition to the British prime minister. What had changed was press interest in the suffrage movement. Walking and Walking On Monday, December 16, 1912, about three dozen women and a dozen reporters started walking toward Albany. In all likelihood, the reporters expected, the trek would be over in a day. The first stories that were published focused on how the number of marchers had dwindled in just a few days. (Most of the women who stepped off on Monday had agreed to march only as far as Yonkers, citing family obligations over the Christmas holiday season.) But Rosalie, Ida, and Lavinia kept walking and walking and walking. They walked through rain and mud and sleet and even a blizzard that some said rivaled the Blizzard of It was the blizzard that made the reporters and everyone across the state sit up and take notice of that motley little crew. Maybe walking to Albany in December was a silly stunt, but it worked. As she sat in the lobby of the Hampton Hotel on State Street in Albany on December 28, 1912, Rosalie saluted the reporters: A spectacular march was necessary to attract attention. I want to thank the press for all that has been done for us. Four days after the pilgrimage ended, the state legislature took the first step that led New York s electorate to extend the franchise to women. On January 1, 1913 the first day of the new legislative session State Senator Robert F. Wagner introduced a woman suffrage bill. According to the New York Sun, Wagner said: While I am opposed to woman NEW YORK archives FALL 2017

6 17 NEW YORK SATTE LIBRARY THE ARCHIVES C O N N E C T I O N It began with a document. But, then, all research begins with a document. The document is sitting there, looking so innocent, raising a few questions in your mind. So you set off to answer those questions and then you discover that, like an onion, it has layers and layers of questions and soon your whole life or at least the piece you can parse away from the other things you re doing is involved with that document! In this case, it began with a petition on woman suffrage addressed to New York State Governor-elect William Sulzer and dated December 12, It was signed by five women and one man. And it was in the New York State Library. Convenient! Curiosity aroused, I started doing a little digging in my favorite resource newspapers and soon learned that those who had signed the document were not the ones who had hiked the 140-plus miles from New York City to the capital, Albany, to deliver it. And that was only the first layer of that onion! One document plus hundreds of newspaper articles equals cool stories (aka history)! And the New York State Library has millions and millions of pages of newspapers on microfilm with thousands and thousands of stories waiting to be revisited. The petition Rosalie and her cohort delivered will be on view at the New York State Museum November 4, 2017, through May 13, 2018, as part of the exhibition, Votes for Women: Celebrating New York s Suffrage Centennial. suffrage, I introduce this and shall support it because our platform favors it. Sadly, the woman suffrage amendment did not pass in It lost by nearly 200,000 votes (748,332 No to 553,348 Yes ). But when the question was posed to the electorate in 1917, it passed by a margin of over 100,000 votes (703,129 men voted Yes and 600,776 voted No. ). After a victory lap around New York State in the summer of 1913, Rosalie moved on, first becoming a spokeswoman for an automobile company and then going to law school. She married, divorced, raised goats, and became far from a perfect neighbor, living in her great and dilapidated, red-roofed house on Cold Spring Harbor-Syosset Road. She died January 12, In 1949, the petition also completed a victory lap around the state as one of the eighty-four precious documents that tell the March of Freedom in New York State. The documents traveled in a specially designed New York Central Railroad train, emblazoned with the New York State seal, visiting communities that Rosalie had visited plus some that she had never gotten to. n