Woman Suffrage and the Home. Interurban Woman Suffrage Series No. 4
- New York: Interurban Woman Suffrage Council, 1907
New York: Interurban Woman Suffrage Council, 1907. First edition. Good. 104 x 140 mm. [8] pp. Good only, with predation to top margin, not touching text. Dampstaining, toning, and old creases. Still a remarkable survival. This is a rare item: OCLC records only one copy (Bryn Mawr), it has not appeared at auction, and this is the only copy on the market.
This exceedingly scarce pamphlet argues against the common anti-suffrage argument that "politics is a business, which is man's sphere, and that it nowhere touches the home, which is woman's sphere" (p. 5). Catt argues, instead, that politics, particularly taxation, directly affected the life and labor of women both inside and outside of the home: for one, "domestic" purchases like fabric and thread were taxed as much as anything else; and she cites the case of Massachusetts corset-stitchers who "received 75 cents per day and were obliged to furnish their own thread," effectively paying a tax to be employed in the largely female garment industry. Politics and the home, then, were inextricable, and the argument that women should be separated from politics because of their domestic duties was moot.
Founded in Brooklyn in 1903 by Priscilla D. Hackstaff, the Interurban Woman Suffrage Council came under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt (1859 - 1947) in 1907. At the time, Catt was at the height of her powers as an organizer, having already spent three years as the President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association - as the successor to Susan B. Anthony - and having founded the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. Catt headquartered the Council at the women-only Martha Washington Hotel in Manhattan, where she kept a room to hold meetings and distribute suffrage literature free of charge. The Council became a crucial to gathering support from elected officials: it "was the first suffrage organization in New York City to interview Assemblymen and Senators on woman suffrage and it called the first representative convention held in the big metropolis" (Harper, pp. 459-460). The Council was a precursor to Chapman's Woman Suffrage Party, a union of New York-based women's suffrage groups that boasted over two thousand members by 1915 and became a leading force in the final decade of the fight for the Nineteenth Amendment.
Harper, ed., The History of Woman Suffrage, vol. VI (1922). Good.
This exceedingly scarce pamphlet argues against the common anti-suffrage argument that "politics is a business, which is man's sphere, and that it nowhere touches the home, which is woman's sphere" (p. 5). Catt argues, instead, that politics, particularly taxation, directly affected the life and labor of women both inside and outside of the home: for one, "domestic" purchases like fabric and thread were taxed as much as anything else; and she cites the case of Massachusetts corset-stitchers who "received 75 cents per day and were obliged to furnish their own thread," effectively paying a tax to be employed in the largely female garment industry. Politics and the home, then, were inextricable, and the argument that women should be separated from politics because of their domestic duties was moot.
Founded in Brooklyn in 1903 by Priscilla D. Hackstaff, the Interurban Woman Suffrage Council came under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt (1859 - 1947) in 1907. At the time, Catt was at the height of her powers as an organizer, having already spent three years as the President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association - as the successor to Susan B. Anthony - and having founded the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. Catt headquartered the Council at the women-only Martha Washington Hotel in Manhattan, where she kept a room to hold meetings and distribute suffrage literature free of charge. The Council became a crucial to gathering support from elected officials: it "was the first suffrage organization in New York City to interview Assemblymen and Senators on woman suffrage and it called the first representative convention held in the big metropolis" (Harper, pp. 459-460). The Council was a precursor to Chapman's Woman Suffrage Party, a union of New York-based women's suffrage groups that boasted over two thousand members by 1915 and became a leading force in the final decade of the fight for the Nineteenth Amendment.
Harper, ed., The History of Woman Suffrage, vol. VI (1922). Good.
Details
Title
Woman Suffrage and the Home. Interurban Woman Suffrage Series No. 4
Author
Catt, Carrie Chapman
Condition
Good
Publisher
Interurban Woman Suffrage Council: New York
Date
1907
Edition
First edition