The Road to Victory: 1917

By 1916, Martha Van Rensselaer had become convinced of the inevitability of the success of the suffrage amendment. She said:

The women of the United States will unquestionably get the vote, it cannot fail to come because it means democracy, and democracy cannot exist where one-half of the human race is subordinated to the other half.

During the Presidential election in 1916, The Cornell Bulletin (a newsletter for women) sponsored a straw vote: “Bulletin Straw Vote, Monday, November 6. Boxes will be placed in Sage and Risley today at 1 o’clock to receive the votes of the undergraduate women for the presidential elections. Promptness is urged, as the polls will close shortly after two. The franchise is not extended as yet to the men of the University. Please everyone vote.” The next day, the Bulletin reported on the results, with a plurality going to Charles Evans Hughes.

By 1917, pro-suffrage sentiment had grown even more, with the fervent support of President Schurman, who wrote in a message to the Cornell Equal Suffrage Club:

The fundamental reason why women should have the ballot is that it is unjust to discriminate against them. No conception of justice can be worked out and applied to the state in any democracy which does not give equal political rights and privileges to the women….

The latest argument in favor of extending the suffrage to women is this great world war for democracy in which we are now engaged. Essentially considered it is a war for the elimination of classes and castes. The object is to make the world safe for democracy, but there can be no democracy with half the people of the world disenfranchised.

On November 6, 1917, New York State became the first state east of the Mississippi to pass a suffrage amendment—by an 80,000 vote majority. On November 8, the Cornell Daily Sun reported:

Among the first to appreciate the achievements and opportunities granted them by the recent voting are Cornell women. Miss Flora Rose, Professor of Home Economics, was especially pleased that women’s suffrage won…. ”I do not think we are going to reform everything,” said Miss Rose, “but I do think it is going to do a great deal for us. We are going to feel obliged to inform ourselves on political questions and to study political science. Instructors will be more interested in teaching women in those classes and we will be more interested because women are at last recognized as citizens of the United States.”

“It is a wonderful victory and a splendid indication that men of New York really believe in a true democracy,” said Mrs. K.M. Wiegand, one of the suffrage leaders of Ithaca…. Mrs. Wiegand added the appreciation of suffrage workers for the work done by women of the university at the polls. About forty were there during the day, some coming in at 6 o’clock in the morning. “The impression the girls made was splendid throughout.”

The Woman Citizen was founded by Carrie Chapman Catt, with a large bequest from Mrs. Frank Leslie specifically to further the cause of woman suffrage. Catt merged three suffrage journals—the Woman’s Journal, the National Suffrage News, and Woman Voter—to form one of the most influential women’s publications of the early twentieth century. The Woman Citizen continued publication until 1931, redirecting its agenda to women’s political education and changing its name to the Woman’s Journal. It regularly included maps tracing the progress of state suffrage amendments.


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