Hell No! They Won't Vote

The Anti-Suffrage Movement in Nevada

A hundred years after Nevada’s women secured their political rights it seems counterintuitive that many both nationally and locally actually resisted gaining the franchise. This complex group of activists sometimes referred to as “antis”, often came from lives of privilege in America’s cities and found themselves with a great deal to lose in the event of a change in the status quo.[1] Beyond simple degrees of privilege, some frequently engaged in reform efforts rooted in the maintenance of gender norms, progressive causes and occasionally publicly fretted that the granting of political rights would undermine the feminine role in the family, thereby damaging women’s place in the American “societal/social” tapestry.[2]

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Nationally, anti suffragism became highly organized around principles of gender conformity and preserving the American family between 1912-1918. These open defenses of the homemaker lifestyle were immediately anchored in fears of a loss of prestige associated with maintaining the American family.[3] Furthermore, as Historian Susan Marshall suggests, many women in the movement viewed the “prolitization” of American women as a direct threat against the home and their very way of life.[4] This campaign, seen as both a reactionary response to the suffrage movement and a conservative movement pinning its hopes to preserving traditional American gender norms sought to mobilize not only status and norms but also male fears of losing their place in American Society.[5]

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Unsurprisingly, these fears manifested in the era’s political cartoons. These caricatures of American life were designed both to relay notions of familial peril and incite dread among local and national audiences. Some illustrations highlighted growing fears that granting women the franchise risked the masculinity of American men. These drawings visually suggested that if American women engaged in the political process men would be forced to adopt traditionally feminine gender roles within American households including child rearing and the maintenance of the home. Based on the ways that childcare is frequently depicted by these cartoonists it seems likely that beyond simply being seen as “women’s work”, these cartoons occasionally depict men as virtually afraid of the task.[6]

Other depictions illustrate a female population rapidly taking on masculine traits in the event that they receive the franchise. Often these characterizations focus upon bouts of domestic violence with husbands as the victims.[7] These scenes upend traditional associations of a male dominated household and doubtlessly represented cause for alarm for many Americans of both genders. Alarmists that subscribed to and promoted these notions disregarded any notion of both genders sharing the public sphere or participating in political discourse. Instead, they warned men that if they conceded even equal representation within the public sphere that America’s men would be forcefully moved to the domestic sphere that women were trying to “escape”.

However, newer scholarship including Manuela Thurber’s work suggests that despite these very public displays of sexism, some anti’s insisted that they wanted nothing to do with the American political system for reasons rooted in reform rather than privilege and social norms. Unlike their counterparts consumed with the status quo, these anti’s perceived themselves as genuine progressives willing to forgo the franchise to remain above the political fray. In their eyes remaining a-political allowed women to increase the efficacy of their reform efforts.[8] These activists, remaining until at least the late twentieth-century unsung in academic circles, sternly insisted that by pursuing the franchise women were actually undermining their ability to influence and inspire an American population badly in need of reform. Rather than confining their social sphere strictly to the home, these “antis” perceived their role in American society as reformers rather than homebodies.[9]

Nationwide the struggle for the franchise gained momentum with Wyoming’s passage of full women’s suffrage in 1869. During the same period Nevada was also discussing Women’s rights in 1869 after Assemblyman Curtis Hillyer of Storey County introduced legislation to grant Nevada’s women the vote only to eventually have it fail due to state regulations governing the adoption of legislation. This included passage in two consecutive sessions by the Assembly. Unfortunately, by the time the measure came up for a second vote many of its supporters were no longer serving in the body.[10] As a result, as one of the last western states to initiate full female suffrage, Nevada represented a key battleground in the fight for women’s rights. A variety of notable “antis”, including New York’s Minnie Branson, arrived in Nevada for the 1914 campaign in the hopes of stemming the tide of political disruption.[11] These outsiders were not alone as some of Nevada’s most prominent citizens, including former first lady Emma Lee Adams, spared no expense in an effort to derail reform efforts in Nevada.[12] These efforts led to the 1914 founding of the Nevada Association of Women Opposed to Equal Suffrage as a lobbying body to counter Nevada’s suffrage movement. [13]

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Former First Lady of Nevada Emma Lee Adams represented one of the staunchest female opponents of women’s suffrage in Nevada. In 1914, she and others founded the Nevada Association of Women Opposed to Equal Suffrage. This group acted as an organizing lightning rod for the Anti-Suffrage Movement in Nevada by working diligently to import well-known national speakers to buttress their cause. Some, including Branson were encouraged to visit Nevada in the hopes that their rallying cries might dampen support for the enfranchisement of the state’s women. The membership was so devout that they led a delegation to Washington with the intent of contradicting a petition to the President of the United States from Nevada’s suffragists that demanded his support. Adams and her followers replied in their own petition that “we are advised that after a most strenuous and expensive campaign covering many months, these petitions assuming to voice the sentiments of the womanhood of Nevada bore the signatures of “more than 500 women”. There are more than 17,000 white women in Nevada over 21 years. Less than one in thirty four have petitioned Congress and we deny the right of these 500 women to speak for the 17,000.”

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Unsurprisingly, prominent men occasionally supported anti-suffrage campaigns both in Nevada and on the national stage. Most noteworthy among Nevadans was banking and mining magnate George Wingfield who proudly bankrolled efforts to hijack progress in Nevada. Indeed, Wingfield even deployed his significant political clout to strengthen his position while threatening to relocate his business holdings elsewhere if suffrage succeeded in Nevada.[14] These threats, based in no small part on his animosity towards organized labor, though scorned by local media, carried with them a great deal of fear due to the economic ramifications that would follow such a drastic maneuver. Thankfully, the forces of stasis and inequality lost this battle a century ago in Nevada. Women first became eligible to vote in state and statewide elections in 1916, with full national suffrage after the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

Be Afriad of Progress

Sources:

Linton Weeks, “American Women Who Were Anti-Suffragettes,” NPR History Department (2015), www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/10/22/450221328/american-women-who-were-anti-suffragettes
Weeks, 2.
Marshall, Susan. “In Defense of Separate Spheres: Class and Status Politics in the Anti Suffrage Movement” Social Forces: Dec. 1, 1986, 65 pg 327.
bid, 327.
bid, 328.
Lewis, Danny. “These Anti-Suffragette Postcards Warned Against Giving Women the Vote”, Smithsonianmag.com, July 19, 2016, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-anti-suffragette-postcards-warned-against-giving-women-vote-180959828/. Palczewski, Catherine H. Postcard Archive. University of Northern Iowa. Cedar Falls, IA. Regardless of the emotional content of the male relationship to child rearing in these cartoons it is generally universally negative. Perhaps most telling is the nearly universal churlish nature of the children in the cartoons. These depictions indicate that regardless if the man is afraid or merely inconvenienced, the experience will doubtlessly be unpleasant.
Lewis, Danny. “These Anti-Suffragette Postcards Warned Against Giving Women the Vote”, Smithsonianmag.com, July 19, 2016, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-anti-suffragette-postcards-warned-against-giving-women-vote-180959828/. Palczewski, Catherine H. Postcard Archive. University of Northern Iowa. Cedar Falls, IA.
Thurner, Manuela. “Better Citizens WIthout the Ballot: American Anti-Suffrage Women and Their Rationale During the Progressive Era.” Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 5 No.1 1993, (Spring) 35. The findings that support that some women were more interested in becoming a political reformers rather than consumed with privilege and the preservation of their role in the domestic sphere appears to still be a less popular interpretation of the anti suffrage movement. However, Thurner’s work is exceptionally helpful in fleshing out a movement doubtlessly more complicated than women seeking to maintain their place in the kitchen.
Thurner, 40.
“Women’s Suffrage in Nevada” https://knpr.org/knpr/2014-11/womens-suffrage-nevada
Emerson Marcus, “‘Epic in politics’: Nevada Women got vote a century ago” Nevada’s Women’s History Project. www.nevadawomen.org
“Meeting of Women Opposed to Suffrage”. Carson City Daily Appeal.
Carson Ladies Form Anti Suffrage Society”. Carson City Daily Appeal May 28th 1914.
Weeks, 1.

Images are copyrighted to:

Lewis, Danny. “These Anti-Suffragette Postcards Warned Against Giving Women the Vote”, Smithsonianmag.com, July 19, 2016, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-anti-suffragette-postcards-warned-against-giving-women-vote-180959828/. Palczewski, Catherine H. Postcard Archive. The University of Northern Iowa. Cedar Falls, IA.

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