MAP: Suffrage States.
Women’s Political Union. Broadside: "Suffrage States.” [New York]: Women’s Political Union, [c. 1912-1915].
Broadside, two fragments (though not from the same sheet), together measuring approx. 7 x 10"; printed purple on white stock; the upper portion, a suffrage map, is dusty and darkened along the left; the lower portion, which prints statistics of the states in which women can vote, is fine.
The map dramatically contrasts the states that have suffrage, i.e., Washington, California, Arizona, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Michigan, with those that do not. Michigan held a referendum in 1912 and the first tally showed a strong vote in favor of woman suffrage. Almost immediately officials began to discover ‘lost’ ballot boxes and gradually ‘nay’ votes overtook ‘yea’ votes. The presence of Michigan as an equal suffrage state suggests the broadside may have been printed just after the initial count and then subsequently reprinted. The bottom fragment with the state statistics properly omits Michigan. An interesting, albeit indirect, reflection of a major referendum that suffragists considered stolen from them.
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