Political Equality Series (23 issues).
Original Run Of Pamphlets Produced By The Coalition-Building
National American Woman Suffrage Association
[Suffrage]. Stone, Lucy, editor. “Political Equality Series”... [National American Woman Suffrage Association: Warren, Ohio, circa 1904-1906].
12mo.; a run of 23 issues of a series of fragile pamphlets; each pamphlet consisting of a small note-sized leaf of paper, folded to make four pages, text printed on all sides; fine. Housed in a specially made cloth folding box.
A fine run of this vehicle for fast-breaking suffrage news, printed and distributed by the U.S.’s first truly coalition-based feminist group, the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
From 1866 the suffrage movement was split apart by bitter disagreements about the question of who should get the vote first, black males or women. In 1869 the premiere suffrage organization, the American Equal Rights Association, folded, and two new groups emerged: the National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Stone and her husband Henry Blackwell. These two groups represented polar factions of the American women’s movement, with the latter embracing a much more inclusive vision of voting rights. In 1890, after skillful diplomacy, the two suffrage groups merged into the newly formed National American Woman Suffrage Association, with Stanton the president and Stone the chair of the national committee.
This “Political Equality Series”(the first and apparently only official regular tract of the NAWSA) consists of a series of short tracts on the issues the raging in the women’s rights movement. The run spans from Vol. I, No. 1 to Vol. III, No. 11; with some numbers (Vol. I, Nos. 4, 9, 10 & 11; Vol. II, Nos. 1, 3, 5, 10 & 11; Vol. III, Nos. 5, 7, 9 & 12) lacking. Articles present in this run include: “Why Women Should Vote,” “The Progress of Equal Suffrage,” and “The M. A. O. F. E. S. W. [the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women], all by Alice Stone Blackwell, Lucy and Henry’s daughter; “The Wooing of the Electors,” by Henry Blackwell; “The Ballot and the Schools,” by Mrs. Helen L. Grenfield; “The Bible for Woman Suffrage,” by Bishop J.W. Bashford; “When Gamblers ‘Pray’ and Mothers Can Demand,” by Kate E.N. Feltham; and “Dr. Thomas on Woman’s Ballot,” by M. Carey Thomas, the legendary president of Bryn Mawr College. There are also anonymous pieces on “The Fruits of Equal Suffrage,” “Equal Suffrage in Australia,” “Judge Linsey on Suffrage,” and other intriguing topics.
A fine collection of pamphlets produced by the premiere national women’s rights organization of its time. Runs of the political equality series rarely surface on the open market.
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