Argument in Favor of Equal Suffrage Constitutional Amendment.
Annotated by Susan B. Anthony
[Anthony, Susan B., annotation] Laughlin, Gail. Argument in Favor of Equal Suffrage Constitutional Amendment…Oregon Equal Suffrage Association; n.d. [1906].
8vo.; two leaves, stapled to make eight pages including the cover; stapled; creased for mailing. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
Pamphlet issued by the Oregon Equal Suffrage Association following the defeat of the Suffrage amendment by a single vote. The typographic cover reads, simply:
Argument in favor of Equal Suffrage Constitutional Amendment. Official ballot numbers. For….302. Against….303. Issue by Oregon Equal Suffrage Association.
Anthony has written at the head of this page: This argument is sent to every voter in the state – by the Secretary of State – free of cost to our campaign committee – is out there circulating this good reason why every man should vote for the amendment – For … 302 – S.B.A.
The Argument, by made by Gail Laughlin, a prominent member of the Maine Legislature and, later, Vice President of the National Woman’s Party, is divided into five sections: “What Equal Suffrage Means,” “The Home and the Government,” “The Wage-Earner’s Need of the Ballot,” “Results of Equal Suffrage,” and “The Uplift to Civilization from Equal Suffrage.” It is followed by four testimonials from two judges and two senators—all men—who live in states that already have equal suffrage. They support the amendment and provide examples of how women’s vote has ushered in a change for the better. As the Hon. John L. Shafroth vouches, “Woman’s presence in politics has introduced an independent element which compels better nominations and better officials” (7).
While championing equal suffrage, Laughlin categorizes men and women into separate spheres, in effect advocating that women’s “private” space in the home be recognized as a public concern:
“While banking and currency and tariff and other commercial questions specially touch man’s side of life and need his brain and his interest and his vote for their solution, these other questions specially touch woman’s side of life and need her brain and her interest and her vote for their best solution” (3). Laughlin further argues that since some women have been “forced to earn a living,” they should be allowed to vote in order to be regarded “as equals in industrial life” (4). She explains, “Never until women have, through the ballot, the power to affect economic conditions, will they be properly protected… [the American Federation of Labor] declared for equal suffrage as a ‘measure of justice to women’ and ‘as a necessary step toward insuring and raising the scale of wages for all’” (4).
Laughlin also explains women’s growing interest in passing a suffrage amendment: “Women have not banded together against men to oppose measures desired by men, but there has been a quickening of interest and a marked improvement along those lines which are especially the lines of life in which women are most interested and which they are most fitted to direct; and women themselves have become broader, finer women from their participation in a broader life” (5). She uses Wyoming as an exemplary model of a state in which their move toward equal suffrage was beneficial to everyone.
In the final section of her Argument, “The Uplift to Civilization from Equal Suffrage,” the author Laughlin points out that in granting equal suffrage, states are simply fulfilling an obligation to their citizens stated in the Declaration of Independence. In the states that already have equal suffrage, “the first step to a higher plane of civic life has been taken” (6). In conclusion, she writes,
There is no force so potent for individual development as is individual liberty. As are the individuals, so the nation is. Therefore, where liberty is the greatest, there civilization is highest; and those states which give to women full political liberty will reap in full measure the glorio
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