Catalog and Price List of Woman Suffrage Literature and Supplies, January 1914.
Woman Suffrage Catalogue
[Suffrage]. Catalogue and Price List of Woman Suffrage Literature and Supplies, January 1914. New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1914.
8vo; staple-bound catalog; faint crease; a few pencil marks within.
An apparently unique copy of a scarce mail-order catalog of literature and supplies, produced by a N.A.W.S.A. Literature Committee chaired by Mary Ware Dennett with Frances Maul Bjorkman as its chief editor, to bolster suffragist efforts across the country. The front cover features a small map of the United States indicating to what extent each state has obtained suffrage (full, partial, or none), followed by twenty pages listing individual items for sale along with a brief description of each. Available literature includes The History of Woman Suffrage, edited by Stanton and Anthony, et al; “Shall Women Vote?” by W.I. Thomas, “a clever and satirical article...adapted to catch the attention of the indifferent;” “The Guardianship of Children,” by Catherine Waugh McCulloch, “a brief statement by a lawyer of the laws concerning the rights of mothers over their children in the United States;” and “Twenty-five Answers to Antis,” by twenty-five eminent suffragists, consisting of “five minute speeches by famous people in answer to all the stock objections.” The booklets section lists, among others, Suffrage Songs and Verses by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Suffrage and the Working Woman, a “set of six different booklets by six different wage-earning women.” “Supplies” include Votes for Women buttons, bannerettes, regalia, posters, stationery, stickers, playing cards, umbrellas and tea cups, as well as lantern slide lectures and a traveling picture gallery.
The growing enterprise of suffrage goods was in keeping with an increased commitment on the part of suffragists to public spectacle as a political tactic, and to the adoption of the methods and materials of consumer advertising. As late as 1909, it was only with a great deal of difficulty that a local suffragist group could assemble any significant collection of suffragist literature and supplies. That changed substantially in the following decade, when N.A.W.S.A. established its national catalog service as early as 1911, and was greatly aided by the legislative creation of free parcel post in 1913. These catalogs became a crucial component to the dissemination of suffragist ideas and materials throughout the country.
An early reference to a N.A.W.S.A. catalog comes in the second edition of Selected Articles on Woman Suffrage, which includes the catalog of 1911 in its Bibliographies section. (No mention of the catalog is made in the first edition of 1910.) Though the catalogs were published on a regular basis, only a very few have survived. OCLC locates a single copy of the catalog from 1912, one from 1915, and two from 1916. This is the only known copy of the catalog from 1914.
See Selling Suffrage by Margaret Mary Finnegan (New York: Columbia, 1999), esp. 123ff.
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