Story of a Sub-Pioneer, The.
Algeo, Sara Barbara. The Story Of A Sub Pioneer. Providence, RI: Snow & Franham Company, (1925).
8vo, 318pp; maroon cloth stamped in gilt with title and facsimile of author’s signature on front panel; white dust-jacket with title and author printed in black with a half-tone of the author at her desk, above which is an emblem of the U.S. and R.I. flags between a ballot box with a feminine hand depositing a ballot in red, white and blue; title and author on spine. Jacket slightly soiled with two tiny chips at top of spine; all corners clipped. A fine copy of the book in a very nice dust-jacket. Illustrated with 91 half-tones, after photographs of those women and men active in the suffrage movement in Rhode Island as well as nationally. Laid in is her signature and an image of her (which is reproduced on the dust-jacket).
First edition. 1/1,000 numbered copies [“the first two hundred of which will be reserved by the Author for her fellow Suffragists”].
Sara (Mrs. James W.) Algeo starts with a spirited account of the ratification in the state legislature on January 7, and the Victory Dinner (where she presided as toast mistress) on the evening of January 6, that preceded the formal signing. The photograph of Governor Beekman signing the Ratification Resolution, seated at his desk with 14 very determined women behind him is, at the least, informative. Sara Algeo calls herself, and others who labored ceaselessly for many years in the cause of woman suffrage, a sub-pioneer. She states she is a feminist “first, last and all the time...” and the autobiographical sketch she gives portrays a woman who fought for equal rights from an early age.
While attending Boston University, she met another BU graduate, Alice Stone Blackwell, and quickly fell in with the suffragists' aims. Chapters on her life and work (as a teacher) include descriptions of those she met, letters, and invaluable first-hand accounts of the suffrage and equal rights activities in which she participated. Of particular note is her account of the 1913 National American Convention where the break between the Congressional Union and National Association occurred. At this time, Mrs. Algeo served as General Chairman of the Woman Suffrage Party in Rhode Island. She reprints speeches by Anna Howard Shaw, letters to various newspapers by herself and others, editorials on the subject of woman suffrage — in short, valuable material. The numerous illustrations, the first-hand accounts of state and national events make this a significant primary source. Mrs. Algeo ends with a chapter demanding equal rights for women and a plea for world peace.
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