Carrie Chapman Catt.
[Catt, Carrie Chapman]. Peck, Mary Gray. Carrie Chapman Catt. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1944.
8vo, (including index); illustrated; smooth black cloth with gold stamping front and spine; a few touches of light wear; near fine.
First edition. Signed by Carrie Chapman Catt and the biographer Mary Gray Peck. NAW describes this biography by Mary Gray Peck as “a warm and detailed account by a devoted admirer and friend.” It is the only biography of this key suffrage leader. Catt, as a young widow in Iowa, first joined the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association in 1887. Soon she dedicated her energies to the suffrage movement. She agreed to marry her second husband, George Catt, only when he agreed to allow her two months, spring and fall, to devote wholly to her suffrage work. In 1895, she proposed to the NAWSA that they institute an Organization Committee to oversee fieldwork, a proposal, which was implemented with Catt heading up the Committee. Susan B. Anthony, a canny evaluator of her lieutenants' talents, recognized that Catt’s organizational skills and keen political sense was vital to NAWSA and the suffrage movement. When she retired as president in 1900, she chose Carrie Chapman Catt to succeed. George Catt’s illness, however, forced his wife to resign in 1904. A decade later she returned to head up the NAWSA, once again, and oversaw the final effort for woman suffrage, formulating a two-prong “Winning Plan.” In 1921, women finally obtained suffrage and full citizenship. Once Mrs. Catt had helped to found the League of Women Voters to succeed the NAWSA, she dedicated herself to world peace, bringing together prominent women’s organizations in support of the cause. She continued to be active until her death at the age of 88. Though many of her strategies as President of the NAWSA during the last years of the campaign aroused criticism, Catt’s political acumen, as Anthony had foreseen, was invaluable to women’s suffrage.
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