Unpublished Memoir fragments, annotated typescript.
UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT OF A FEMINIST ACTIVIST
[Tilton, Elizabeth Hewes]. Typescript chapters of a manuscript on the Prohibition movement in America. [ca. 1945].
44 typescript leaves; occasional manuscript annotations; creased at folds; paperclip marks.
From the archives of Edna L. Stantial, archivist for the National Woman Suffrage Association, a collection of annotated typescript chapters from an unpublished manuscript by Massachusetts feminist and activist Elizabeth H. Tilton (1869-1950), recounting her involvement as a leader in the Prohibition movement. Also active in the Massachusetts Woman’s Suffrage Association, the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, and numerous other feminist organizations, Tilton threw her energies into the Prohibition movement during the first two decades of the 20th century, writing dozens of articles on the subject, organizing the Women’s National Committee for Education Against Alcohol, and acting as director of the Unitarian Temperance Society. The present manuscript contains portions of six chapters detailing that work, and recounting the struggle between the wets and the drys in the years following the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. Tilton’s work on the front lines of the movement brought her into contact with Presidents, Congressmen, and other prominent activists and journalists on both sides of the issue, and the manuscript recalls the complicated intersections of lobbying groups, organizations, and other political actors involved in the struggle. Tilton’s enthusiasm for her work as an activist and her blunt assessments of situations and people are defining features of the manuscript, seen for example in the following passage from a chapter headed “Calvin Coolidge Appears But ‘Says Nothing Too Much’”:
Prohibition and Suffrage have both been ratified in our state. We have taken a long
breath. Standing as it were on the very top of those two great achievements.
Crescendo at its height! ... Everyone, however, is now turning to the victorious
women for help. ... So we are being gathered in to pull new chestnuts out of the fire.
A Republican woman from Massachusetts, Tilton represents the advent of a new political subject in America: the middle-class woman voter and organizer, henceforth a powerful voice in U.S. politics. Chapters in the present manuscript include: “Book II: Those Southern Women;” “Calvin Coolidge Appears But ‘Says Nothing Too Much;’” “America Goes Underworld;” “Book II: Those Party Conventions;” “The Outdoor Culture Shouts for Joy;” and “I-XI: The United States Enters the World War.” Several of the annotations in the margins and at the heads of chapters are in Stantial’s hand. This unpublished manuscript of a reformer and citizen active at a crucial juncture in the women’s movement is an important piece of feminist history.
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