Political Equality Series and others (38 leaflets bound together).
[Suffrage]. National American Woman Suffrage Association. Political Equality Series and Others. Compendium of 38 Suffrage Leaflets. [Warren, Ohio: NAWSA, 1908].
Bound volume: 3-11/16” x 6-1/8,” pale grayish beige stiff glossy paper sides with black cloth spine. The volume binds together 38 leaflets of varying sizes, with their original wrappers, with an index at first pages. A touch of fraying to spine ends; minor crease at front lower tip; ruffling along front edge. Binding strained; a little ink at top edge of one leaflet. Generally very good. The binding appears to have been an improvisation, but a professional one.
Inscribed by Eliza W. Osborne, suffrage pioneer, daughter of Martha C. Wright and niece of Lucretia Mott, to her grandson at the front blank: “To my dear grandson / Charles D. Osborne. / for him to read & ponder / over one of the greatest & / most important questions / of the day / Eliza W. Osborne / December 1908.”
Eliza Wright Osborne could point to a distinguished women’s rights heritage: her mother, Martha Coffin Wright and her aunt, Lucretia Coffin Mott, together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mary Ann McClintock had organized the first women’s rights convention, the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. Eliza married a successful industrialist, David Muson Osborne, and their home at 99 South Street became the setting for numerous suffrage gatherings. It was at the Osborne house one Christmas that Susan B. Anthony met Harriet Tubman for the first time. Anna Howard Shaw in The Story Of A Pioneer remembered: “...the best talk I have heard anywhere was that to which I used to listen in the home of Mrs. Eliza Wright Osborne...where Mrs. Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Emily Howland, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Ida Husted Harper, Miss [Harriet May] Mills, and I were gathered there for our occasional weekend visits.” Eliza Osborne founded the Cayuga County Political Equality Club, regularly attended New York Suffrage Association meetings and NAWSA conventions. She also attempted to vote at every election, to the embarrassment of local polling officials. NAWSA appointed her as its delegate to the International Council of Women. A few months before she inscribed this volume, Eliza Osborne presided at the 1908 Commemorative Program in Honor of the 1848 Convention; the importance of the woman suffrage movement must have weighed more forcefully with her than ever.
The compendium includes many of NAWSA’s most effective and best known supporters. The Index groups the leaflets as follows: Affirmative Arguments — “Why Women Should Vote,” Alice Stone Blackwell; “Dr. Thomas on Woman’s Ballot,” M. Carey Thomas [President, Bryn Mawr College]; “Miss Woolley on Woman’s Ballot,” Mary E. Woolley [President, Mount Holyoke College]; “Roosevelt for Equal Rights,” Theodore Roosevelt; “Frederic C. Howe on Suffrage,” Hon. Frederic C. Howe; “Woman in the State,” Hon. [Senator] George F. Hoar; “Mrs. Livermore on Suffrage,” Mary A. Livermore; “The Wage Earner and the Ballot,” Maud Nathan; “Woman Suffrage in its Relation to Working Women and Children,” Florence Kelley; “Persuasion or Responsibility?,” Florence Kelley; “What is a Democracy,” Susan W. FitzGerald; “Woman and the Vote,” Mary Kenney O’sullivan; Answers To Objections — “Objections Answered,” Alice Stone Blackwell; “The Modern City and the Municipal Franchise for Women,” Jane Addams; “Progress of Woman Suffrage,” Alice Stone Blackwell (the leaflet stamped at the rear, “In 1908 Denmark gave women municipal suffrage”); “Alice Freeman Palmer on Woman’s Duties,” Alice Freeman Palmer [former President, Wellesley College]; “The Bible for Woman Suffrage,” Bishop J.W. Bashford; “Two Workings of a Bad Law,” Lora S. La Mance; “Captivated Calves,” Lida Calvert Obenchain; “The Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women,” Alice Stone Blackwell; “The Division of Labor,” Alice Stone Blackwell; Equal Suffrage In Practice — General, “Fruits of Equal Suffrag
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