LETTER: Autograph letter signed to Anthony, February 2, 1884.
Anthony to Helen Barker
“Put on your bonnets & make the women of the state
acquainted with your powers & your virtue”
Anthony, Susan B. Autograph Letter Signed “Susan B. Anthony” to “Mrs. [Helen] Barker.” Jamestown, North Dakota, 09/28/1890; two leaves; one 8 ½ x 11-inch leaf “South Dakota Equal Suffrage Association” stationery, one 8 ½ x 5 1/2 -inch leaf; writing on all sides; creased where folded from mail; first leaf torn at center fold but intact.
Anthony writes a lengthy letter to Women’s Christian Temperance Union President Helen Barker, mailing her a check and commenting on a speech (another) “Mrs. [Helen] Barker” delivered in Jamestown, North Dakota, with which Anthony was disappointed. Anthony writes, “She gave her trite statement that the saloon makes criminals…and closed with answering to objections urged against women’s voting. I was disappointed – in that her talk was all from the man’s stand-point—I longed to cry woman supplement man – To echo him – or duplicate him!!”
In the 1890s, suffragists allied with the WCTU, and, although the group’s main objective was to enact more restrictive liquor laws, it also advocated women’s suffrage “on the grounds that without the vote women lacked the power to protect home and family and to defend morality.” At the same time, the Union had also joined together with the newly-formed South Dakota Equal Suffrage Association, whose goal was convincing delegates to the constitutional convention to propose woman suffrage to voters in the fall 1890 election. Anthony had temporarily relocated to South Dakota to manage the campaign; the Helen Barker she mentions as a speaker was a candidate for SDESA state organizer.
On Barker, Anthony continues, “She is a good speaker though not – what is called a magnetic speaker. Your executive committee & superintendents, officers of the WCTU will never supplant her – or make the women of the state feel that she is not the greatest & best woman for your President.”
Anthony concludes her thoughts on Barker with a call to arms to the letter’s recipient: “So long as each & all of you stay at home – and she visits women in their homes – and speaks to the people every county every year…[this] will be repeated over & over unless some of you – put on your bonnets & make the women of the state acquainted with your powers & your virtue – and scores of you have both of these essentials – but they must not be hid…”
Anthony’s letter continues with an update on her own speaking schedule. She also encloses several checks to pay individuals involved with the election campaign, and settles out various paycheck details, noting “At $4 a week – each – it will cover over a little over five weeks – and be assured that if money does not come from the county and local societies – I will see that your board is paid up to the end of the campaign and a week after…”
Anthony also outlines her post-election plans: to return to “Huron from the Black Hills at once,” after which more meetings will be organized before she is off again, to “Omaha to attend the Nebraska [National] Convention.” Concluding, Anthony muses, on the state of the women’s movement, “It does seem very strange that the societies all over the state feel so little responsibility about helping to pay the expenses of their state work. But – write cash & urge the friends everywhere to help…”
In the November 1890 election, the women's suffrage amendment would not pass by a wide margin; the state would not pass the amendment until 1918.
(Source: Ross-Nazzal, Jennifer M. Winning the West for Women. University of Washington Press, 2011. 30-33.)
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