Speech of Hon. Stanley E. Bowdle Delegate from Hamilton County, on Woman Suffrage before the Ohio Constitutional Convention" leaflet.
*Bowdle, Stanley E. Leaflet: “Speech of Hon. Stanley E. Bowdle Delegate from Hamilton County, on Woman Suffrage before the Ohio Constitutional Convention.” Cincinnati, Ohio: The Cincinnati and Hamilton County Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, [ND, but 1912].
6 x 8-3/4,” <6>pp; printed self-wrappers (stapled). Near fine.
In January 1912 Ohio convened a constitutional convention to consider amendments to the state constitution. Suffragists found a sympathetic supporter in William Kirkpatrick, chair of the Equal Suffrage Committee. Hearings were held in February (the likely date of Congressman Bowdle’s speech) and in March the Convention voted 76-34 to put an amendment before the voters which would delete the words “white male” from the state’s constitution. Anti-suffragists then introduced and carried an alternate amendment to delete only the word “white” (and thus separate black voters from suffragists). History Of Woman Suffrage records that liquor interests expended substantial sums in a vigorous anti-suffrage campaign though it notes: “There was never any statewide anti-suffrage association of women but only small groups in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus. Most of them were rich, well situated, not familiar with organized reform work and not acquainted with the viciousness of their associates [i.e., liquor interests].” Ohio voters failed to pass either amendment when they went to the polls September 3, 1912. Bowdle raises the issue of “just what is meant by representative government” and suggests that women should decide, by referendum, whether a majority does want suffrage. He declares that the questions of woman suffrage “is no longer a joke. It is war...I tell you the whole movement is but a part of the effeminate superficiality of this generation.” He exhorts his listeners to defy the “present masculine abasement now witnessed in America.” Equal suffrage, in fact, pollutes the voting pool: .”..when women got the ballot in Colorado it took many years for the good women to stop the outcast woman vote. Denver has a large abandoned woman vote. The prevailing gang used to vote them back by the hackloads. It was merely another evil added to the electorate.” The Congressman concludes by saying “I represent him who has lied and died for women...” Congressman Bowdle’s anti-suffrage rhetoric reached such a pitch later in his career that the New Republic excoriated him for his “leering, lewd contempt of women, his 'cave man idea'.” While Bowdle gilds his words with an air of elaborate chivalry, the thrust of his arguments are profoundly misogynistic. History Of Woman Suffrage, Vol. VI, 509-511. Also, Kinnard 760 (which quotes the New Republic article); Kinnard, however, does not record this leaflet.
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