Remember+the+Ladies+-+A+Look+at+the+Woman’s+Suffrage+Movement+in+Wheeling

By Kate Quinn

In a letter to her husband who was busy in Philadelphia writing the Declaration of Independence and laws to govern this new country in 1776, Abigail Adams wrote:

//I long to hear that you have declared an independency- and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than you ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, no Representation.//

One hundred years later in 1876 a West Virginia woman could still not: 1.	request a trial by jury -- since women were barred from serving on juries they could not then be tried by their “peers” 2.	elect those who determined the taxes she must pay on any property she owned 3.	dispute a husband’s claim that she was insane and should be committed to Weston’s unhallowed halls 4.	pass labor laws restricting the 10 hour work day endured by women working in the mills and factories 5.	if divorced or single, establish credit in her own name or have legal control of either her children or property through marriage 6.	attend many universities, medical schools, enter the legal profession or be a member of the American Medical Assn. 7.	and in an ironic twist she was even barred from attending the dedication of the Statue of Liberty our national symbol of freedom in 1886!!!!

Here in West Virginia the movement for women’s rights began in 1895 in Grafton when the West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association (WVESA) was formed. The formation of this association stemmed from statewide speeches given by the Rev. Henrietta Moore of Ohio who was engaged by the National American Woman Suffrage Association to persuade West Virginia women to fight for their right to vote. Clubs were formed in Wheeling, Benwood, Wellsburg, New Cumberland, New Manchester, Clarksburg, Grafton, Fairmont, and Mannington.

Their interest in suffrage may have been due to the fact that they were industrial centers and hubs of transportation whereas the rest of the state remained isolated. A year later only two of these clubs remained in existence.

In 1897, a second state convention was held in Fairmont and Fannie Wheat of Wheeling was elected president. Carrie Chapman Catt, the chairwoman of the NAWSA attended the meeting and encouraged the two remaining clubs (Wheeling and Fairmont).

The Wheeling group, calling themselves the Political Equality Club, with Dr. Harriet Jones as President, petitioned the Charter Commission of Wheeling to include a provision for woman suffrage in a new charter under consideration, but the commission “laid the petition aside for future consideration”. The Wheeling group also distributed literature at the State Fair, collected signatures for petitions supporting an amendment to the state constitution and succeeded in persuading the public library to subscribe to both the Woman’s Journal and the Woman’s Tribune (both were pro-suffrage literature).

The 1898 Wheeling Convention of the WVESA saw invitations to the Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly extended, but it is not known whether any members attended. National suffrage leaders Carrie Catt and Anna Shaw both were featured speakers. The Wheeling Register reported, “Mrs. Catt impressed her audience as a woman of ability and was a polished and forceful speaker. Her arguments were well constructed and could not help but win adherents to the cause which she so ardently espoused.”

The Intelligencer reported that Mrs. George E. (Annie Caldwell) Boyd of Wheeling also delivered a “well prepared and logical effort, and a strong plea for the enfranchisement of women”.

In February 1899, Annie Shaw addressed the state Legislature presenting her case for women’s rights. Although she was politely received, her plea was ignored. The only successful legislation regarding women that year was a bill to require seats for saleswomen!!!

The Wheeling Intellligencer by this time was cooperating with the women in publishing a weekly column reporting activities nationally in the suffrage movement and the women of the northern part of the state were gaining experience in organization and the confidence to address their pleas through politics and legislation. By 1901, the women’s organization was able to get a resolution calling for a referendum vote introduced in the state legislature. This resolution was defeated by a vote of 31 to 25.

By 1905, only the Fairmont club was in existence, but then suddenly four new clubs with twenty-five new members were begun and a state convention was held in Moundsville. Efforts to lobby the state legislature were undertaken and in Wheeling, renewed interest in persuading the amendment of the new city charter to provide for woman suffrage. On a separate ballot from that of the city charter, the question of woman’s suffrage was placed before the voters. Although more votes were cast on the suffrage ballot than that of the charter, both were defeated.

The women then turned to the Labor organizations for support and addressed the West Virginia State Federation of Labor in 1906. The Labor convention adopted a resolution in favor of woman suffrage. For the next two years the movement focused on the state legislature but were unable to get resolutions passed.

In 1908, the Woman Suffrage League of Wheeling affiliated with the West Virginia Federation of Women’s Clubs. This came about because the Women’s Club, in their striving to affect social reform found that without a vote they had no voice.

As the political climate of West Virginia began to change, the state legislature proposed an amendment to allow women to serve on boards for state institutions, as county clerks, probation officers, and notaries public. Supported by the State Bar Association, this amendment saw defeat by the voters of the state by a very small margin.

May of 1913 saw West Virginians marching in a New York City Suffrage parade and Wheeling took part in a statewide celebration of Suffrage Day. One of Wheeling’s leading ladies of the Suffrage Movement was Henrietta Fulks who sold Suffragist papers on Chapline Street, took automobile trips to the steel mills to hand out fliers to the workers, and organized speeches.

A 1976 article by Mary Liebold, then President of the League of Women Voters, reported: “The suffragists were decked in the full female regalia of the early twentieth century – brimmed, picturesque hats, high-buttoned shoes, skirts sweeping the ground, suffragist banners emblazoned across chests.

Suffrage speeches were delivered about noonday. Henrietta recollected one afternoon driving an out-of-town speaker onto 14th Street just across from the former Hub department store, in front of what was then the Orpheum Vaudeville Theatre. The top was down and the Suffrage banner was draped across the back of the auto. An enormous crowd gathered around the women and listened spellbound to the speeches. The crowd was composed mostly of men.”

The Anti-suffragists had their headquarters at 14th and Market Street and had embellished the façade with a banner reading ”Women’s Place is in the Home” so the Suffragists opened their headquarters next door complete with their own banner which read “ If the Home is Women’s Sphere, What Are the Antis Doing Here?”

War was waged by the women on two fronts. Some lobbied the state and others went after federal politicians. By 1915 and 1916 a state referendum was on the ballot in West Virginia and eight other states. In four states the vote was successful…..West Virginia was not one of them. The largest defeat of the referendum in any state was our own with the amendment losing by 100,000 votes. One of the many state senators against the amendment had been Senator Ben Rosenbloom of Ohio County who declared his personal opposition to woman suffrage and his intention to defeat the referendum

But the battle by the suffragists was hard fought. From the time the resolution for the referendum passed both houses of the state legislature until the vote in November, the NAWSA provided speakers, assisted in the organizing and encouraged the local women. One woman prominent in the local campaign was Dr. Harriet Jones, the first licensed female physician in the state.

Harriet Jones herself was remarkable. She had a successful medical practice in Wheeling. She also established her own hospital and the TB sanitarium on the site of what is now Bridge Street School. She traveled the state with Francina McMahon in 1909 lecturing in all 35 counties on tuberculosis…this at a time when the roads were practically mud-strewn paths and gas was obtained at the general store. Later she established the State TB Sanitarium at Terra Alta and the “Sanitorium for Colored People”. She also served for several years as the assistant superintendent of the Weston State Hospital, established the first public playgrounds in Wheeling, and later went on to found the state orphanage at Elkins and the Girls Industrial Home at Salem, West Virginia. She served as a state Legislator in 1924-25. Most of her suffrage work included scheduling out-of-state speakers, writing pamphlets, and to newspapers around the state with suffrage questionnaires.

The headquarters of the WVESA then moved to Morgantown where posters and literature were mailed out to women all over the state. The then president, Lena Post was a past president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in West Virginia and her emphasis on the “dry” platform of the suffrage policies went down well with the National organization.

By this time the women had won the backing of most of the state newspapers and many prominent men including Rabbi Hill Silver of Wheeling who spoke around the state at his own expense. Both candidates for governor (Republican Judge Ira Robinson and Democratic candidate John Cornwell) had declared their support for woman suffrage.

Many outside organizers were brought in by the national organization who considered a win in West Virginia imperative. One of these organizers was Eleanor Raoul of Atlanta, Georgia, who in 1916 worked the six counties of the Northern Panhandle. Eleanor felt that the rural areas of her district were more interested in suffrage than Wheeling was. After visiting Bethany and West liberty, in Brooke and northern Ohio counties, she wrote, “Since I left Wheeling I have found more interest in suffrage and am somewhat encouraged. I believe if we work the rural districts well we can carry the state.”

She later wrote about Wheeling: “I really think suffrage is very difficult up in this part. It was certainly started wrong in Wheeling – I mean the fashionable, rich people did not take it up and the people who did had too much of the reformer spirit to make much of a go of it. That certainly has had its effect through this whole section.”

She may have been right as Brooke and Hancock counties had the highest majority of votes for suffrage in the referendum, but then, those affluent counties were more like their prosperous Ohio neighbors then fellow statesman in poor, rural areas. The referendum was defeated in Ohio County. The final vote was 161,607 to 63,540…nearly 75% against suffrage.

The national organization was devastated by the loss of the referendum and tried to analyze its failure. Although legislatures and political leaders were for the amendment, most of the men of the state still did not believe that women wanted to vote, or were biologically or socially fit to vote. In his essay “Woman’s Suffrage’ Harry Temple of Pendleton County wrote: “…Woman is, by her very nature, constitutionally and organically disqualified for the service of the state. She has not the cerebral organization adapted to the close, protracted, and harassing study of state affairs, nor a nervous organization equal to the sustained exertion and endurance demanded by judicial and legislative duties, nor a muscular organization fitted for the police or military service; and the functions of maternity, or if she be single, the physiological conditions that provide for maternity as the normal function of womanhood, incapacitate for a kind of service that must either repress her nature, or destroy her health.”

This was the typical view of male anti-suffragists at the time and surprisingly the women anti-suffragists argued that 96% of women did not want to vote and it would be “un-American” to force the vote on them!

As the United States entered World War I in 1917 and President Wilson declared that he would “make the world safe for democracy”, women who had been involved in the suffrage movement began to turn their efforts to the war and thousands joined the Red Cross, giving up all hope of obtaining the vote. But in Washington D. C, Alice Paul and others picketed the White House using Wilson’s own words against him and asking how he could fight for democracy abroad and yet ignore the rights of women at home. Alice Paul and 40 other women went to prison, were force fed after a hunger strike there, and managed to embarrass the President who finally saw the political advantage in giving women the vote. He rewarded their efforts during the war by proposing a Federal Amendment to the Constitution allowing women to vote. The amendment easily passed both the House and Senate and was sent on to the states for ratification in May of 1919.

Many states immediately ratified the amendment, but others like West Virginia were not scheduled for a regular session of the state legislature until after the 1920 elections. Governor Cornwell did not want to call a special session of the legislature, as the cost was $1500 per day. But a special session was needed on a tax issue and Cornwell felt that he could introduce the vote on ratification at the same time. The special session was called for February 27, 1920.

Telegrams and petitions began to pour in from all over the state. The West Virginia State Federation of Labor, the West Virginia Association of Graduate Nurses of Wheeling, the United Brethren Church in West Virginia, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the West Virginia Federation of Women’s Clubs, all had their say in favor of giving women the vote. Twenty-three counties, including many southern, rural counties sent petitions.

Just as it appeared that ratification was a sure thing, the anti-suffragists imported a large number of lobbyists to Charleston to change the mind of legislators about their vote.

The House of Delegates ratified the amendment with a vote of 47 to 40 and passed it to the state Senate where a deadlocked tie vote of 14 to 14 was cast.

The anti-suffragists attempted to get Archibald Montgomery, a West Virginia Senator who had resigned the previous summer to move to Illinois reinstated to no avail when Governor Cornwell produced his letter of resignation. The pro-suffragists pinned all their hopes on Senator Jessie Bloch of Wheeling, who was on vacation in California. If the Senator could reach Charleston in time, and cast the deciding vote and IF the legislature could stay in session long enough for him to get home, then the amendment would pass. The drama began!

Bloch was in San Francisco and when he heard of the special session had sent a telegram stating that he “strongly favored ratification”. His cross-country trip by train brought headlines to the Wheeling papers and Bloch “sightings” were commonplace. An adjournment was forced on the Senate over the weekend to allow Bloch’s arrival and suffragists corralled senators to keep them in Charleston for the up-coming tiebreaker vote. The vote of 13 to 12 for adjournment was made possible only because of a wreck on the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad that prevented one member from returning to session. By March 8, the headlines in The Intelligencer read, “Senator Block Delayed ---may decide Fate of Suffrage” and “Casey Jones Biggest Hope of Suffrage”.

Eventually word came that the Senator would arrive on a 2:30 a.m. train in Charleston. Henrietta Fulk offered to meet the train but was dissuaded by Mrs. Yost, ”quite a few years senior to Henrietta” who felt a “middle of the night meeting in a lonely train station would be most undignified behavior for a young Suffragist”.

Bloch was met instead by reporters and prominent Republican Senators after his rail trip from Chicago 310 miles distant. When asked why he had refused a private airplane, he stated that he knew he could make the trip in time and indeed did. He had left California on Thursday and arrived early in the morning on Monday. He cast the deciding vote that day making West Virginia the 34th state to ratify the amendment to the Constitution.

In a telegram to Lena Yost, Chairwoman of the Ratification Committee of the WVESA, Carrie Catt, the national suffrage leader stated:

“Suffrage is won. The words are simple but thrill as few words can do. The people who have followed the course of woman’s suffrage from outside with indifference or small understanding of what has been at stake will have no comprehension of the real message which the West Virginia victory carries to women. To us it means that the nation is won, that the seventy year struggle is over, that the women are enfranchised American Woman”.

The women celebrated and then continued their struggle in Delaware, Washington, and Oklahoma. Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment. The deciding vote was cast by a young Senator who was directed by a telegram from his mother to vote FOR the ratification.

Feb. 25, 2007