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This chapter describes the significant rise in sympathy for women's suffrage amongst Conservatives from the 1880s. It explains how far Conservative suffragism is in common with Liberal suffragists, and to what extent did they develop a distinctively Conservative rationale for women's enfranchisement. Conservatives argued that over the years women had demonstrated a far more genuine demand for the vote than the unenfranchised men; this would justify incorporating them into a bill as a counter-weight to the additional working-class males. The advantages for the Conservatives in a compromise of this kind had been demonstrated in 1885 in the deal between the Tory-dominated House of Lords and the Liberal government. By 1914 the Conservative members appeared to have become at least as pro-suffrage as their Liberal counterparts.

Women played an important and in some ways distinctive role in the British anti-suffrage movement, though many female ‘antis’ were reluctant to take an active part in public campaigning. It could be argued plausibly before 1914 that the majority of ‘ordinary’ women did not want the parliamentary vote. Anti-suffragists' prominent role within the largest non-political women's organizations suggests their views were closely attuned to mainstream female opinion on desirable gender roles. Anti-suffrage beliefs were varied in origin and diverse in expression. The new approaches which have shaped revisionist histories of suffragism in recent years are of equal relevance to understanding the complex history of its female opponents. These women's ideas formed part of an extended debate on the Woman Question, rather than merely over the franchise issue. Suffragists and female anti-suffragists found much common ground, drawing from the same developing spectrum of ideas around gender and citizenship. The chapter concludes with a summary of the book's structure and contents.

Despite its considerable achievements, the WNASL was handicapped by limited funding and lack of direct parliamentary influence. Meanwhile, the Men's League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, founded in December 1908, suffered from weak organization and political complacency. In 1910, the way was prepared for a full-scale merger of the two organizations. This proved an unexpectedly difficult process as male and female leaders vied for influence over procedures and policies. The WNASL commitment to promoting women's public service in local government was a major stumbling block. There were also conflicts over the name, constitution, and administrative arrangements of the new National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, finally launched in December 1910. The chapter provides a detailed analysis of the formation and development of the NLOWS, focusing particularly upon gender relations, but also investigating propaganda methods and local branch-building across Britain. Despite some setbacks, female activism remained vital to organized anti-suffragism.

This final chapter weighs up the extent to which anti-suffrage hopes of protecting and reinforcing distinctive gender roles were matched by developments in public life in the inter-war years. The post-war careers of former anti-suffrage leaders illustrate their new opportunities for gendered public service. Gender continuity and change are evaluated in relation to parliamentary politics and government, before turning to the evolution of the non-political women's movement. This retrospective survey prepares the way for conclusions on the women anti-suffragists' long-term historical importance. Women leaders were always at the heart of organized anti-suffragism. Their role was often distinctive and sometimes creative. Anti-suffragism was a women's social cause, and found widespread support within the British women's movement as well as among the female public. The histories of suffragism and anti-suffragism are closer than has often been assumed. Though anti-suffrage women failed to hold back democracy, they succeeded in giving voice to important currents of conservative opinion.

Mencken's column, “The Free Lance”, was published daily in the Baltimore Evening Sun from 1911 to 1915. Mencken became a controversial local figure, taking on such issues as medicine, literature, prostitution, immigrants, the American language, reform, and suffragism. Mencken's columns on Baltimore's public health issues forced him to consider the plight of the city's African-American population, and he began to display a new sensitivity towards the race that he had not shown in his book, Men Versus the Man.

The achievements of the Victorian suffragists have been underrated. Since their success preceded the militant phase it obviously has major implications for the significance attributable to it; when the WSPU was founded in 1903 it was in some ways a symptom of the improving fortunes of suffragism rather than simply a cause. This chapter complements this thesis by putting the domestic movement in the context of international suffragism. It seeks to demonstrate how the enfranchisement of women in New Zealand and Australia, and to a lesser extent the United States, advanced the cause in Britain by discrediting some of the alarmism of the Antis and lending credibility to the suffragist case. The accumulation of experience from abroad was very good for morale; indeed, by the early 1900s it had created a sense of momentum and inevitability in suffragist circles.

This chapter describes the fluctuations in Liberal support for women's suffrage. After the initial, and largely Liberal, launch of the suffrage campaign in the 1860s, a number of supporters who had been attracted to the cause, partly by sheer respect for John Stuart Mill, retracted, and, as a result, the debate over votes for women became an argument within the ranks of Liberalism. What made the relationship between Liberalism and suffragism so complicated were the inconclusive attempts by Liberals to weigh the significance of the growing support for the cause expressed by Conservatives; in the process questions of principle became entangled with considerations of party advantage. The prolonged confrontation between the government and the suffragists had not been wholly barren of results. It established that votes for women could not be treated as a question of principle but had to be translated into a form acceptable to the governing party.

This chapter approaches suffragism through the perspective of its opponents. It shows the fitful nature of organized anti-suffragism and emphasizes that its chief efforts came too late in the day to offer any effective check to the long-term social and political trends which worked in the suffragists' favour. It also underlines the fundamental flaws in anti-suffragism, notably its attempt to combine male Antis with female Antis who were often feminists. As late as 1912 the Antis themselves faced as great a crisis as the suffragists. They were finding it difficult to obtain speakers and to maintain local branches; defection and disillusionment especially among female members weakened the organization; and even the defeat of the Conciliation Bill could not obscure the minority status of Anti-Suffragism in the Commons.

This chapter describes the renewed emphasis and promotion of non-militant suffragism. By seeking a more democratic approach to suffragism, a left-wing alliance, and the mobilization of working-class men and women Sylvia Pankhurst heralded a more realistic strategy. The key development in this period consists in the expansion of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the shifts in its political tactics in 1912. Important trends in the explanation for the eventual outcome of the campaign is highlighted: while militant suffragism was diminishing before 1914, suffragism expanded significantly; this growing movement was moving in the opposite direction to the WSPU; and that suffragism began belatedly to cross the class barrier and to develop into something like a mass movement which was more difficult for the Asquith government to ignore. The changes during 1912 to 1914 proved to be complicated, and the war interrupted the process before the new strategy had been fully tested.

This chapter completes the re-evaluation of suffragism by examining the extent to which the non-militant campaign expanded into a mass movement, the significance of the alliance between the Labour Party and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and the latter's attempt to develop a working-class base during the last two and a half years before the outbreak of war. It is here, rather than in the better-known suffragette campaigns, that the central explanation for the eventual success of the women's movement lies. The suffragists had got what they wanted: a government bill which included women and was therefore almost certain to become law. This was especially true since the conference had got over the long-standing political obstacle by incorporating wives into the electorate. After straining over much more limited proposals for decades, the politicians had found it easier to swallow a truly democratic measure covering 8.4 million women.

This chapter takes a look at the networks of feminists and their international movement, describing the wave of activism that spread in 1912, and looking at the strong anxiety over the increasing ambitions of women. It then discusses the public debates on suffragism and feminism, the silencing of The Freewoman: A Humanist Weekly and the possible changes made to the Poetry magazine. Finally, the chapter studies the avant-garde journal Camera Work, the roles of women in modernist literary history and the modernist decades that followed 1912.

This chapter looks at the variety of causes Irwin was involved in, from animal rights to suffragism to pacifism. The chapter reviews the anti-trust movement led by Theodore Roosevelt and blossoming during Woodrow Wilson’s push for progressivism. Irwin’s immunity to anti-immigrant sentiment because of her Scottish roots is discussed. Her reason for opposition to the new Actors Equity Association is covered. As the calls for suffragism grow, Irwin lends her voice to the cause, as do other actress suffragists, including Mary Shaw and Lillian Russell. She urges Woodrow Wilson to appoint her as “Secretary of Laughter.” Through it all, she stresses the strong connection between women and humor and her belief that women have a greater sense of humor than men do.

This chapter follows May Irwin’s personal and public life from 1915 to her last performance of the “Frog Song” at a Mark Twain centennial celebration in 1935 followed by her retirement to the Thousand Islands and her death in 1937. The author then analyzes the five interconnected strategies that Irwin used to maintain success, including her use of domesticity and its connection to the private sphere/public sphere argument in feminism. She also looks at how Irwin embodied the American myth of success and concludes that Irwin’s most skillful balance of shifting identities was in her performance of the coon song. Irwin unconsciously embodied the combination of love and envy that critic Eric Lott has found in the dominant white culture’s attempt at black cultural appropriation.

This chapter examines the woman suffrage movement during the outbreak of war in Europe. Contradictions and upheaval related to the war marred the last three years of the suffrage campaign in New York. Most suffragists and anti-suffragists turned their attention from suffragism to patriotism, war preparedness, or pacifism between August 1914 and April 1917, when the United States entered the war. The movement, which previously faced divisions among members of its rank and file over tactics and strategies related to women's enfranchisement, now divided along new lines of patriotism and militarism. Sensitive to citizenship rights and responsibilities, most suffragists felt compelled to choose a position in response to the war. Nevertheless, they insisted on keeping their campaign before the public, most often linking suffrage with patriotism to highlight their worthiness for full citizenship.

The period 1912–15 saw the Third Home Rule Bill crisis, and was a momentous one in Irish history. Ireland moved from the prospect of a new unity and autonomy to the threat of partition and even civil war. The stakes in the crisis were major. The issues were of great complexity. In Exiles (1912–15), Joyce addresses them. The two major male principals represent subtly modulated versions of two distinct Irish cultures, one British-, one Irish-identified. Liberal English and Irish nationalist ‘one nation’ thought hoped the two cultures would unite. Conservative and Unionist ‘two nation’ thought insisted they could not. Joyce finally, reluctantly espouses the ‘two nation’ view, but understands it tragically. However, in Bertha, the woman in the play, he recognizes another interest, that of Irishwomen, excluded from the crisis, but powerfully represented by suffragism. In the end, Joyce identifies his thought for the Irish future with Irishwomen and their `immunity’ from history.

Wilkinson's involvement in the women's movement is crucial to understanding her political trajectory. At the level of her ideas, Wilkinson developed a gendered critique of pre-war British socialism. She sought to fuse democratic suffragism and Labour politics. With the war, both her socialism and her gender politics radicalised and fused into a Marxist feminism centred around the achievements of the early Soviet state and admiration for Kollontai. After quitting the CPGB, her criticisms of middle-class feminists mellowed but strongly defended protective legislation against equalitarian feminists. Over the course of the 1920s, she became more focused on women's reforms rather than revolution. Serving on the NEC constrained her gender politics, especially over family allowances and birth control, alienating herself from even Labour women activists over these matters. She became closer to the Time and Tide circle of Bloomsbury feminism. The transnational dimension introduced anti-fascism into the mix of Wilkinson's feminism though ultimately a drift and de-radicalisation of her gender politics occurred. This specific loss of radicalism helped to prepare the major threshold in her politics in 1940. Thus, Wilkinson's gender politics was a distinctive part of her political journey and was actively constitutive of all its phases.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's primary goal, which is to understand the movement for women's rights from the point of view of the women who opposed their enfranchisement in New York State. Recovering a clearer understanding of attitudes regarding women's power, as well as the meaning of the vote to women of the time, more accurately illuminates any study of women's rights movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book analyzes activities at the local and state levels, and those that connected New York State to the national perspective, in an effort to clarify the importance of anti-suffragism for the suffrage movement, as well as for the movement for women's rights. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter explores the earliest attempts by conservative women to organize anti-suffrage activity. It was not until Susan B. Anthony and other suffragists conducted state tours in preparation for the New York State Constitutional Convention that anti-suffragists surprised suffragists by establishing temporary organizations to prevent the removal of the word “male” from the state constitution, and presented their views in opposition to enfranchisement and the protection of their existing rights. Their rhetoric developed out of the tradition of male anti-suffrage rhetoric, but the women articulated their own views of opposition to enfranchisement. Women who established these short-lived organizations laid the foundation for the women who established organizations in the next period of anti-suffrage.