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Challenging Years: The Memoirs of Harriot Stanton Blatch
1940. No Edition Remarks. 347 pages. Pictorial dust jacket over blue cloth. Newspaper clipping stuck to rear free endpaper. Black and white photographic plates throughout. Binding remains firm. Pages and plates have light tanning and foxing throughout. Pencil inscription to front free endpaper. Boards have light shelf-wear with corner bumping. Slight crushing to spine ends. Clipped jacket has heavy edgewear with areas of loss, heavy tears, chips, and creasing. Light tanning to spine and edges. Wear marks and foxing overall.
347 pages, Library Binding
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About the author
Harriot Stanton Blatch
38 books6 followersHarriot Eaton Stanton Blatch (January 20, 1856 – November 20, 1940) was an American writer, suffragist, and the daughter of pioneering women's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
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August 14, 2024
A very interesting book. What I really enjoyed was learning about the American women's suffrage movement from a different perspective; the previous book I read was focused on Alice Paul's leadership, while this one was, of course, focused on Harriot Blatch's, and I was able to see in this book places where Blatch disagreed with Paul's decisions and explained her reasonings, making my perspective on the movement more multifaceted. I found the beginning of the book, the first two parts or so, rather dull and the language sort of confusing, but once Blatch began to focus on her work for women's suffrage, my attention was grabbed, and things ceased to be boring (except for some of the long sections that focused on what the Senate was doing, step by step). I certainly recommend this book to all people interested in learning more about the American women's suffrage movement. Blatch was an admirable tactician and leader - although I have to say, I found her a bit conservative in some senses, and preferred what I learned of Alice Paul's strategies to hers. Yet, at other times, I found her more wise, likely due to the influence on her of growing up under the auspices of her mother Elizabeth Cady Stanton and having that source of feminism so close and so easily consulted. By wise, I mean in her analyses of politics (very practical and sound) and judgments of which courses of action to take. What's also fascinating (more in a negative sense, alas) about this book is that reading it, you really do not get a sense of the danger and physical suffering scores of women in this movement went through to get the vote - there is, for example, absolutely no mention of hunger strikings, that I can remember (and if there is, it is insignificant enough for a person to easily forget it), which is a great disadvantage to this book. On a positive note, Blatch's writings on protective legislation for women workers - and how unwise and disadvantageous it is - are eminently sensible, and I'm glad to have read them, as, reading Rheta Childe Doore's book What Eight Million Women Want, I was almost convinced of the opposing viewpoint, but was left with a sense of unease and disquiet, and I see why now. Another book I read recently, Concerning Women by La Folette, also discoursed on how politically unsound and harmful protective legislation for women workers is, so, together, they easily prodded me into discarding any sense of positiveness I had held towards the idea.
____________
“The Congressional Union was now referring to the Bristow-Mondell Suffrage Amendment, as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, claiming that it had been drafted by her in 1875. I thought it time to enlighten the younger generation of suffragists on the history of the Suffrage Amendment.
To state that the Amendment was originally introduced in 1875 challenged the political sense of women. Why should our leaders in the past be proclaimed so slow and dull as never to have seen the meaning of reconstruction until eight years after that period in American history was closed? They thought in terms of a Federal Amendment right after the Civil War, first insiting that women be enfranchised with the Negro, and then when the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were adopted without recognizing woman’s right to the ballot, they demanded a Sixteenth Amendment.
In 1869, a Sixteenth Amendment was introduced by George W. Julian of Indiana at the request of my mother and Miss Anthony, and read: “The right of suffrage in the United States shall be based on citizenship and shall be regulated by Congress, and all citizens of the United States, whether native or naturalized, shall enjoy this right equally without any distinction or discrimination whatever founded on sex.” But it made little headway.
Then in 1878, when Susan B. Anthony was on a lecture tour in the West, Senator Sargent, at the instigation of my mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, introduced a Woman Suffrage Amendment patterned after the Fifteenth Amendment, which had been drafted by Charles Sumner. To follow an accepted form was wise statesmanship. The mere wording gave rise to no discussion. It read “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” My mother spoke for this Amendment at the Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Associated held in Washington at the time, and at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and wrote Miss Anthony all of the details. It has always seemed to me a cruel fate that they could not have been in Washington together on this historic occasion.
The Amendment was introduced year after year in this form and was called the Sixteenth Amendment until 1913 when the Income Tax Amendment was adopted.
To call the Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment belied history. It should have been called the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Amendment to honor my mother who made the first public demand for woman suffrage in 1848; or the Stanton-Anthony Amendment to honor those two noble women who worked so devotedly side by side.” (247-9)
“By this time it was clear to me that President Wilson was an anti-suffragist, but sufficient of a politician to wish to hide the fact. To the club women who called upon him, he talked of his ‘passion for local government,’ and made that passion the moving principle of his opposition to dealing with woman suffrage by national amendment. But his devotion to State rights was a mere veneer covering his hatred of political freedom for women. Had any of his noble phrases on democracy rested on the slightest recognition that women are one-half the people, then in his speech recommending to suffragists State action, he would have made his attitude clear as a citizen of New Jersey towards the political freedom of women. But he was wholly silent upon the referendum which was to take place in New Jersey in the autumn of 1915. Had Woodrow Wilson been sincere in offering Party obligation as an excuse for inaction, then he would not have slid behind the respect due his office, and declared it was not proper for him to submit himself to questioning.” (249-50)
“By this time the World War was well underway and its repercussions were being felt in this country. We of the Women’s Political Union felt that it had a definite relation to our work, that it made more important than ever the enfranchisement of women. Editorially in the Women’s Political World, I pointed out that women bear the heaviest burden of war, that children, the wards of women, are the chief sufferers in a moderate war, that war is caused because the masculine ideas of physical force are not balanced in government by the ideals and practical common sense of women.” (251)
What’s interesting is that, unlike the English, the American suffragists did not call a “truce” once WWI began. There’s one understandable reason - the war wasn’t brought onto American soils, unlike the English, who were bombed - but I think that’s not the only reason.
“Had our hopes, our plans, and our efforts to have women assume their share of responsibility in guiding international relations been taken seriously, perhaps the War of 1939 would not be a reality. But the enfranchisement of women was all the limited vision of the post-war years could comprehend. The full cooperation of women in world affairs remains for the future even in 1940.” (252) A hint of looking beyond the vote (for suffragists are said to have limited their vision exclusively to the vote at the expense of feminism/women’s liberation).
“This woman was not discussing the value of shorter working hours, she was pointing out that ‘equal pay’ cannot rule for an entire group of workers when restrictions apply to part of the group and not to the whole body.
We meet here, not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact. Pay is not equal, and cannot be, where conditions are wholly unequal. Protection for the women worker means exactly what it would mean for the alien man if by law he were forbidden to work Saturday afternoon, overtime, or at night, while the citizen worker was without restriction. The alien would be cut off from advancement in every trade in which he did not by overwhelming numbers dominate the situation, he would be kept to lower grade processes, he would receive much lower pay than the unprotected worker.
What common sense would lead us to expect, in the hypothetical case of an alien man, has happened for the woman worker. Oddly enough she has not herself asked for this protection, but it has been urged very largely by women not of the industrial class. Women teachers, doctors, lawyers, women of leisure are the advocates of special legislation for industrial women. And yet in their own case they are entirely reasonable, and ask no favors. The woman teacher, and quite truly, insists that she works as hard and as long hours as the man in her grade of service, and on that sound foundation she builds her just demand for equal pay. Women doctors and lawyers have never asked for other than a square deal in their professions.
I became more and more convinced that industrial women must be permitted to guide their own ship, that they have knowledge enough to reach a safe harbor.” (288-9)
“I was one of the first women in this country to see the folly of and the menace to women in protective labor legislation which did not at the same time apply to men and which linked women with children. After suffrage was won, many women who had been engrossed in the suffrage campaign turned their attention to improving women’s working conditions. Their motives were good and commendable, but their knowledge of economic laws and the real needs of women was sadly lacking. They were still under the psychological handicap of ‘women first,’ and so instead of demanding better labor conditions for all workers, they grabbed what on the surface appeared to be a plum for women. They failed to see that in working for protective legislation for adult women and not also for men, they were shutting the door tight against the economic independence of women. They failed to see that although women had been enfranchised over a large part of the globe, they could never actually achieve influence until they struck off the chains of economic slavery.” (320-1)
“The idea is very generally held, that women, in consequence of our modern industrial system, are undertaking, for the first time, various kinds of arduous work. With this theory is linked the conviction that the hard work of the world was once done by men, and that our aim should be to return to those ‘good old times’ and keep women sacred from toil and dedicate their energies to maternity and culture. A survey of the past will show that those times never existed. With the development of machinery and division of labor there has come no change in the sex of toilers though there has come a change in the place where some of the world’s production is carried on. Therefore, facts force us to admit that men are not being displaced by women, but rather that every man who works at a loom or a knitting machine, every man who is working in factories where food is being produced is poaching on his sister’s domain. We must not for a moment think that unpaid housework is protected leisure, nor that a life of leisure is a reasonable aim for women. There is a given amount of labor to be done and women ought to shoulder their share.” (329-30)
“If younger women could only realize how difficult it was to win what rights we have today, they would be less indifferent to the back-to-the-home-movement which is sweeping the world. If the back-to-the-home movement flows into an ebb tide, there may not be a flood tide for a long time to come. I am convinced that women are facing a crisis today and must unite and take a definite stand to protect the rights they have won, and in saving these rights they will also save civilization.
Women can save civilization only by the broadest cooperative action, by taking part in greater numbers in government, by daring to think, by daring to be themselves. The world is calling for women of vision and courage. May the women of the world hear the call and go forward!” (335)
Huzzah! I couldn’t have said it better myself, sister. This quotation could no doubt be applied to today, too. Women don’t realize how hard it was to win the rights we do have, and they don’t realize those rights are being taken away.
____________
“The Congressional Union was now referring to the Bristow-Mondell Suffrage Amendment, as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, claiming that it had been drafted by her in 1875. I thought it time to enlighten the younger generation of suffragists on the history of the Suffrage Amendment.
To state that the Amendment was originally introduced in 1875 challenged the political sense of women. Why should our leaders in the past be proclaimed so slow and dull as never to have seen the meaning of reconstruction until eight years after that period in American history was closed? They thought in terms of a Federal Amendment right after the Civil War, first insiting that women be enfranchised with the Negro, and then when the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were adopted without recognizing woman’s right to the ballot, they demanded a Sixteenth Amendment.
In 1869, a Sixteenth Amendment was introduced by George W. Julian of Indiana at the request of my mother and Miss Anthony, and read: “The right of suffrage in the United States shall be based on citizenship and shall be regulated by Congress, and all citizens of the United States, whether native or naturalized, shall enjoy this right equally without any distinction or discrimination whatever founded on sex.” But it made little headway.
Then in 1878, when Susan B. Anthony was on a lecture tour in the West, Senator Sargent, at the instigation of my mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, introduced a Woman Suffrage Amendment patterned after the Fifteenth Amendment, which had been drafted by Charles Sumner. To follow an accepted form was wise statesmanship. The mere wording gave rise to no discussion. It read “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” My mother spoke for this Amendment at the Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Associated held in Washington at the time, and at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and wrote Miss Anthony all of the details. It has always seemed to me a cruel fate that they could not have been in Washington together on this historic occasion.
The Amendment was introduced year after year in this form and was called the Sixteenth Amendment until 1913 when the Income Tax Amendment was adopted.
To call the Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment belied history. It should have been called the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Amendment to honor my mother who made the first public demand for woman suffrage in 1848; or the Stanton-Anthony Amendment to honor those two noble women who worked so devotedly side by side.” (247-9)
“By this time it was clear to me that President Wilson was an anti-suffragist, but sufficient of a politician to wish to hide the fact. To the club women who called upon him, he talked of his ‘passion for local government,’ and made that passion the moving principle of his opposition to dealing with woman suffrage by national amendment. But his devotion to State rights was a mere veneer covering his hatred of political freedom for women. Had any of his noble phrases on democracy rested on the slightest recognition that women are one-half the people, then in his speech recommending to suffragists State action, he would have made his attitude clear as a citizen of New Jersey towards the political freedom of women. But he was wholly silent upon the referendum which was to take place in New Jersey in the autumn of 1915. Had Woodrow Wilson been sincere in offering Party obligation as an excuse for inaction, then he would not have slid behind the respect due his office, and declared it was not proper for him to submit himself to questioning.” (249-50)
“By this time the World War was well underway and its repercussions were being felt in this country. We of the Women’s Political Union felt that it had a definite relation to our work, that it made more important than ever the enfranchisement of women. Editorially in the Women’s Political World, I pointed out that women bear the heaviest burden of war, that children, the wards of women, are the chief sufferers in a moderate war, that war is caused because the masculine ideas of physical force are not balanced in government by the ideals and practical common sense of women.” (251)
What’s interesting is that, unlike the English, the American suffragists did not call a “truce” once WWI began. There’s one understandable reason - the war wasn’t brought onto American soils, unlike the English, who were bombed - but I think that’s not the only reason.
“Had our hopes, our plans, and our efforts to have women assume their share of responsibility in guiding international relations been taken seriously, perhaps the War of 1939 would not be a reality. But the enfranchisement of women was all the limited vision of the post-war years could comprehend. The full cooperation of women in world affairs remains for the future even in 1940.” (252) A hint of looking beyond the vote (for suffragists are said to have limited their vision exclusively to the vote at the expense of feminism/women’s liberation).
“This woman was not discussing the value of shorter working hours, she was pointing out that ‘equal pay’ cannot rule for an entire group of workers when restrictions apply to part of the group and not to the whole body.
We meet here, not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact. Pay is not equal, and cannot be, where conditions are wholly unequal. Protection for the women worker means exactly what it would mean for the alien man if by law he were forbidden to work Saturday afternoon, overtime, or at night, while the citizen worker was without restriction. The alien would be cut off from advancement in every trade in which he did not by overwhelming numbers dominate the situation, he would be kept to lower grade processes, he would receive much lower pay than the unprotected worker.
What common sense would lead us to expect, in the hypothetical case of an alien man, has happened for the woman worker. Oddly enough she has not herself asked for this protection, but it has been urged very largely by women not of the industrial class. Women teachers, doctors, lawyers, women of leisure are the advocates of special legislation for industrial women. And yet in their own case they are entirely reasonable, and ask no favors. The woman teacher, and quite truly, insists that she works as hard and as long hours as the man in her grade of service, and on that sound foundation she builds her just demand for equal pay. Women doctors and lawyers have never asked for other than a square deal in their professions.
I became more and more convinced that industrial women must be permitted to guide their own ship, that they have knowledge enough to reach a safe harbor.” (288-9)
“I was one of the first women in this country to see the folly of and the menace to women in protective labor legislation which did not at the same time apply to men and which linked women with children. After suffrage was won, many women who had been engrossed in the suffrage campaign turned their attention to improving women’s working conditions. Their motives were good and commendable, but their knowledge of economic laws and the real needs of women was sadly lacking. They were still under the psychological handicap of ‘women first,’ and so instead of demanding better labor conditions for all workers, they grabbed what on the surface appeared to be a plum for women. They failed to see that in working for protective legislation for adult women and not also for men, they were shutting the door tight against the economic independence of women. They failed to see that although women had been enfranchised over a large part of the globe, they could never actually achieve influence until they struck off the chains of economic slavery.” (320-1)
“The idea is very generally held, that women, in consequence of our modern industrial system, are undertaking, for the first time, various kinds of arduous work. With this theory is linked the conviction that the hard work of the world was once done by men, and that our aim should be to return to those ‘good old times’ and keep women sacred from toil and dedicate their energies to maternity and culture. A survey of the past will show that those times never existed. With the development of machinery and division of labor there has come no change in the sex of toilers though there has come a change in the place where some of the world’s production is carried on. Therefore, facts force us to admit that men are not being displaced by women, but rather that every man who works at a loom or a knitting machine, every man who is working in factories where food is being produced is poaching on his sister’s domain. We must not for a moment think that unpaid housework is protected leisure, nor that a life of leisure is a reasonable aim for women. There is a given amount of labor to be done and women ought to shoulder their share.” (329-30)
“If younger women could only realize how difficult it was to win what rights we have today, they would be less indifferent to the back-to-the-home-movement which is sweeping the world. If the back-to-the-home movement flows into an ebb tide, there may not be a flood tide for a long time to come. I am convinced that women are facing a crisis today and must unite and take a definite stand to protect the rights they have won, and in saving these rights they will also save civilization.
Women can save civilization only by the broadest cooperative action, by taking part in greater numbers in government, by daring to think, by daring to be themselves. The world is calling for women of vision and courage. May the women of the world hear the call and go forward!” (335)
Huzzah! I couldn’t have said it better myself, sister. This quotation could no doubt be applied to today, too. Women don’t realize how hard it was to win the rights we do have, and they don’t realize those rights are being taken away.
April 28, 2023
Full disclosure: I read this hoping to find content to document Blatch's involvement in the Victory Garden movement in America and Britain. If you're interested in her political career and the suffrage movement in America, definitely read this. For me, it was a slog until the last chapter, but this last chapter was very fun to read.
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