Women are Children: Don't Let Them Vote

by Stephen J. Gertz

"The Militant" by G.T. (?), c. 1910-1912.

This political cartoon, in ink and watercolor, was likely inspired by and in sympathy with the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League (1908-1918) which opposed granting women the vote in Parliamentary elections within the United Kingdom.

The same sort of battle against women's suffrage was occurring simultaneously in the United States, ongoing since the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 proclaimed voting rights for women.

Here, a little girl is arrested by two bemused policemen. She's in tears holding a can of oil, the prime suspect of arson to the house ablaze at right in the background.  On the house's fence the girl has chalked the demand, "Voats fer Wimmen."

The message is clear: English domestic life is threatened by immature women demanding the vote. Militants are particularly irresponsible and dangerous; the whole of society will go up in flames if women stuff the ballot box with their foolishness. A more condescending view of the issue is difficult to imagine. It was not, however, unusual. Casting women suffragettes as little children was a standard weapon in the anti-suffragette arsenal.

In the United States, a similar anti-suffragette theme was expressed at the very same time by Ten Little Suffragettes, a scarce eleven-page comic based upon the folk-song, Ten Little Indians. Ten little girls in pinafores carry protest signs supporting women's suffrage but are undone by their pre-pubescent behavior until only one remains and, petulant, she breaks her doll's head.

That women are children and incapable of making informed decisions about things they care about is a sentiment that remains amongst many to this day. Why should adults cede power to emotionally labile kids?

Particularly female children who are now increasingly dominating college enrollment, often out-earning their husbands and boyfriends, and are members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Cabinet.

Next thing you know, there'll be a female President of the United States. Somehow, the United States will survive - though a segment of the male voting population may feel their manhood whither and retract into their gut to disappear with their last vestige of superiority in everything except, perhaps, the ability to fix a toaster - a skill that many men have yet to master, this writer included whose grand philosophy regarding broken small household appliances boils down to, Buy a new one.
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[ANTI-SUFFRAGETTE ORIGINAL CARTOON]. G.T. [?]. The Militant. [London?]: c. 1910-1912. 39 x 35 cm original ink and watercolor drawing.
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Image courtesy of John Drury Rare Books, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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Of related interest:

Ten Little, Nine Little, Eight Little Suffragettes...(And Then There Were None).
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The First and Most Important American Political Cartoon Comes to Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

By Benjamin Franklin
From the Pennsylvania Gazette, May 9, 1754.

On May 9, 1754, the Pennsylvania Gazette, a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin and the most successful in the American colonies, featured a cartoon by Franklin with accompanying text  by him that rallied the American colonies to unite and defend against the French in the looming French and Indian War. It was the first time that the colonies were asked to act as one.

That issue is among the rarest pieces of all early American history, the most ephemeral of ephemera. The only known surviving copy of that issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette lies in the Library of Congress. But another copy has surfaced and will be auctioned at Heritage Auctions Historical Manuscripts Signature® Auction September 12-14, 2011 in Beverly Hills, CA. It is estimated to sell for $100,000 - $200,000. There is no reserve. The estimate may be conservative. This is major, major offering, the only copy to ever come to auction and quite possibly the last.

The cartoon, Join, or Die, would, in 1765, be republished in the September 21st issue  (its only issue) of the Constitutional Courant as a clarion-call against the Stamp Act. calling for the unification of the colonies in their struggle for justice from Great Britain. In 1774 Paul Revere altered the cartoon to fit the masthead of the Massachusetts Spy.

"This rare and historic newspaper holds the earliest publication of the first and most celebrated editorial cartoon in American history," says Sandra Palomino, director of historical manuscripts at Heritage Auctions.

In the cartoon, the snake represents the the colonies, eight individual sections labeled with abbreviations for New York, New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Vermont, North Carolina and South Carolina. There was, at the time, a long-held superstition (with roots in the legend of Osiris)  that held that a snake cut to pieces would come back to life if the pieces were put together before sunset. Separate, they are inert and impotent. United, they are active,  and powerful. Delaware and Georgia were omitted, for reasons that remain unclear.

The image, redrawn, was later co-opted by each side during the American Civil War.

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Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions, with our thanks.

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