Suffer the ladies part 1
In 1901, Carrie Nation led the fight for woman’s Suffrage by chopping up saloons in Kansas in 1901. Leading hundreds of ladies in her ‘ Home Defense’ Army, she rollicked and rolled across the state smashing bottles and barrels and leaving taverns in tatters in ruins and thirsty tipplers in pain.
Often, she would tell the ladies, “You don’t know how much joy you will have until you begin to smash, smash, smash.”
Carrie nation’s battle cry was a forerunner of things to come. Her anti-saloon campaign in Topeka, Kansas was an opening shot in the fight for Woman’s Suffrage as well as for Prohibition.
In Lake County men raised a glass in the taverns with never a thought for National Prohibition twenty years away. Their thoughts were elsewhere. May 11, 1911, the Lakeport Record reported on the doings of reigning World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Jack Johnson. The champ was in London, spending some of the money he had earned in the prize ring. ‘ Jack Johnson is spending money like a Pittsburg millionaire. He has ordered an expensive motor car, a bass violin, and a diamond necklace for his wife. The necklace is estimated at an expenditure of twelve thousand dollars. On his return from London, he struck the suffragette question head on.’
Suffragette ladies boiled when they read Johnson’s opinion of women.
Jack Johnson said, “When the time comes that men ain’t able to run businesses, women ought to put on pants and make a living for the men. I never give my seat to a suffragette in a car. They want the same rights as men, Let them undergo the same chances. If women had the rule, men would work from six in the morning until midnight… and then they wouldn’t get any rest as women would chew the rag the rest of the time. If women had their way there would be no music halls, races, or airplanes. Anything they couldn’t do themselves, they wouldn’t let the men do. If they got the power, they would have men fighting one another. Show me a wise woman, who ever invented anything. Show me a smart suffragette capable of anything but to air up malicious mischief and stonethrowing raids on parliament and I will swim back to the United States.”
The fact the short article appeared as an ordinary news item, along with several other news about what was happening on that ordinary day, literally shouts with what wasn’t said by the women. What their great granddaughters, a hundred and fifty years later, would have declared about such male unawareness can be imagined. That’s the way it was in 1911.
Although the Suffrage movement started in New Zealand in 1893, it wasn’t until after the First World War in 1918 that women began getting close to getting their right to the vote. Seven decades later, by 1994, women voted in all parts of the world.
Woman’s Suffrage in Lake County began, in 1874, with an odd compromise. Women had the right to run for school-related offices but they couldn’t vote for anything else, not even for dog- catcher. During the Presidential contest, between William Jennings Bryant and William McKinley, the national debate over Free Silver stirred passions in Lake County. Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman passed through Lake County’s towns to champion the cause of woman’s rights and speak for the woman’s vote and they left their mark on Lake County’s citizens. The time seemed right so Woman’s Suffrage was placed on the ballot.
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Parrie nation’s battle cry was a forerunner of things to come. Ler antisaloon campaign in Topeka, Nansas was an opening shot in the fight for Woman’s yuffrage as well as for Srohibition.