Thursday, March 22, 1917
Combining political activism and aggressive sales promotion, today’s Saratogian is a special Woman’s Suffrage Dollar Day edition stuffed with advertisements from businesses that support women’s right to vote.
The men of New York State will decide in November whether women can vote in future elections. The suffrage referendum appears on the state ballot just two years after voters defeated a similar amendment, but the state legislature authorized a new referendum almost immediately.
“The women who are giving of their time and energies to promotion of the cause have again assumed preparation and supervision of this special supplement,” an editorial explains. The first Suffrage edition appeared in 1915.
The 1917 Suffrage edition gives prominent Saratoga County women a fresh opportunity to make the case for their right to vote.
“I believe that the responsibility of government, municipal and national, should be shared by men and women because I believe in democracy,” says Sarah Gridley Ross, the dean of Skidmore School of Arts.
“Fairness and democracy demand that if one woman in the United States has sufficient intelligence, interest and ability to participate in government, not only should she be given the opportunity to express her interest in the one recognized way, the ballot, but she should be held responsible by the government for using the power which is created by intelligent interest.
“The number of girls who complete a high school education is considerably in excess of the number of boys,” Ross notes, “Is this not a significant fact? Should not the state demand returns on its investment?”
Kate Cotter ,“the senior business woman in Saratoga Springs,” recalls that “Many times I have been interested in actions which seemed to me for the benefit of the community, and I would gladly have voted to put men in office who have the welfare of Saratoga Springs at heart.
“The number of business women here increases every year, and it seems to me they deserve an equal opportunity with the business men of expressing their opinion through the ballot concerning the management of city affairs.”
Mrs. William H. Hodgman observes that female stockholders vote on business questions, pay taxes on the property they buy with their earnings, but have no voice in how their taxes are used. “Why should men have the right to vote money from women taxpayers without their consent?” she asks.
High school teacher Harriet W. Sharpe notes that 90% of public school teachers are women. The state should “extend the suffrage to those who must teach the value and use of the suffrage,” she writes, or else “entrust this teaching to men only.”