Last updated: May 21, 2020
Article
Maud Malone: Suffragists Honing Their Skills
https://www.loc.gov/item/2014680144/
On Tuesday afternoons Maud and her suffragettes continued to hold open air meetings in Madison Square Park. As crowds grew, Maud and her team continued collecting a growing number of signatures from men supporting votes for women. Slowly more women tried out open air speaking to a crowd of male voters.[1] “I will admit that I was a great deal shocked when I first thought of women taking part in open-air meetings,” said Mrs. Belle Grey Taylor, one of the women clubbers, “but really it is what we say and how we say it, not where that is of importance.”[2]
Women speakers honed their skills at creating speeches designed to change the feelings men had about women’s equality and voting rights, rather than speeches focusing just on intellectual arguments. “Women are taking their places in every calling and profession,” speaker Lydia Kingsmill Commander would say, “and it is now essential that they should have a right to take a part in the government…Women are no longer to be considered little tootsey-wootseys, who have nothing to do but to look pretty. They are determined to take an active part in the community and look pretty too.” Maud stated: “… I find two undercurrents of feeling, not reason, in the man in the street against equal pay. One is that it hurts their pride to know a woman is getting as much as a man. Another is that they dislike the idea of woman being independent of men…The bedrock of the objection to [women’s] suffrage is feeling, not reason, the only way to get to him is through his feelings.”[3]
With this fact in mind, Maud perfected her question and answer skills so that her session often resulted in furious debates breaking out across the audience of men, both pro and anti-women’s suffrage. “That’s one of the best things about our street meetings.” Maud said, “They start little street meetings all around the rim of the crowd. Sometimes I’ve left half a dozen orators all talking woman suffrage, for or against. That’s six meetings a night without a hall rent.”[4]
Notes:
[1] “Suffragette speaks for women’s rights” The Evening Telegram [New York] January 10, 1908. “Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, an English Suffragist who has been touring the United States in the cause of the ballot for her sex made a farewell speech at a meeting today at Madison Square Park. This was the second outdoor meeting held under the asupices of the Harlem Equal Rights League. Maud Malone President of the League, presided. The audience composed of a hundred men and fifty women.
“Suffragettes Rally: Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson and other Spar with Madison Square Crowd” New York Daily Tribune January 11, 1908. “Miss Harriett Keyser mounted the stand to say that there had been a lot of talk lately about open air meetings not being respectable but she considered the good cause insured respectability.”
“Suffrage in a cold wind” The New York Times January 15, 1908. “Miss Helen Hoy, a young woman lawyer made a serious speech which was received with attention.”
“Suffragettes Rally: Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson and other Spar with Madison Square Crowd” New York Daily Tribune January 11, 1908. “Miss Harriett Keyser mounted the stand to say that there had been a lot of talk lately about open air meetings not being respectable but she considered the good cause insured respectability.”
“Suffrage in a cold wind” The New York Times January 15, 1908. “Miss Helen Hoy, a young woman lawyer made a serious speech which was received with attention.”
“Mrs. Hoy abuses the men” New York Daily Tribune, January 22, 1908. “There were about a half dozen speakers, including Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, Miss Keyser, Miss Maud Malone, and Mrs. B. Borrmann Wells.”
[2] “The Women are divided on outdoor talks” New York Times January 3, 1908.
[3] “Suffragettes hope to capture country for equal rights” The New York Herald, March 5, 1908.
[4] “Men she can’t reason with: Maud Malone’s Street Canvas for Suffrage” The Sun [New York] December 10, 1908.