Just Finished Reading: The Woman’s Hour – The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss (FP: 2018) [340pp] 

 

Just one more State would do it. Ratification of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was only, so they thought, weeks away. But Tennessee was going to be a hard nut the crack. Most of the prior States had been Northern and the last few States had voted not to ratify. If Tennessee failed to vote in favour of the woman’s vote that could be the end of things for years – if not forever. It was all or nothing. With the stakes being so high the pro-vote camp brought in their biggest hitters. They were opposed, likewise, by the most famous (or infamous) and most dangerous in the anti-vote camp: other women. The site of Nashville, that August 1920, was going to be the location of an epic fight between the irresistible force on one side and an immovable object on the other. Tempers would flare, accusations made of bribery, threats and intimidation, calls to honour, history and God would be made publicly, in the Press and in private. Finally, after years of work in the background, months of preparation and days of haranguing local politicians in all came down to a handful of votes in the Tennessee state house.  

Although I knew something of the women's fight for the right to vote in the UK around World War One, I wasn’t too familiar with the fight in the US. This book certainly filled that hole in my knowledge and then some. Not having much more than a passing knowledge of the American political system (and even more so how it was constituted in the 1920’s) I was unaware at just how difficult it was for women to get the vote – first an Amendment to the US Constitution would need to be arranged through Congress – this took YEARS to even get this far – and then two thirds of the States would need to ratify it before it became Federal law. As you can imagine this was a long drawn out and complex thing to accomplish – and that was without an active and growing opposition to the very idea of women voting which is one thing that actually really confuses me. 

In many ways I am a simple (or simplistic) thinker. To me a democracy is where voters cast their ballot for the person they wish to represent them in whatever flavour of representative government they have decided on. For it to be an actual democracy the vote should be available to everyone who resides in that country over a certain age (18 seems reasonable in most cases) and without any other qualification – with very few and very specific exceptions. Essentially if you’re an adult you get a vote – end of story. The idea that a system can call itself a democracy and, at the same time, restrict the vote to a sub-set of the population seems to me on the face of it nonsensical. To deny the vote to half the adult population calls into question the legitimacy of the entire system. But as ratification crept ever nearer (or so it seemed) arguments against the female vote became ever more strident – especially from women themselves (something I have never, and still do not having read this book, understood). Of course, all of the old arguments were raised in Tennessee – that women were not emotionally or intellectually fitted to political discourse or debate, that politics would in some way ‘sully’ women, that voting would make women barren (I kid you not) and that politically inclined women would leave their husbands and families or never start them in the first place and that ultimately allowing women the vote would inevitably lead to the downfall of civilisation.  

Interestingly (for me at least) was a southern ‘twist’ on the whole debate. It was put forward that allowing women to vote would call into question the honour of southern manhood and result in a petticoat government (hilariously some of the more outrageous proponents for the vote demonstrated that they were no longer wearing petticoats), furthermore there was the explosive issue of ‘States Rights’ and the imposition of unwished for laws and restrictions from the Federal government which carried the unpleasant reminder of imposed Reconstruction after the Civil War (something else that confounds me), finally the argument was put forward by the anti-vote faction that allowing women to vote would, by implication, allow BLACK women to vote and that the inevitable backlash across the South would force Washington to intervene. Better for everyone simply to let the Amendment die and for everyone to forget about it! 

To say that I learnt a lot from this detailed account of the final days to ratification of the 19th Amendment would be an understatement. Although I knew (or at least recognised) a few names – mostly on the pro-vote side and some leading politicians of the age – most of the people presented in this book were new to me as was the lengthy and convoluted process to get anything done. I was struck by the similar, often underhand, methods and tactics used in the fight to the present debacle in American politics we see on our TV screens (or on YouTube in my case) that would not be out of place in either the 1920’s or 2020’s. There’s a LOT pack into these pages and the only slight criticism I would have was that it was a little TOO detailed (or just maybe a little too unfamiliar to a non-American) for a light read, so I did struggle with it at times. But if you want to know how women finally got the vote in the USA this is most definitely a good place to start. Recommended.