"The Nonsense Of It" was a circular published circa 1870 and written by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911). Among his many roles, Higginson was an abolitionist, author, Unitarian minister, and for two years, a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives representing the 1st Middlesex District. Beginning in the 1850s, he was also one of the leading male advocates for women’s suffrage. The displayed publication shows us a glimpse into his views. The circular is presented in a list format with 16 reasons why women should not vote, followed by Higginson’s rebuttal of those reasons. A few are transcribed below:
3. “The polls are not decent places for woman.” No place is decent from which women are excluded. Shall we exclude women from the railroad cars, because the smoking-car is apt to be a dirty place? When a man takes his wife daughters into the cars, their presence brings decency. It will be the same at the polls.
6. “Women would only vote as their husbands or fathers do.” Many women have no husbands and no living fathers. If they have, and vote as these men do, there will be no quarrel. If they vote differently – as they are very likely to do on questions of temperance, religion, and the right to control their own property or their own children, – then this objection falls to the ground.
10. “I should not wish to hear my wife speak in Town-meeting.” Nor would she like to hear you, unless you said something better worth saying than most of the talk against Woman Suffrage. But you are often willing to pay other men’s wives to sing in public, and if a woman may properly uplift to sing nonsense, why not to speak sense?
12. “Women are too busy to vote.” Why not say, “Men are too busy to vote?” Men are apt to claim that their own day’s work is harder than that of their wives.
This circular presents rather progressive views for the 1870s! And it is also important to note that women didn’t receive the right to vote until the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920, so this circular was produced fifty years prior to women achieving the right to vote.
The other displayed item was published in 1917, only three years prior to 19th Amendment. Displayed together, these two items emphasize just how long it took for suffrage to pass. The Woman Suffrage Year Book was published by the National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company and was compiled to provide an accurate and up-to-date recording suffrage statistics. The yearbook is displayed open to the Massachusetts page in the section titled “The Progress of Woman Suffrage Measures in State Legislatures.” It tracks all of the suffrage measures from the first petition presented to the legislature in 1849 to the Suffrage Amendment being passed in the House and Senate in 1915 (before it was submitted to referendum and defeated).
These two items will be on display in our reading room through March 28. And while you’re here, be sure to check out the two other cases in the library that are displaying materials highlighting women’s history, including some resources related to the Irish “Mill Girls” of Lowell. And for even more women’s history content, check out this previous blog post on a 1900s pamphlet titled, “Why Women Should Vote.”
Elizabeth Roscio
Preservation Librarian
