Women--Rights of women

From the woman voter

Theodore Roosevelt recently spoke at Carnegie Hall on the Conservation of Motherhood and Childhood. During the course of his speech, he deviated away from this topic and additionally opined that the people should be given more power and the courts should have less. The author of this piece says that the women in attendance should have asked whether “the people” in this instance included women.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12

November bulletin

A schedule of November events to be held by the National league for the Civic Education of Women. The November 14 lecture by Arthur von Briesen on “The Influence of The Legal Aid Society upon Civic Life” is emphasized.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-11

Letter from Helen M. Bent to Theodore Roosevelt

Helen M. Bent writes to Theodore Roosevelt about his upcoming speech on “The Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood.” She would like Roosevelt to specifically bring up venereal diseases and how it threatens the lives of innocent women and children. She writes that many women’s organizations have focused on this problem for years and are frustrated since, as women with little political power, state boards of health have not done enough to address the topic.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-10-14

Manuscript regarding gender roles in society

Typed excerpt from Chapter V of Theodore Roosevelt’s Autobiography, Applied Idealism, in which he discusses gender relations and roles in society.

Collection

Dickinson State University

Creation Date

1913

Telegram from Theodore Roosevelt to Jane Addams

Theodore Roosevelt thanks Jane Addams for supporting him at the National Progressive Convention and for seconding his nomination. He hopes that women will be involved in all levels of the Progressive Party during the 1912 election and into the future.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1912-08-08

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Charles Dwight Willard

Theodore Roosevelt is delighted with the clear information in Charles Dwight Willard’s letter and wishes he could reply at length. He wants to quote Willard in an article about women’s rights and duties. Roosevelt congratulates Willard on his overwhelming victory in the municipal contest. Recalling his article on James B. McNamara’s trial, Roosevelt wishes that leaders would remember, as Willard does, that true progressives stand against brutal wrongdoing done by labor as much as that done by capital.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-11

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Mrs. Edward Droier

Theodore Roosevelt asks Mrs. Droier not to ask him to make any speeches this year, but he sends a letter on suffrage that can be read in Brooklyn and throughout the country.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1915-10-16

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to John McCann

Theodore Roosevelt mostly agrees with Father John McCann regarding his views towards peace or war with Germany. Roosevelt compares people who do not want their sons to be soldiers with those who do not want their daughters to be mothers. Roosevelt references a couple of priests he had lunch with at Oyster Bay, New York.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1915-07-10

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Florence Schloss Guggenheim

Theodore Roosevelt approves of the work being done by the Women’s Department of the National Civic Federation and discusses women’s rights. He believes the success of the movement to acknowledge women’s equality with men in political rights will be depend on its concrete results. If women do their duty better for having those rights, then they should have them. Their primary duty is in the home. If Roosevelt believed that women would not fulfill those duties well because they gained the right to vote, he would not advocate for them to have that right; just as he would not advocate for men to have political rights if he believed that their having them would take them from their prime duty of providing for their wives and families.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1916-03-29

Letter from Harriet May Mills to Theodore Roosevelt

Harriet May Mills writes Theodore Roosevelt about his upcoming speech at Carnegie Hall on the Conservation of Women and Children, stating that women cannot advocate for themselves on this subject if they cannot play a role in lawmaking. She urges Roosevelt to use his influence and make his stance on suffrage known so that New York can join California in allowing women to vote.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-10-17

Letter from Alice H. Chittenden to Theodore Roosevelt

Alice H. Chittenden writes to Theodore Roosevelt about his upcoming Carnegie Hall address on “The Conservation of the Lives of Women and Children.” She is opposed to the suffrage movement, which she knows Roosevelt supports, and wants to emphasize her believe that the conservation of women should be focused on improving economic conditions so that women need not work outside the home and can preserve their health and energy, subsequentially raising birth rates.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-10-16

Letter from Mary Emma Miller to Theodore Roosevelt

Mary Emma Miller approves of Theodore Roosevelt’s article “Race Decadence,” published in The Outlook. She shares her thoughts on women’s duties and the “blindness” of women in political leagues.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-04-19

Letter from Annie Nathan Meyer to Theodore Roosevelt

Annie Nathan Meyer wishes she had known about President Roosevelt’s recent trip to Henderson House, as it is near the preserve that she has tried to persuade Roosevelt to visit. She describes a recent “glorious experience” in the preserve. She and her husband, Alfred Meyer, will be in Washington, D.C., for the upcoming Tuberculosis Congress and hopes to visit and discuss women’s rights. The prestigious magazine, The Studio, published Meyer’s article on American artist Homer Dodge Martin.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-08-29

Letter from Robert Grant to Theodore Roosevelt

Robert Grant returns an “extraordinary screed” Roosevelt had received to him, and says that he would not honor the author with a reply. Grant writes dismissively of women’s clubs and comments on reproduction and love.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-10-28

“Independence Day” of the future

A future Fourth of July celebration is depicted where women have gained suffrage and equality. Young and old women ring a bell labeled “Equal Rights.” A notice on the bell tower states “Strike Out the Word Male.” Women emerge from underground and participate in a procession, marching under banners that state “United Order of Matinee Women” and “Higher Culture Division.” The procession passes two statues, one of a woman holding a rolling pin labeled “Erected to the Memory of the First Woman Who Wore Breeches” and the second of an eagle wearing a bonnet, labeled “The American Bird is a Hen Eagle and Lays Eggs. [?] Blake Sculp.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-07-04

A squelcher for woman suffrage

A woman is denied the opportunity to vote because she is wearing a dress and a hat that are too wide for the narrow booths labeled, “Ballots must be prepared in these booths.” A policeman is standing on the left, and, in the background, election officials are standing over the ballot box for “Election District No. 13.” Caption: How can she vote, when the fashions are so wide, and the voting booths are so narrow?

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-06-06

Puck’s presidential possibilities – No. 1, The national knife-grinder

Presidential hopeful John Sherman, wearing a tall stove-pipe hat, stands in the middle of a village street, operating a grinding wheel labeled “Nomination” and sharpening a large knife labeled “Law-Breaking Strikers.” Papers in his pocket are labeled “Speeches,” and a sign attached to his wheel states, “Please help a poor perennial aspirant to get to the White House.” Just up the street, leaning against a fence, is a man labeled “Striker.” Along the street are buildings labeled “Silverites, Womans Rights, Populists, [and] Protectionists” with people standing in windows or at the door, holding large knives to be sharpened.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-08-15

The manicure

A woman wearing a large hat smokes a cigarette and gets a manicure from a man wearing a suit. Caption: In the era of the suffragette.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1910-10-19

At the woman’s club

Print shows two fashionably dressed young women, one sitting in a chair with her left foot resting on her right knee, holding a cane and gloves, and smoking a cigarette. The other is sitting on the edge of a table, holding a paper with the word “Freedom” at the top; there is an alcoholic beverage between them. These liberated women are discussing a remark made by the husband of one of them the prior evening. Caption: “I had a row with my husband after the play, last night.” / “What about?” / “He tried to call me down for going out between the acts to see a woman.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-03-29

Letter from John Hay to Theodore Roosevelt

Secretary of State Hay would like to know if Helen Gould should be appointed to the International Congress for the Protection of Women.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-06-03