Infighting on the left.
Title
Infighting on the left.
Description
I’ve told the story of the WTUL/Wage Earners’ League suffragists at length because it resonates so loudly today.
Two camps that should have been allies dismissed one another instead of collaborating, squandering opportunities for power. 🧵💪
(Photo Kheel Center c. 1910)
Feminists were afraid of Socialism; Socialists disdained feminism as bourgeois. Sound familiar? In the years before and after the turn of the century, if they’d collaborated more, they could have benefited each other. Laboring men had votes that suffragists desperately needed, but suffragists resented these immigrant men for having the vote when educated white women didn’t.
Had women been able to vote, the mothers/daughters/sisters/wives of laboring men could have made the progressive movement stronger sooner.
But rather than find common cause against a power structure that rejected them both, they organized separately. They emphasized their differences and frustrations rather than their common ground. Rose Schneiderman, Pauline Newman, Leonora O'Reilly & more tried to break the logjam.
This small cohort of Jewish and Irish immigrant women insisted that they could be suffragists AND Socialists, feminists AND working women. That both identities and both goals mattered. I always admired their accomplishments. I didn’t realize how lonely their work. #Suffrage100
That's such a lovely compliment! I'm just taking scholars' wonderful books and breaking them into small pieces. I'll figure out a way it can live on, though. Thank you. Means a lot.Â
Two camps that should have been allies dismissed one another instead of collaborating, squandering opportunities for power. 🧵💪
(Photo Kheel Center c. 1910)
Feminists were afraid of Socialism; Socialists disdained feminism as bourgeois. Sound familiar? In the years before and after the turn of the century, if they’d collaborated more, they could have benefited each other. Laboring men had votes that suffragists desperately needed, but suffragists resented these immigrant men for having the vote when educated white women didn’t.
Had women been able to vote, the mothers/daughters/sisters/wives of laboring men could have made the progressive movement stronger sooner.
But rather than find common cause against a power structure that rejected them both, they organized separately. They emphasized their differences and frustrations rather than their common ground. Rose Schneiderman, Pauline Newman, Leonora O'Reilly & more tried to break the logjam.
This small cohort of Jewish and Irish immigrant women insisted that they could be suffragists AND Socialists, feminists AND working women. That both identities and both goals mattered. I always admired their accomplishments. I didn’t realize how lonely their work. #Suffrage100
Rachel, I really hope you have plans to gather all of this incredible information you’ve put together this year into something we can continue to consult — a book, a blog, something! It’s a labor of love, I know, but also a terrific resource!
— Christina Wolbrecht (@C_Wolbrecht) May 13, 2020
That's such a lovely compliment! I'm just taking scholars' wonderful books and breaking them into small pieces. I'll figure out a way it can live on, though. Thank you. Means a lot.Â
Creator
Daily Suffragist
Source
Date
12/05/2020
Files
Collection
Citation
Daily Suffragist, “Infighting on the left.,” Daily Suffragist, accessed April 18, 2024, https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/items/show/378.