Organized: 1911
Disbanded: 1920, after passage of the Nineteenth Amendment
Preceded by: many state anti-suffrage organizations
Head: Mrs. Arthur (Josephine) Dodge
Located in: New York City with a "branch" in Washington, DC; then after 1918, in Washington, DC
Publication: Woman's Protest, reorganized as Woman's Patriot in 1918
The organization was heavily funded by brewers and distillers (who assumed that if women got the vote, temperance laws would be passed). The organization was also supported by Southern politicians, nervous that African American women would also get the vote, and by big city machine politicians.
An early pamphlet listed these reasons to oppose woman suffrage:
- BECAUSE 90% of the women either do not want it, or do not care.
- BECAUSE it means competition of women with men instead of co-operation.
- BECAUSE 80% of the women eligible to vote are married and can only double or annul their husband's votes.
- BECAUSE it can be of no benefit commensurate with the additional expense involved.
- BECAUSE in some States more voting women than voting men will place the Government under petticoat rule.
- BECAUSE it is unwise to risk the good we already have for the evil which may occur.
A satirical response to these (circa 1915) by Alice Duer Miller: Our Own Twelve Anti-suffragist Reasons
