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Woman and the Ballot : The New Illinois Law Explained.
Chicago: Chicago Savings Bank and Trust Co., [ca. 1913.] 16mo (6.25” x 3.325”), staple-bound, printed and embossed gray wrappers. 12 pp. CONDITION: Very good. An apparently unrecorded booklet, published by the Chicago Savings Bank and written by a prominent Republican lawyer and former County attorney, outlining the details of women’s newly-won—but limited—right to vote in Illinois. This rare booklet at once informs women of their new partial suffrage rights (effective Jun 26th, 1913) and advertises the Chicago Savings Bank & Trust Company to prospective female customers. The text, set off by red section titles, explains the concept of the legal right to vote; the “Offices for Which Women May Vote” under the new Illinois law; voter qualifications; voter registration; what to do about when registration is refused or challenged; how to cast a ballot; and general cautions and reminders regarding ballot security and more. The final page is devoted to “Woman and Banking.” The Illinois Presidential and Municipal Voting Act passed in large part due to the strategic leadership and lobbying of Grace Wilbur Trout (1864–1955) and the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association. Trout and her team built individual relationships with congressmen, and in 1913 a bill was introduced giving women the vote for Presidential electors and a limited array of municipal officials. After unleashing a deluge of calls, letters, and telegrams to convince the Speaker of the House to bring the bill up for a vote, and then counting heads in the House chamber and “literally fetch[ing] needed men from their residences,” the Presidential and Municipal Voting Act was passed on June 11th and signed into law on June 26th, 1913. “Women in Illinois could now vote for Presidential electors and for all local offices not specifically named in the Illinois Constitution. However, they still could not cast a vote for state representative, congressman, or governor; and they still had to use separate ballots and ballot boxes. But by virtue of this law, Illinois had become the first state east of the Mississippi to grant women the right to vote for President. National suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt wrote: ‘The effect of this victory upon the nation was astounding. When the first Illinois election took place in April, (1914) the press carried the headlines that 250,000 women had voted in Chicago. Illinois, with its large electoral vote of 29, proved the turning point beyond which politicians at last got a clear view of the fact that women were gaining genuine political power’” (Sorensen). Republican attorney Robert S. Iles (1848–1924) was born in Alexandria, Kentucky, and as a young man worked as a teacher and a South Dakota cattle ranger before becoming a lawyer in Chicago. He served as county attorney for Cook County from 1890 to 1894, and as president of the influential Hamilton Club, a Republican organization, in the 1910s. No holdings recorded in OCLC, nor do google searches locate any other examples. REFERENCES: Sorensen, Mark W. “Ahead of their Time: A brief history of woman suffrage in Illinois” at Illinois Periodicals Online.
Item #9288
Price: $550.00
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