Women in White

If you watched the State of the Union Address on Tuesday night, February 4, 2019, you must have noticed all of the women dressed in white.  The purpose was to remember those suffrage women of the past who struggled for decades to win the vote for women.

Although white is the color we most frequently associate with suffragettes, they also wore purple for loyalty and dignity; green for hope; and white for purity.

We tend to associate the Suffrage Movement with the early 1900s, perhaps because women did not gain the vote until that century.  The bill was passed in 1919; however, the final state to ratify and make the bill law was Tennessee in 1920.  Some states took a very long time to ratify, the last state being Mississippi in 1953.

Although we may remember those 20th century suffragettes in white, the movement began much earlier.  Probably the best known historic event is the Seneca Falls Convention held in 1848.  Among the five women calling that event was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who began working with Susan B. Anthony in 1851, both pictured above later in their lives.  

Kansas women were urging their rights even before Kansas had been admitted as a state.  In 1859 women sought equal rights at the Wyandotte constitutional convention, and although they were not allowed to speak, women's mere presence at the convention may have contributed to the passage of women's rights to acquire and own property and to retain equal custody of their children.  Traditional laws transferred a woman's property to her husband when she married, and in the event of divorce, men automatically gained custody of their children.   In 1861, the first state legislature granted women the right to vote in school elections, and a quarter of a century later, in 1887, Kansas women won the right to vote and to run for office in city elections.  Of course, it was men who were needed for passage of these rights, since women could only lobby and persuade from outside of the government.  

While these voting rights may seem minimal, given the fact that women were excluded from voting in state and federal elections, Kansas was seen as quite progressive for those times. 

Isaac's Inventive Imagination and the Tricycle

Lady Florence Norman, 1916 London

When a friend shared a photograph of Lady Florence Norman riding to work in London in 1916 on her motor scooter, I thought immediately of Isaac.  Although he was not alive when this suffragette received the scooter as a birthday present from her husband, the journalist and Liberal politician, Sir Henry Norman, Isaac was alive during what is considered the Golden Age of bicycling, or the era of the Bicycle Craze. 

Ad from the County Capital

Because bicycles have existed as long as the memories of most living people, we may tend to assume they were invented much earlier than they, in fact, were.  Unverified history may suggest bicycle-like inventions much earlier, but the first practical 2-wheeled bicycles resembling today's bikes date back only to the 1800s.  Therefore, they were a fairly new invention in Isaac Werner's time.  In their early years bicycles were regarded as more of a toy for adventuresome young men, too dangerous for practical use.  As paving of roads and sidewalks increased and bicycle safety improved, bicycles became more popular.

When Isaac Werner read in the newspaper about a respectable lady riding a tricycle in New York's Central Park, he began to consider the design for a tricycle suitable

Cartoon from Punch

for the prairie.  He recorded in his journal his design, altering the wheels and using knuckle joints in the manufacture.  He not only described the details of his invention in his journal, he also described the image he pictured of ladies riding their prairie bicycles to visit their neighbors, sparing them from the effort of hitching horses to wagons or buggies each time they needed to go for a visit.

[Caption for cartoon reads:  Gertrude:  "My dear Jessie, What on earth is that bicycle suit for!"  Jessie:  "Why, to wear, of course."  Gertrude:  "But you haven't got a bicycle!"  Jessie:  "No, but I've got a sewing machine!"]  Remember, you can enlarge the images by clicking on them.

Isaac's invention never went further than his imagination and the notes in his journal, but bicycles did become popular with the ladies.  Susan B. Anthony said, "I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.  It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance."  WCTU president, Frances Willard learned to ride late in life and praised the benefits of cycling, giving her own bicycle the name "Gladys."  (See "Before Carrie Nation--Prohibition in Kansas," blog archives of 9-13-2012.)

Not everyone appreciated the sight of women astride bicycles.  The story is told of male undergraduates at Cambridge University showing their displeasure about women being admitted to the university by hanging a woman in effigy in the town square.  To express further disgust with the behavior of modern women of 1897, the female effigy was astride a bicycle!

The fact that Isaac approved of women riding bicycles is no surprise.  His journal often expresses his approval and encouragement of the liberation and advancement of women.




[Welcome to all of you now visiting my blog through the link in The Pratt Tribune each week.]