Details
CLEVELAND, Grover. Autograph letter signed ("Grover Cleveland"), as former President, to Edward W. Bok (1863 - 1930), Princeton, 20 May 1905. 4 pages, 8vo.
CLEVELAND SNEERS AT "THESE FLOSS-COATED SPECIMENS" IN THE WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
"I am surprised," Cleveland tells Ladies Home Journal publisher Edward Bok, "to receive so many favorable (and favoring) letters touching the Women's Club article. In point of fact the exceptions number only two or three - and they are sort of mild. Some interviews have been sent to me in which prominent Club Women have rushed into print, and have justified the position you and I have taken as to the frightful danger of their influence and teaching. I regard the exhibition of the truth of these floss-coated specimens, as a very wholesome and instructive result of the publication. Some clergymen have in letters to me, expressed their approbation in the most unstinted terms...I am more convinced than ever that we are right, and that well timed additional advocacy, and resulting thoughtfulness on the part of good people, will ostensibly increase the evidence that we are right. I certainly would enjoy continuance in the thickness of the fight..." Cleveland strongly attacked the feminists in the pages of Bok's magazine, arguing that voting women would upset "a natural equilibrium" that could not be disturbed but at the cost of "social confusion and peril." The Suffragette movement only grew stronger, however, over the course of the early 1900s, until Congress approved the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1919, and the states ratified it the following year.
CLEVELAND SNEERS AT "THESE FLOSS-COATED SPECIMENS" IN THE WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
"I am surprised," Cleveland tells Ladies Home Journal publisher Edward Bok, "to receive so many favorable (and favoring) letters touching the Women's Club article. In point of fact the exceptions number only two or three - and they are sort of mild. Some interviews have been sent to me in which prominent Club Women have rushed into print, and have justified the position you and I have taken as to the frightful danger of their influence and teaching. I regard the exhibition of the truth of these floss-coated specimens, as a very wholesome and instructive result of the publication. Some clergymen have in letters to me, expressed their approbation in the most unstinted terms...I am more convinced than ever that we are right, and that well timed additional advocacy, and resulting thoughtfulness on the part of good people, will ostensibly increase the evidence that we are right. I certainly would enjoy continuance in the thickness of the fight..." Cleveland strongly attacked the feminists in the pages of Bok's magazine, arguing that voting women would upset "a natural equilibrium" that could not be disturbed but at the cost of "social confusion and peril." The Suffragette movement only grew stronger, however, over the course of the early 1900s, until Congress approved the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1919, and the states ratified it the following year.