Anti-Suffrage Tract from a Founder of the Art Students League
A Letter on Woman Suffrage from One Woman to Another
Notes: An anti-women's suffrage pamphlet, reprinted from the edition of 1894 with a new one-page introduction.
Gilder's argument, made somewhat obliquely, is that women are incapable of the physical force or threat of force necessary for civilization. She makes this position much more directly in the new introduction: "Giving the ballot to woman would create a mere pretense of citizenship, for she could never enforce a law which her vote had placed on the statute book. She could not use the proper force of a sheriff, a member of a sheriff's posse, a marshal of a federal court, of a constable, policeman, militiaman, or federal soldier."
FWIW, Lola Baldwin was the first sworn woman police officer, hired by the City of Portland, Oregon, in 1908. Alice Stebbin Wells joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1910. In 1915, Constance Kopp was hired by Bergen County, New Jersey, as the first female sheriff's deputy.
According to OCLC, the first edition of this anti-suffrage tract is widely held in libraries; this second edition is rather uncommon.
Gilder (1846–1916) was married to the writer Richard Watson Gilder and had seven children. She trained as a painter and did some commercial illustration work. She co-founded the Art Students League and the Society of American Artists. She was also the model for female figures in several Winslow Homer paintings.
15 pages. 5 by 7 inches.
Edition + Condition: Second edition. Some spotting to covers, else very good in printed wrappers.
Publication: New York: (n.p.), 1909.
Item No: #360756
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