Ringing Out for Women’s Suffrage: The 1915 Campaign to Win the Vote for Women in Pennsylvania

A valiant “Votes for Women” strides from the West to liberate women in the eastern half of the country in this illustration from the February 20, 1915, issue of Puck. At the time, suffragists were hopeful that Pennsylvania would become the first state east of the Mississippi to extend the franchise to women.
Library of Congress

“The appearance in villages of this car with a “Votes for Women” apron in front, yellow pon-pons floating in the breeze and pennants flying, awakens interest in the most lethargic.” – The York Daily, October 25, 1915

On June 24, 1919, Pennsylvania became the seventh state to ratify the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. For Philadelphia suffragist Caroline Katzenstein (1888–1968), and no doubt many of her fellow suffrage workers from around the state, the moment was bitter-sweet: “The Senate Chamber, when the vote was taken, was ablaze with the purple, white and gold colors of the NWP [National Women’s Party] and made a scene to be remembered. It all helped the workers to forget, at least for the moment, the many years of drab and difficult work that led up to this joyful occasion.”

Though Katzenstein did not elaborate, the victory must have brought to mind the failed campaign four years earlier to win women the vote through statewide referendum. At the time, it appeared that the cause of women’s suffrage — an effort over half a century in the making — would finally be achieved state by state. Between 1910 and 1914 the number of states that voted to enfranchise women nearly doubled. Another dozen or so states, including Ohio, New York and New Jersey, permitted women partial suffrage in some elections.

Parades and pageants—a staple of the campaign for women’s suffrage in the 1910s—featured scores of supporters wearing colorful sashes such as this one. These highly choreographed displays were designed to raise the movement’s public visibility. The purple, white and gold sash belonged to the Congressional Union, the militant wing of the movement headed up by Philadelphia-educated Alice Paul.
The State Museum of Pennsylvania

Alas, Pennsylvania was not among either group. “In Pennsylvania women are totally disenfranchised,” Jennie Bradley Roessing (1881–1963), president of the state suffrage association, noted bluntly. “Not even voting on school matters.” What’s more, the commonwealth’s complex social and political geography made the prospect of electoral reform unlikely. “No other [state] has a population so diversified in blood, in occupations and in interests,” one Philadelphia newspaper observed. “Here are found all nationalities, large numbers of voters being held together by racial sympathies and being instinctively antagonistic to ideas that seem novel. Here are the greatest industrial corporations, whose policies are inimical to change, especially in the direction of broader democracy.”

Louise Hall, organizing secretary of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, speaks from the platform of the Justice Bell truck at one of its many stops in the hinterlands of Pennsylvania in the summer of 1915. Despite battling poor roads and mechanical breakdowns, the auto campaign helped suffragists reach voters in relatively isolated sections of the state.
Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University

Notwithstanding, suffragists in Pennsylvania, emboldened by gains in the West as well as high profile suffrage victories in Great Britain and other countries, renewed their efforts. The space of a few years saw the establishment of the College Equal Suffrage League (1908), the Pennsylvania Limited Suffrage League (1909) and the Equal Franchise Society of Philadelphia (1909). In 1910 the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association (PWSA) — the state chapter of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) — opened its first physical headquarters in Philadelphia, the latter a sure sign that suffrage leaders were prepared to move their campaign from the parlor to the streets.

The relocation of PWSA’s headquarters to the state capital in 1912 signaled the beginning of another chapter — a determined push for a statewide referendum. Though the cause had its political supporters in Harrisburg, prying the necessary two-session resolution from a lukewarm-to-resistant General Assembly was a tall order. The state’s political machines, long understood to be beholden to the “rum interests,” were inherently opposed to the idea on the logic that women would use their franchise to advance Prohibition and other social reforms. “When we asked senators for their votes, they just laughed at us and said there wasn’t a suffragist in their district, or if there was, they had never heard of him,” recalled one PWSA lobbyist. But a Progressive wave was beginning to loosen the machine’s grip on Pennsylvania politics, and within the year, PWSA had secured the acquiescence, if not support, of Republican Party boss Boise Penrose. Historian Roberta Leach noted,  “Nowhere — except in the simultaneous Illinois crusade — had women suffragists demonstrated this sort of astute politicking.”

With legislative approval secured, PWSA began strategizing how best to reach, inspire and persuade the voters in whose hands the referendum, scheduled for the November 1915 ballot, would be decided. Pennsylvania suffrage work to that point was decidedly imbalanced. Although Philadelphia had become a hotbed of activity, thanks in large measure to the charismatic leadership of Alice Paul (1885–1977), the rest of the state was apathetic at best. There was also the issue of tactics: Paul’s open-air rallies found receptive audiences in the big city; however, provocative public displays would not go over well in the more socially conservative hinterlands.

This banner is similar to the one that adorned the Justice Bell when it toured all 67 counties in an effort to drum up statewide support for the measure. Blanche McNeal Smith, chair of the Dauphin County Suffrage League, donated the banner to The State Museum of Pennsylvania in the early 1960s.
The State Museum of Pennsylvania

Still, field organizers such as Lilian Stevens Howard urged women to forsake the indoor meetings that the movement had relied on in the past and consider more novel and potentially effective approaches for canvassing wide swaths of the electorate. “Auto tours are extremely effective, and should start out from headquarters, taking a separate county each day, starting out at noon and returning at midnight,” Howard recommended. PWSA President Roessing concurred, adding that the automobile also served double duty as a mobile platform from which speakers could make their case to the assembly. “We must dispense with some of the old style of campaigning and get down to the real factor — men. After all, it is the men who will give us or withhold from us the ballot,” Roessing noted.

To that idea, Katherine Wentworth Ruschenberger (d. 1943), a suffrage supporter from Delaware County, added another one: a full-scale bronze replica of the Liberty Bell, the cost of which she proposed to underwrite at her own expense so that PWSA might use it in its upcoming educational campaign. The bell was to be identical to the original except it would not have a crack and it would carry an added inscription, “Establish Justice.” The clapper was to be chained to the side to symbolize how women’s voices had been silenced.

Louise Hall addresses a crowd of wage earners outside a Pennsylvania factory in 1915. Despite long odds, the campaign to win the hearts and minds in industrial sectors proved successful, no doubt due to the tireless efforts to reach this demographic during the Justice Bell’s tour.
Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University

By spring of 1915, PWSA finalized plans to tour the bell, variously known as the Justice Bell or the Women’s Liberty Bell, to all 67 counties that summer in advance of the November ballot question. The bell would be mounted onto the back of a flatbed truck, which would serve double duty as a speaking platform for the suffrage workers who would escort the bell to the various county seats and address crowds along the way. A “Votes for Women” banner was fixed to the truck’s back railing and a sign attached, noting simply, “This bell will ring for the first time on the day that the women of Pennsylvania are granted the right to vote.” The New York Times opined that the traveling bell might be the perfect way to reach the target audience: “It takes something to stir people in the backwoods of Pennsylvania,” especially concerning an issue plagued with such apathy as the cause of women’s suffrage.

The Justice Bell made its debut at a rally in Sayre, Bradford County, on June 25. From there, the bell and its entourage of itinerant suffragists were scheduled to travel west across the state’s northern tier counties and south at Clearfield through the western counties before arriving in Pittsburgh for Fourth of July ceremonies. After touring vote-rich southwestern Pennsylvania, the bell would then begin a long zigzag across the state to visit the southern tier counties before making a final stop in Philadelphia a few weeks in advance of the referendum. The hope was that the bell could cover about 30 miles a day, give or take several miles depending on road conditions, especially in the mountainous counties. (By the end of the four-month campaign, it had logged close to 5,000 miles.)

The Justice Bell stops in Carlisle, Cumberland County, one of the 67 county seats that the campaign visited during its four-month tour across the commonwealth. The bell’s platform served double duty as a mobile dais and helped speakers deliver their message to the crowds that assembled at every stop.
Cumberland County Historical Society, Carlisle, PA

From the outset, it was evident that the sheer novelty of the campaign would be enough to grab headlines across the state’s rural hamlets. Cross-state automobile tours were uncommon enough. The added spectacle of a group of women escorting a full-scale Liberty Bell replica on the back of a flatbed truck proved an instant crowd magnet.

“Both in the rural and industrial sections the receptions have been the same — friendly, warm and enthusiastic,” noted the Coudersport Potter Enterprise on September 8, 1915. “The farmer has left his plough, and the miner his pick, to see the bell that is to sound the message of political independence.” Coleraine, Carbon County, “a little mining town, with its single street, emptied itself of men, women and children as the big bell truck, gay with yellow flags, came honking up the steep mountain road in the village. For an instant, every dooryard became a mass of faces, then the coal dust flew in every direction as the miners and their families dashed out to meet the bell.” After listening to Emma MacAlarney, one of the suffrage workers making the appeal from the back of the truck, a “brawny miner” approached to say he was with her: “All you folks want is a square deal and you can gamble that we’ll give it to you.”

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Whether such enthusiasm would translate into votes remained to be seen, but there was no doubt the bell was a welcome spectacle, even in counties where “anti” sentiment was strongest. Although political opposition was robust in the cities where political machines were most entrenched, PWSA encountered an “almost reactionary spirit” in the inherently socially conservative Pennsylvania German settlement areas of southcentral and southeastern Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, when the bell passed through Lancaster County in early October, a crowd of about a thousand gathered around. According to Alice Krone, a historian who interviewed campaign suffragists in the 1940s, “The crowds were silent; there was no applause, but neither was there jeering.”

Antisuffrage forces mounted their own propaganda campaign to defeat the amendment. Although the “liquor interests” had long been arrayed against suffrage, the campaign also encountered strong opposition from socially conservative areas in southcentral and southeastern Pennsylvania. Critics also tried to equate women getting the vote as a direct threat to traditional gender roles.
The State Museum of Pennsylvania

On October 22, the Justice Bell rolled into Philadelphia, its final stop, for “one last spec-tacular appeal” 10 days before the election — an elaborately choreographed “Festival of Lights” featuring a parade of automobiles, a phalanx of young, Grecian gown–clad suffragists bearing “sprays of daffodils concealed with electric lights,” Krone reported, and in the center, the Justice Bell bedecked in flowers on a raised pedestal. “Never before had the suffragists staged such an elaborate, breath-taking spectacle.”

Despite the rousing enthusiasm that the tour evoked, the forecast for the upcoming referendum was not encouraging. Many newspapers predicted a sweep for antisuffrage forces, which pointed to the lack of enthusiasm for the vote among the wives of many rural and urban voters. “The men are much more ready to understand what we are aiming at than the women,” noted Roessing.

When the final votes were tallied on November 2, the amendment had failed by about 55,000 votes. Having exceeded expectations, supporters were surprisingly upbeat: “The Antis have not won the state of Pennsylvania,” women’s suffrage leader Anna Howard Shaw proclaimed to a resilient crowd at a postelection rally in Philadelphia. “They always had it. We have won every vote that was cast for suffrage. Those who opposed us have lost just that much.”

Despite failing to make inroads into Pennsylvania German counties to the west of Philadelphia, an electoral results map published the day after the election revealed that half of the state’s counties voted in favor of the measure, with especially strong support in the central and northern tier counties. The most pleasantly unexpected outcome was the support for the referendum in the industrial districts, especially the mining towns. And although Philadelphia voters rejected the measure, electors in Pennsylvania’s second largest city, Pittsburgh, carried it by more than 3,000 votes, the largest urban vote for suffrage to that date.

The Pennsylvania Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage published this map showing referendum results by county in 1915. Counties that voted “yes” are in white; those that voted “no” are in black. Antisuffrage sentiment remained strongest in conservative Pennsylvania German counties in southeast and southcentral Pennsylvania. By contrast, support for the measure was surprisingly strong in the mill and mining towns of southwestern and northeastern Pennsylvania.
Reproduced with permission from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania

“In this first battle we have won some trenches,” Shaw continued. “We do not measure our progress by inches, but by miles. We are infinitely nearer victory than we were two years ago. In this short campaign we have been able to do what has never been done by the men of this State, for they have never conducted such a campaign as ours.” She predicted, with some accuracy, that the next event would be “the funeral . . . for the divine rift of sex. . . . That funeral will take place the next time the amendment is voted upon in Pennsylvania.”

As for the Justice Bell, although it remained silent that day, it finally did ring out some five years later, following congressional ratification of the 19th amendment in September 1920 — its voice, like that of the women it represented, silent no more.

Catherine Wentworth, the niece of the woman who financed the replica Liberty Bell, finally rang the bell during a ceremony outside Independence Hall in September 1920 to mark the formal ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Pennsylvania State Archives/MG-73

Curtis Miner, Ph.D., is senior history curator at The State Museum of Pennsylvania. He writes widely on Pennsylvania social and cultural history. His articles for Pennsylvania Heritage include “The Pennsylvania Turnpike, From Tollbooths to Tunnels” in Fall 2015 and “A Home for History: S.K. Stevens and the Campaign for the William Penn Memorial Museum and Archives” in Spring 2015.