Hints for Housewives Anti-Suffrage Pamphlet

This pamphlet was distributed by the Saint Paul Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage with the purpose of informing women that they didn't need the right to vote to live happy and meaningful lives. The interior contains cleaning and cooking tips for housewives, interspersed with anti-suffrage statements such as "You do not need a ballot to clean out your sink spout. A handful of potash and some boiling water is quicker and cheaper." Anti-suffragists, who were men and women, gave many reasons women should be denied the vote, such as a lack of understand of political issues and lack of physical strength to enforce the laws they pass.

 

From St. Paul Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. Votes of Women can accomplish no more than votes of Men. Why waste time, energy and money without result? [,,,] The great advance of women in the last century - moral, intellectual and economic - has been made without the ballot, which goes to prove that the ballot is not needed for their further advancement along the same lines. Women, standing outside of politics, and therefore free to appeal to any party, are able to achieve reforms of greater benefit to the state than they could possibly achieve by working along partisan political lines. The basis of government is physical force. It isn't law enactment only but law enforcement that protects society, and the physical power to enforce the law is neither possible nor desirable for women. No one can afford to be neutral regarding Socialism or Feminism and no one can do anything, directly, to advance these movements without helping lay the axe at the taproot of Christian civilization.

Citation: 
Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota. P1518