Everett Labor Movement Battles 'Ladies' Home Journal' on Suffrage
Local activists denounce the magazine for printing anti-suffrage propaganda and targeting working-class women.
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The Everett Suffrage Club has issued a sharp rebuke against The Ladies' Home Journal and its editor, Edward Bok, for a recent article attacking woman suffrage in Western states. The Journal’s piece, which claimed suffrage was an 'appalling' failure, is viewed by local labor activists as an attempt to protect the status quo by delegitimizing working-class political agency. The publication is accused of catering only to an elite 'lady' class while mocking the struggles of women who must labor for their own survival. Activists argue that the magazine's opposition to suffrage is, in itself, the best advertisement for why women need the ballot to defend their own interests.
“No better argument for woman suffrage could be offered to the working men of America than the fact that the Ladies' Home Journal is opposed to it.”
The rhetoric here highlights the intersection of class and gender in the Washington suffrage campaign. It is a reminder that the fight for the vote in Washington wasn't just a general progressive movement, but a specific struggle over who had the right to advocate for their own labor conditions.
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