Politics, Economic Provisioning, and Suffrage in St. Louis: What Women Said, What Men Heard

Introduction In February of 1919, State Representative Charles P. Comer, a 39-yearold unmarried lawyer from a St. Louis brewery ward, voted against granting presidential suffrage to women. Despite the defiant gesture, expected of a man identified by national suffrage leaders as "an especially vehement opponent" of woman suffrage (Catt and Shuler 1923: 349), presidential suffrage passed that day in the Missouri House by 123 votes to eight.(1) Only four months later, Missouri joined the rush of state legislatures called to ratify the 19th Amendment, granting women equal suffrage on all electoral levels. On July 2, Representative Comer voted aye, explaining to his fellow (male) legislators that, "I've played poker long enough to know when to lay down my hand" (Catt and Shuler 1923: 349). The St. Louis women, upper class and progressive, who cheered from the galleries, had been battling the likes of Charles Comer for nine years.(2) One of the enduring questions in history is why any group would choose to share political power with another group, thus diluting its own power. The granting of suffrage to American women in 1919 is one of those events in which we seek answers. I focus here on the diversity of women's visible economic provisioning functions, arguing that the granting of suffrage had political benefits to the men in power; at the same time, the political risks were being lessened because women were starting to look like men economically. Charles Comer decided to join the majority. One would like to ask why he thought the game was lost. Was he suddenly convinced, as some historians have suggested, by the role of women in World War I? (for example, Barck and Blake 1947: 264-266). Was he impressed by the support finally voiced by President Woodrow Wilson or former President Roosevelt? (Catt and Shuler 1923: 258, 177). Did increasing awareness of the consequences of prohibition dry up opposition to suffrage along with the St. Louis breweries? Some states refused the pressure to call sessions to consider ratification. Why not Missouri, which had defeated suffrage in the 1913, 1915, and 1917 General Assemblies and in a 1914 referenda, and that had been considered a "black" state--nearly hopeless in its opposition--by suffrage leaders only months earlier? ("Victory Map" 1918). The Missouri case and, in particular, events in St. Louis help illuminate the reasons men in power were willing to grant the vote to women. By looking at a specific locale, we can see more clearly the economic and political workings that led even a "black" state's legislators to join the band-wagon. Papers and books over the years have often focused on what women said, on their changing strategies, related to the vote. This article uses the matter of economic provisioning to get at what men "heard": what they took from women's strategies and what they saw women doing, politically and economically, to back up the talk. I will present background on what women were indeed doing, politically and economically, in St. Louis, as well as look at the political climate in which men operated. I will assess the reasons men might have been willing to grant suffrage in light of what they "heard" in St. Louis. Charles Comer might have had second thoughts about--or been wary of--denying the growing economic power he would have seen in the women of St. Louis. From his law office near the Old Courthouse, he would note the businesses that depended on their female typists, stenographers, and other clerical help. For that matter, he knew first-hand the inconvenience of the current strike by the "telephone girls" on both St. Louis telephone companies: the Kinloch telephone exchange was barely working on July 2, 1919, and the Bell exchange was slow. (3) From his bachelor rooms at the Missouri Athletic Club on the northwest corner of Fourth and Washington Avenues, he might have seen a steady stream of immigrant and native women heading to the shirtwaist, shoe, and cigar factories each morning. …