Stanton Blatch (1856-1940): Download the PDF
The daughter of suffragist pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriot Stanton Blatch re-energized the movement with new tactics and the recruitment of working class women.
“Unpaid work never commands respect; it is the paid worker who has brought to the public mind conviction of woman’s worth.”
– Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch
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- Encyclopedia Britannica
Aunt Susan
Growing up, Harriot had close contact with Susan B. Anthony, a frequent visitor who collaborated with her mother. She remembered her as an austere figure who disciplined the Stanton children and won “more by compulsion than attraction” in contrast to her mother’s warmth. Harriot felt a child’s resentment toward Anthony for taking so much of her mother’s time.
Harriot invited radical English suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst to speak at Carnegie Hall as a guest of the “Equality League of Self-Supporting Women.” The invitation has a union label at the bottom.
- Library of Congress
Perhaps the youngest suffragist at the 1912 parade.
- Library of Congress
I Love a Parade
Blatch felt that American suffragist activities were too subdued and advocated parades and spectacles that would include working women. Although one suffragist complained that “a parade would set suffrage back fifty years” she organized the first suffrage parade in New York City in 1910. Her annual parades helped inspire the famous 1913 parade in Washington, D.C. at the time of Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and daughter Harriot in 1856.
- Library of Congress
Finding Her Own Voice
Returning to America she took a leading role in the suffrage movement. Influenced by militant trade unions in Britain she recruited working class women to the cause, many from low-paying jobs in factories and the garment industry. She founded the “Equality League of Self-Supporting Women” to bring to suffrage “the strength of women engaged in wage earning occupations.” She felt that professional women and industrial workers should make common purpose in opening the workplace for women.
Across the Pond
After majoring in math at Vassar she studied at the Boston School of Oratory and toured with her mother on the suffrage lecture circuit. She met English businessman William Henry Blatch Jr. on a return trip from Europe. They married in 1882 and lived in Britain for twenty years.
Shrewd Operator
Blatch lamented the lack of political sophistication among many suffragists and organized lobbying at the New York legislature, calling her organization the Women’s Political Union. She placed “silent sentinels” at the door during committee meetings, a tactic that was later used in picketing the White House. She began targeting anti-suffrage candidates in political campaigns, causing one to remark “woman is dangerous when she wants to gain a point. She will stop at nothing.”