From 1910 to 1917 the Men's League for Woman Suffrage was an influential factor in the movement in New York. It was believed to be the first of the kind and the idea was said to have originated with Max Eastman, a young professor in Columbia University, but in a sketch of the league by him in The Trend in 1913 he said that in 1909, when he went to consult Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of the New York Evening Post, he found that Mr. Villard had received a letter from Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, asking him to organize such a league; that he had conferred with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and they had "agreed to share the ignominy" if some one would undertake the organizing. This was done by Mr. Eastman, who, armed with letters of introduction by Mr. Villard, succeeded in getting the names of twelve men of civic influence. Using these names he sent out several thousand letters to such men over the State and finally obtained twenty-five members. In November, 1910, the first meeting was held at the New York City Club and officers were elected. By good fortune George Foster Peabody was one of the earliest members, a Georgian by birth and one of New York's prominent bankers and financiers. He consented to serve as president and with this prestige many members were secured. "The league owed its pecuniary life to him," said Mr. Eastman, "and a great part of its early standing before the public."
After the first year the league was equally fortunate in having James Lees Laidlaw, another New York banker and man of affairs, take the presidency. He retained it for the next six years, and when the National Men's League was formed he consented to serve also as its president until the contest for woman suffrage was finished, giving active and constant assistance. Mr. Eastman was secretary of the New York League for a year or more, assisted by Ward Melville, and was succeeded by Robert Cameron Beadle, general manager of the U. S. Stoker Corporation. He gave valuable and continuous service to the league until just before the campaign of 1917, when the pressure of business required his time and he became vice-president and George Creel ably filled the office of secretary during that strenuous period.
In 1910 the league took part in the first big suffrage parade and no act of men during the whole history of woman suffrage required more courage than that of the 87 who marched up Fifth Avenue on that occasion, jeered by the crowds that lined the sidewalks. It was a body of representative citizens, led by Mr. Peabody, Mr. Laidlaw and Mr. Villard. The league became a large organization, enrolling among its members such men as Governor Charles S. Whitman, Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, Frank A. Vanderlip, Colonel George Harvey, William M. Ivins, Dr. Simon Flexner, Professor John Dewey, Hamilton Holt, William Dean Howells, John Mitchell, Charles Sprague Smith, Samuel Untermeyer, Herbert Parsons, President Schurman of Cornell University, President McCracken of Vassar College and many Judges, public officials and others of note. In the suffrage parade of 1912 the league four abreast extended five blocks along Fifth Avenue. Under its auspices mass meetings were held, district rallies, public dinners with 600 guests, balls and theatrical performances, and campaign activities of various kinds were carried on. Men's leagues were formed in many States. The Woman Voter of October, 1912, published in New York City, issued a special league number, with sketches, pictures, etc.
The Women's Political Union, which under the name of the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women was formed in New York City in the autumn of 1906 by Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, was an active force for many years. Its object was to bring to suffrage the strength of women engaged in wage-earning occupations and under its aegis trade-union women first pleaded their cause before a legislative committee on Feb. 6, 1907. That spring the league held two suffrage mass meetings, the first for many years in Cooper Union, and the following year Carnegie Hall was for the first time invaded by woman suffrage with a meeting in honor of Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the English "militant" suffragists.
The league sent over 300 women to Albany by special train on Feb. 19, 1908, to a hearing on a woman suffrage amendment. The same year it started open air meetings throughout the State. On election day in 1909 the Union distributed literature at the polls and five members tested the right of women to act as watchers. It made the innovation of interviewing candidates and pledging them to vote, if elected, for the submission of a suffrage amendment to the electors.
In 1910 the Union organized in New York the first suffrage foot parade of 400 women, and other larger ones afterwards. In September it began a vigorous campaign against Artemus Ward, Republican candidate for re-election to the Assembly in a banner Republican district in New York City, because of his hostility to the suffrage amendment. Pedestrians could not go a block in the district without hearing a soap box orator trying to defeat him. The night before election eighty-six out-door meetings were held. Although it could not defeat him his former majority of 2,276 was reduced to 190. In 1911 it engineered campaigns against Cuvillier in Manhattan and Carrew in Brooklyn for the same reason, distributing over 100,000 pieces of literature in opposing the latter, who had an adverse majority of over 2,000.
In 1911 the Union took 400 women to Albany and in 1912 the largest suffrage delegation which had ever gone there. They practically compelled consideration of the suffrage resolution and after its defeat campaigned against the enemies, ending the political careers of some of them. Before election day the files of the Union contained signed pledges from every candidate for the Legislature in 45 of the 51 Senate districts and in 85 of the 150 Assembly districts. On Jan. 23, 1913, the Senate voted 40 to 2 for the amendment and on the 27th the Assembly concurred with but five adverse votes. On May 3, the Union organized a parade of victory in New York City.
During the great campaign of 1915 the Union was constantly evolving new features to draw attention to the amendment. It closed its activities with a luncheon of a thousand covers at the Hotel Astor just before election day in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. After the defeat it amalgamated with the Congressional Union, abandoned State work and centered its efforts on an amendment to the Federal Constitution. Throughout its existence Mrs. Blatch was president, Elizabeth Ellsworth Cook, vice-president, Marcia Townsend, treasurer, Eunice Dana Brannan, chairman of finance, Nora Stanton Blatch, editor of the Women's Political World, the organ of the society; Caroline Lexow, field secretary and Alberta Hill and Florence Maule Cooley, executive secretaries. [Information furnished by Mrs. Blatch.]