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Review
| How the West Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868–1914, by Rebecca J. Mead. New York: New York University Press, 2004. 272 pp. $40.00, cloth.
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| In this carefully researched and well-argued study, Rebecca Mead provides a complex and compelling answer to a question that has vexed scholars for years: why did western states and territories take the lead in granting women the right to vote? Mead's answer has four major parts: territorial politics required constant attention to constitutional questions and opened the door to discussions of women's rights; an equation that linked whiteness and womanhood to civilization qualified women for political inclusion; alliances with farm, labor and progressive reform associations led to formal endorsements of woman suffrage, a recognition of the importance of women's partisanship, and the increasing visibility of women politicians; and women's innovative initiatives enlivened suffrage organizations, bringing them to the attention of politicians eager to build coalitions. This argument is set out in the first chapter and Mead locates it within the larger historiography on western woman suffrage. Readers unfamiliar with this scholarship will find the first chapter provides useful introductory material. |
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Chapter two outlines the efforts of the first generation of women's rights activists, who Mead calls "organic intellectuals," to publicize their cause through journals and newspapers. This generation created a coordinated movement and their arguments were important when territories began to discuss statehood issues. Chapter three covers the connections between the statehood process and woman suffrage in the context of Reconstruction and Gilded Age politics. Chapters four and five shift the focus to partisan maneuverings after the rise of the Populist party with a focus on Colorado, Idaho, and California. Chapter six moves geographically to the Pacific Northwest to examine factional conflicts within the suffrage movement and the development of new progressive coalitions and agendas. Chapter seven returns to California to examine the class-bridging efforts of woman suffragists that led to their 1911 victory. The final chapter discusses events in other states and traces the development of what Mead calls the "modern" suffrage movement. |
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Throughout, Mead places the women activists at the center of her narrative. She describes the development of territorial and state suffrage organizations, showing heir interactions with other women's organizations, men's groups, and legislatures, and she explains why specific issues intersected with the woman suffrage cause. Readers will find much that is new in her examination of race relations and the labor movement in relation to woman suffrage. Mead draws on numerous archival collections and primary printed sources, including memoirs, periodicals, and activist women's newspapers. The book makes a significant contribution to the literature on woman suffrage specifically and western politics more generally. |
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Instructors should find the book useful in the classroom. It is well written, avoids jargon, and sets forth a compelling argument and a superb story that needs to be better known. It is useful for introducing the story of woman suffrage in the west and for connecting that story to different state, regional, and national political issues. Throughout the text, Mead carefully presents necessary information about the political structure of each territory and state to explain political changes. With lively prose, she brings the women activists to life through short biographies that capture the complexities of their personal and public lives. This is not a celebratory history, but the stories of these women's efforts to expand their citizenship rights will engage students. Mead also provides concrete examples rather than abstract arguments about how gender, race, and class worked together in particular situations to shape the political process. Thus students should come away from reading this book with a better understanding of the power of ideas to define the parameters of political inclusion and exclusion. In the end, Mead argues, the western suffrage movement was a "radical" movement because it demanded that people change their ideas about womanhood and manhood, and it invigorated the party system by encouraging third party developments, and requiring its participants to be actively engaged in the public sphere. Instructors interested in getting students to think deeply about the political process—including the important act of voting—will find Mead's book to be a useful tool. |
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| University of Vermont |
Melanie Gustafson |
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