Democracy and the Suffrage is a 4 by 5-inch booklet containing a long, scholarly essay by Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. on women’s suffrage. It was published in Portland, Oregon in 1912. Multiple copies in the family archives caught my eye. It was published in Portland, where he had moved to start his professional life as an attorney.
I wondered why my grandfather had written such a thing at all. He was new in Portland, Oregon. He was no longer an academic, having left his teaching job at Princeton after the 1908-09 academic year. He moved to Portland in 1911 to start a law practice.
And then, it’s a progressive, pro-suffrage essay. Just what were his politics? Was he actually involved in progressive issues? [The full text is here Democracy and the Suffrage_1912]
Growing up, we knew our granddad to be a prairie-raised Democrat, one of the old kind; when Democrats were conservative, Republicans more progressive. He later (in 1928), to the shock and dismay of his family, married a New York City Republican, but again, the old-school kind. His wife Isabel was progressive, worldly, even a bit of a bohemian.
In 1912 when Charlie wrote and presented this essay, American women could only vote in a few U.S. states. The women’s suffrage movement was growing and gaining its voice, but the changes needed hadn’t happened yet.
But Charlie thought women’s suffrage was overdue. At the end of his exploration of the topic, he let the words of someone else summarize his views:
“I cannot close this paper better than by a quotation from one of the keenest of political thinkers of the past century, John Stuart Mill.
“In speaking of the extension of the franchise to women, he says: ‘Let us hope that as the work proceeds of pulling down, one after another, the remains of the mouldering fabric of monopoly and tyranny, this one will no be the last to disappear, that the opinion of Bentham, of Mr. Samuel Bailey, of Mr. Hare and of many other of he mos powerful political thinkers of the age and country (not to speak of others) will make its way to all minds not rendered obdurate by selfishness or inveterate prejudice; and that before the lapse of another generation the accident of sex, no more than the accident of skin, will be deemed a sufficient justification for depriving the possessor of he just privileges of a citizen.’”
Charlie’s mother, Mollie Mahaffie, before long staged a near coup in Hobart, Oklahoma, and got herself on the all-male school board. She would have approved of his essay and his advocacy. I hope he sent her a copy of this pamphlet. If he did, she would have kept it close and showed it off.
And so too would have his Aunt Ella. She was a fiercely-independent, accomplished woman, an educator, who also served on a school board, in Kansas. She was fond of, and kept a close watch on Charlie’s progress in life. I hope she got a copy of Democracy and the Suffrage.
Surely both of these women were on Charlie’s mind as he built his argument for suffrage. And yes, Charlie did get involved in progressive politics and issues in Portland. More on that in the next post, here.
This is one of a series of posts that explore the life of Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. through family memories and items from a family archive. Charles was the author’s grandfather. He left a remarkable collection of papers, photos, and mementos which offer a lens through which to explore his life and legacies. For the full collection, click here.
