From the Archives: You think one vote doesn’t matter? Hah!

By Pamela | November 1, 2024

I have told this story here on the Margins before.  But with the presidential elections only a few days away, I think it’s important to remember right now that the 19th Amendment was ratified thanks to one man’s vote.

 

In August, 1920, 35 states had ratified the amendment; 36 states were needed for it to pass. Tennessee was the only state still in the game. Proponents and opponents of the amendment gathered in a Nashville hotel to lobby legislators. The press dubbed it the War of the Roses because supporters of the suffrage movement wore yellow roses in their lapels while its opponents wore red roses.

On August 19, the vote appeared to be tied, assuming the count of red and yellow roses was correct. When the roll call came, 24-year-old Harry T. Burn stepped into history. Burn came from a very conservative district and wore a red rose in his lapel, but when asked whether he would vote to ratify the amendment he answered “aye”. What changed his mind? A letter from his mother, Febb Burn, who told him to “be a good boy” and vote in favor of the amendment.

Asked later about his change of heart, Burn said “I knew that a mother’s advice is always safest for a boy to follow and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification. I appreciated the fact that an opportunity such as seldom comes to a mortal man to free 17 million women from political slavery was mine.”

 

If you have the right to vote, use it. Because one vote can in fact change the world.

 

From the Archives: You Can’t Vote Because

By Pamela | October 29, 2024

I first ran this post in 2011.  I think it is an even more important reminder today.

 

[Suffragists in parade] (LOC)

From sixth century Athens on, who has the vote and why has been a touchy and evolving subject in democracies.  People who already have the vote have hesitated to extend it to others for two basic reasons.  Those with the vote don’t think those without the vote have the capacity to make good choices.  Those with the vote fear they will lose power.

Over the centuries, people in power have come up with plenty of reasons not to extend the franchise to those who don’t yet have it.  Here are a few of the classics:

You can’t vote because

  • You’re a slave
  • You’re a woman
  • You don’t own property
  • You don’t own enough property
  • You don’t practice the right religion
  • You are the wrong race or ethnicity
  • Your father or grandfather couldn’t vote

The United States presidential election is next Tuesday.  If you’re lucky enough to have the vote, use it.*

*This is a handy primer on exercising you voting rights in the United States:  https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/voting-rights   Pass it on to anyone you think might need it.

From the Archives: Rural Free Delivery

By Pamela | October 25, 2024

 

Over the last several months, I have been working my way through a stack of “get out the vote” postcards: writing as legibly as possible. (Always a challenge for me.) Now I’m at the deadline and writing a little more quickly and a little less legibly. *

Since I am under a bit of pressure here, it seems like a good time to share a post about the American postal service which originally ran in October 2022.

*If you get one of my cards, don’t spend any time trying to read the message. Here’s the short version: Vote!

Every time we take a road trip, we miss one or two or twelve things we would like to see because they were closed for the season,* or we hit town on the wrong day, or we had the wrong directions,** or we just plain ran out of steam.

In the case of the Rural Free Delivery Postal Museum, in Morning Sun, Iowa, we made an attempt to set up an appointment, but the telephone number on the website was dead. And it was a little too far out of our way to take a chance and just stop by.

But the story the museum celebrates is just too good not to share:

Home mail delivery is something we take for granted in the United States . But in fact, it is a relatively new service. Free mail delivery began in cities in 1863. Rural postal customers—who made up the vast majority of the population at the time— weren’t so lucky. They paid the same amount for stamps as city folk, but they still had to pick up their mail at sometimes distant post offices or pay private companies to deliver it.

In 1896, after several years of advocacy by the National Grange*** and discussion by Congress, Postmaster General William L. Wilson agreed to test the idea of Rural Free Delivery. The service began on October 1, 1896, when five men on horseback set out to deliver mail along ten miles of mountain roads outside Charles Town, Halltown, and Uvilla West Virginia. (Perhaps it was not by chance that West Virginia was Wilson’s home state.) Within a year, the post office serviced 44 routes in 29 states. (The service was so new that regulation mailboxes did not exist. Farmers nailed improvised receptacles on fence corners, including old boots, tin cigar boxes, and shoe boxes.) Customers across the country sent more than 10,000 petitions asking for local routes.

In 1902, Rural Free Delivery became a permanent service of the Post Office. Farm families became a little less isolated.

On a related note: The RFD Museum wasn’t the only postal moment on our trip. When we stopped at the Pine Creek Grist Mill in Muscatine County, Iowa, we learned that the gentleman who founded the mill in 1834 was licensed to run the first post office in the county. The mailing address for any letters coming through the post office was the same: Iowa Post Office, Blackhawk Purchase, Wisconsin Territory. I had never thought about how letters would be addressed on the frontier. Suddenly it became clear to me just how amazing it was that people could send letters to someone who had left home and moved west.

 

*Word to the wise: If you take a road trip through Minnesota in late September you will miss a lot of stuff.
**As I mentioned in an earlier post, if you want to visit the New Philadelphia archeological site, do NOT put New Philadelphia, Illinois in your GPS. It will take you to an existing town in the other direction.
***For those of you who don’t know: The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, commonly known as The Grange, has been providing support for American farmers since 1867.  Originally designed to help rural America recover from the devastation of the Civil War, “Grangers” fought discriminatory railroad pricing, established local buying cooperatives, and, yes, fought for rural mail delivery.  Local Grange Halls were often the social heart of rural communities places and worked with Farm Bureaus, Extensions Services and 4-H clubs to educate farm families about the newest methods of farming and household management. Today the Grange is still an active advocate for family farms. Cooperative action at its best.

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For anyone who might be interested, my interview for Q & A with Peter Slen on C-Span will air Sunday, October 27 at 8 and 11 pm Eastern time.  If you can’t watch then, it will be available for streaming on-line in the near future.