From the September 1912 issue of Cartoons Magazine, above, a set of Women’s Suffrage cartoons, by Fontaine Fox, J.E. Murphy, and Oscar Cesare.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read their captions.

Below, Teddy Roosevelt shown courting the women’s vote (women could vote in the Presidential election in a handful of states in 1912, though nowhere near the majority). By cartoonists Gaar Williams, Charles Bowers, and others.

In addition to the cartoons concerning women and their struggle to gain the right to vote, the September 1912 issue was filled with plenty of other cartoons containing the 1912 male view of women. It is instructional to see these together — as they were at the time. It’s not as if Women’s Suffrage cartoons ran in isolation. Besides being largely against the cause, as well as neutral but dismissive, many of the other cartoons concerning women could be belittling, running counter to the few times that a pro-Women’s Rights cartoon appeared.

Above, by Luther D. Bradley, Fontaine Fox again, and Ralph Everett Wilder, cartoons depicting women having to deal with aggressive “mashers”.

Below, by Frank Michael Spangler, Fox, and Wilder, more.

Above, commentary on women’s fashions (and men’s reaction), by Clive Weed, Bradley, Fox, and Wilder.

Below, cartoonist Harry J. Westerman‘s depiction of “World Champion Dunce”, the Reverend Elmer Huffner, pastor of the First Christian Church of God, in Grand Junction, Colorado, who delivered a sermon calling for the exile of all “Old Maids”. (Clicking on Huffner’s name will bring you to a Syracuse Journal newspaper page containing not only that story, but numerous jaw dropping items of the time.)

Next, romance, by Billy DeBeck, and Fox yet again.

Above, still more by Bradley, Fox, and others, on the relationship of the sexes.

Below, DeBeck, George W. French, Gaar Williams, and Herbert H. Perry.

Doug Wheeler

ElectionComics Women’s History James E. Murphy