In 1909, and already a veteran of the movement in Europe and the States, Konikow, then a member of the Socialist Party’s National Women’s Committee, with a piece for a special suffrage edition of the Chicago Socialist.

‘Why Should a Woman Suffragist be a Socialist?’ by Antoinnette F. Konikow from The New York Call. Vol. 2 No. 50. February 27, 1909.

The woman suffragist of the capitalist class will not be entirely excluded from my consideration. Only exceptionally can she strip herself of her class prejudice and sincerely enter the gates of the Socialist philosophy.

It is you, working woman, and you, middle class woman, and you, professional woman, whom I have in view. You are taking part in the world’s labor, and you know the suffering of exploitation, your aspirations are stifled, you are induced by your experience to reject and ponder over the wrongs of woman’s life, and you think you have found a way of lifting this misery from the shoulders of women in your struggle for woman’s suffrage.

Like the working class of France in 1789, you hope to attain freedom and justice by attaining political emancipation. Like the working class of France you will be bitterly disappointed. Political power can be used for or against you, depending upon the party it represents.

To acquire the right to vote is very important, but it is still more important to know how to use the ballot. In the amazing array of facts of our modern life we need a compass or we will be lost upon the billows of the political ocean. To acquire the right viewpoint to guide us through the labyrinth of conflicting views, we must have a clear grasp upon our economic situation, must understand the existence and relationship of classes, learn which class represents our interests; with one word, become class conscious. Only then will the ballot in our hands be a factor for progress.

Study the economic conditions of today and you will conclude that the main source of women’s misery, economic exploitation, present abnormal marriage conditions and the social evil can only be eradicated by a fundamental change of our present property relations.

The key to the necessities of life is now in the hands of the capitalist class; it must belong to the whole nation. Propaganda for woman suffrage can only reach its aim of helping women to change her conditions, if it goes hand in hand with the critical study of the present economic framework of society. It is the magic of Socialism that will bring forth blossoms upon the barren staff of political rights.

Some of you are inclined toward Socialism, but you prefer at present to concentrate your efforts upon woman suffrage only: the red specter of Socialism might embarrass those statesmen from whom you expect the granting of the ballot. Some of your prominent woman suffragists have been quite worried about the insistence of Socialists working for women’s rights.

But there is no need for anxiety. The advance of Socialism indirectly or directly will always help woman’s franchise. Either woman’s suffrage will be obtained because our politicians hope to stem the tide of discontent by using reactionary and conservative woman upon the political battlefield, or it will be granted as a concession to the great social unrest in which participate both the working class and the middle class.

Finland is a proof of my contention: so is England, where woman’s aspirations were greatly advanced through the general political upheaval brought about by the rising political powers of the working class.

Woman has attained the right to work, the right to suffer. The Socialist wants her to get the right to live and enjoy life.

In the ranks of the Socialist party woman works not only for the means of getting freedom, but for freedom.

The New York Call was the first English-language Socialist daily paper in New York City and the second in the US after the Chicago Daily Socialist. The paper was the center of the Socialist Party and under the influence of Morris Hillquit, Charles Ervin, Julius Gerber, and William Butscher. The paper was opposed to World War One, and, unsurprising given the era’s fluidity, ambivalent on the Russian Revolution even after the expulsion of the SP’s Left Wing. The paper is an invaluable resource for information on the city’s workers movement and history and one of the most important papers in the history of US socialism. The paper ran from 1908 until 1923.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-new-york-call/1909/090227-newyorkcall-v02n050-womansuffragespecial.pdf