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Maine History Online

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Debates Over Suffrage

Woman suffrage postcard, ca. 1917

Woman suffrage postcard, ca. 1917

Item 5477 info
Maine Historical Society

Early suffragists in Maine had to find solid arguments to convince their neighbors that votes for women would benefit everyone.

Images like this postcard illustrated the idea that women were the real experts on food, children and household management, and therefore the most qualified people to be voting on important policy decisions in these areas.

The suffrage movement easily won the support of many temperance leaders who assumed women would support temperance and therefore saw woman suffrage as a way to promote temperance laws.