Nellie McClung Quotes
Women have cleaned up things since time began, and if women get into politics there will be a cleanup.
Nellie L. McClung, 1873-1951, Canadian Writer, Speech, Minneapolis, May 7, 1916
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The editorial was in support of women’s suffrage—the right to vote which at the time women did not have in Britain. Women were very active in protests and demonstrations. Tactics sometimes involved civil disobedience and chaining themselves to public buildings. It was the civil disobedience and disruptions that the newspaper referred to as the “follies and excesses.” In retrospect today, it is amazing how threatened the society felt and how they reacted to the “threat” of females voting. It does however give us a perspective on those contemporary societies which restrict women’s voting rights.
It would be over 30 years more before American women could vote for President. Lockwood never could.
First female presidential candidate & first divorcee to run for that office. The half to which she was referring were the females, who by many narrow laws were unable to participate in the intellectual and political life of the country. At the time, women could not even vote.
First woman elected to Congress. Women could vote in Montana years before women had the right to vote nationally. Women pioneers were critical contributors to an extremely hard life. Many widows and single women ran farms and ranches, fought raiding Indians, and married pioneer women were necessary to survival.
Nellie Letitia McClung was a Canadian author, social activist, suffragette, politician as well as a maternal feminist. She was a part of the social and moral reform movements prevalent in Western Canada in the early 1900s. Her great causes were women's suffrage and temperance. It was because of her hard work and advocacy, along with others involved in the Political Equality League of Manitoba (which included men), that in 1916 Manitoba became the first province to give women the right to vote and to run for public office. Nellie McClung was at the forefront of the Suffragist movement in Canada. Through her social justice activism, the issues of temperance, anti-war (enfranchisement of Japanese Canadians and opening the Canadian Border to Jewish Refugees), Labor and Dower rights were among her most important contributions.
