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where they are. we have more events this afternoon, so you're welcome to stick around all day. i'm pleased to welcome johan in neuman this afternoon to discuss her important new book "gilded sufferragists" about a group of new york socialites who fought for the became's right to vote. among the more than 200 social figures she writes bass host or familiar names, and she reminds us what a radical, explosive notion the women's vote was in the early 1900s 1900s and and hn her own words, there's a moment when generations cross paths and aned ay that once seem radical loses its toxins. this is call one of the top books of the fall from independent publishing houses. neuman is a scholar in residence at american university and an award-winning journalist who has

wherein for "los angeles times" and "usa today." going to be in conversation with jude woodruff who she node from covering the white house. judy is -- worked as correspondent for nbc, cnn, npr and many a places. he me welcome johan joanna neuman and jeudy wood drive. >> i'm so excited to be here and johanna is. i have to start off, full disclose sure and say when johanna wrote me about this event a few months ago and said any chance you other be free, i wrote her immediately back and said, absolutely. i'd love to see you. book sound great. we go way back. we go back to the white house during the early 1980s, when

both of us were just out of middle school. [laughter] >> we were early on in our careers as journalists, and i think we bonded back anyone, even though i was in broadcast, she was in print. we always kind of gravitated toward each other. i was such a huge fan of her reporting and she was a respected journalist. but johanna, you have gone on to great are things. went on to earn her ph.d. she is a scholar in residence, done extraordinary historical work and this latest book is just a treat for all of you who haven't had a chance to read it yet or peek at it. you are truly in for a treat. johanna, without going any longer on all the prefaces, just why haven't you changed? 30 years?

>> guest: full disclosure, good doctors. >> host: you covered -- i knew you you as a reporter, "los angeles times," covering politics. covered the white house, state department, the congress. how did you -- i want to do a quick background. how did you find your way from doing that to being interested in history? >> guest: well, actually, i was very happy as a journalist. i loved what i was doing. can you all hear me,? but in late 2008, when the economy was collapsing, "the los angeles times," where i worked, decided to close the washington bureau, and i took a buy-out, as many journal journalists have and i started free lansing, "the los angeles times" called me back within a month and asked if

i would do their political blog from washington any morning hours before anyone in los angeles was up. if anything happened in washington in the morning, it was mine. and one day i'm sure many of you remember this -- the obamas got a dog. and his name was bo, and he was a portuguese water dog. and of course everyone is going to have this tidbit, and my job as a blogger is to think how i can distinguish us? so i thought and thought and i did a blog post that was titled "obamas get a black and white dog" and i did a riff on post racial, biracial and what it meant for the country, we have black and white dog. and this thing went viral for about 15 minutes, and the national editor called me

several hours later and said, this was fabulous. let's have more of this. this is fantastic. and later that evening, when i was having dinner with my husband, without title, jeff glazer, i said, i really have to find michigan more substantive to deal with. >> host: the dog lovers here may resent that. >> guest: that is the truth. and then we started brainstorming about what i could do that i love, and i had always loved history. my father was a great history buff and had given me the bug. and so i decided at a very advanced age to go back to school and get my ph.d in history. this is my first book as a historian. it's also -- for me it's the first test of my conviction that

you can marry the deep archival research imperative of the historian with the narrative skills of a journalist. >> host: why did you want to write about these women and the suffragist -- this was an aspect of the suffragist movement which has gotten no attention. >> guest: i knew very little about the suffrage movement. not like they taught it in school. one of the topics that interested me while i was back in school. and i was first going to write about stuffage in the 19th 19th center when there was a terrible schism between the two pranks of the movement, between elizabeth stanton and suzanne b. anthony on one side and lucy stone and henry blackwell on the

other. stone and blackwell are staunch analystists and believe that -- abolitionists and believe that the black men should be enfranchised first. that they 15th amendment which gives black men the right to vote should be ratified and then women can fight for their vote. susan b. and elizabeth katy, if they're going into the constitution, we're going with them, or else we're fighting it. and in this split the movement for almost 30 years, and they had rival organizations. it was deeply damaging for the cause. and i set out -- that was going to by my dissertation topic, prove that elizabeth katy and susan b. were horrible and ruined the movement.

bit was so depressing and my factually advisor, who has kindly come here today and he can remember i walked into his office and i said i want to start thinking about what finally worked. i want to look forward to the positive news that women finally got the vote. and i started researching the early 20th century 0 to see what was going on. started reading newspaper accounts and i tripped over these women. nobody noticed them. they were sort or too famous to notice. >> host: you didn't know about them when you started this thing. >> guest: no. i was reading newspapers from the 1900s, and there would be occasional references to event where this fancy, uber wealthy celebrity socialites were coming

out for suffrage. what happens, when they joined suffrage in 1908, this again is a movement that is sort of been in the dull dumbs, languishing, considered the cause of the fringe, the intellectual fringe or there's various code words, there's code words for lesbian fringe or radical fringe, but clearly not the mainstream. and then comp the society women ask they're covered already. celebrity figures, covered by the press for their -- take core, travel, entertainment. they over the top. one reason it's such a fun read. put when they came out for votes for women, it electrified public opinion. sort of interested the

mainstream. it would be like angelina jolie embracing -- suddenly u.n. refugees get sexy. who would have thought? that's what happened, believe. >> host: and what was the moment and speaking of -- just touching back on your point about race, that comes up again as it turns out. what was the moment -- let me put it this way. when did you realize that they were consequential enough to devote this much attention to them? what made you realize that? >> guest: i'm not sure i did. i just like their stories and no one has covered them, and i just thought they were -- yeah, just thought they were delicious characters. really. it was the journalist in me. and then as i studied them, noticed the consequences of

their involvement. you could really see it. one of my favorite anecdotes in the book is a womped named florence nighting $gale what was her last name -- a canadian immigrant and moved to new york and she opened a beauty business, and the reason i can't remember her last name is that she changed her name to liz arden, and elizabeth arden was never political, and she -- one day she shocked her staff by leaving her desk and going out to join one of the suffrage parades, those iconic suffrage parades you may have seen photos of long fifth avenue, and when she got back, her staffers were like, we didn't know you support

it the cause. she says, oh, don't, but our clients do. and that's when i knew that they were consequential. >> host: who were -- talk a little bit about the instigators of this, the first women from this socialite group, class, whatever you want to call it, who were brave enough, bold enough, ahead of their times enough to stick their necks out and say, i'm going to do something about this. >> guest: the first one -- there was a first one -- was katherine duer mackey, the descendent of great old money in new york, and she married new money, the silver mining fortune of clarence mackey and his family, and they have this guildded existence, a place in manhattan, they rent every

season in newport. a 628-acre estate in roslyn, long island and katherine is beautiful. she is stunningly beautiful. she is covered for everything she does. when she decides to run for a seat on the school board of roslyn, long island, it's a shock to everyone, and two years later she decided she's going in figure for women's right to vote. and it is electrifying. there's a woman -- lucy stone, who i mentioned before, from the 19th century, her daughter, alice, wrote this beautiful description of what happens when macmacky joins the effort.

when alice's mother lucy was campaigning for women's rights and against slavery in the 1840s. men hitted -- being the audience -- they hissed and threw rotten eggs and alice was beside herself that now makey speaks, people are clamoring for tickets. they can't wait to hear her. they're selling out events. suffrage finally has spring in its step. people are excited about it again. i believe that is really one of the assets they bring. the other asset they bring, which -- we can develop this later, but i think they're what you would call an obsession with fashion or their eye for fashion, but clearly their fascination with fashion trends

was an asset they brought to the campaign. the understood that if you wanted to sell something to the mainstream, you had to present it in such a way that it would be appealing, as you would any consumer product. right? they treated the campaign as if it were a consumer effort. so i think that was one of her great contributions. >> host: way ahead of their day. talk a little bit, johanna, hot but they were received by he established -- what was then the movement. they came out of left field, right field, whatever you want to call it, but you're right, they were out of a field. >> guest: a field that most of us will never understand. i mean, the one thing -- can i tell a story? >> host: that's what we love.

we've to the story snooze one of my great research adventures was when i -- i went to many archives and libraries across the country because these women left bread crumbs every. >> host: where temperature the libraries? >> guest: they had all left their materials at the library of congress, it would have been much easier. but some of them left in the schlessinger library at radcliffe, the huntington library in pasadena, and so this was on a trip to los angeles, and there were just a few collection is wanted to look at, at ucla. and one of them was an oral history transcript of mrs. mackey's secretary, ethel was her name. i'm pretty compiled because as a journalist you interview people all the time, as a historian you

learn to interview documents. you learn to talk to the people through the documents they left. you can ask them questions. they don't always answer. but i was very excited and i get there and i request the file and the file comes and i open it, and there's one page, and it says, this transcript is missing. and i don't know if any of you if ever seen a 60 something have a hissy fit but that is what i proceeded to do, and the librarians escorted me out of the research area. and then they summoned this marvelous lady, teresa barnes, the head of the oral history department at ucla, and i explained the problem. and teresa barnes -- barnett -- said i will promise to look for

this. will commission a research assistant. we'll scour the library. we'll try to get you this transcript, but because of the rules of oral history at the time this interview was done, which was in the 1960s, so this woman was interviewed in the 1960s about events in the 1910s. we can't send you a pdf. you have to come back to california. so, i'm a student on a little budget. but two weeks later i get an e-mail from her and and she says, i'm sorry, we never found the transcript but we did find the tapes. and she said, we're going digitize it, put it on a cd, you can come out here with your laptop and listen and take notes. well, this was a great blessing

in my life because i got to hear the voice of someone who knew one of my -- what i've come to called my ladies. it's about ace close as i historian can come to touching history. and the thing that tickled me about ethel -- ethel was an immigrant from hungary, and she talked about maki and how she had influenced her to dress. she said maki dressed her. she said she never overdressed me. she dressed me as a secretary should properly be dress but spoiled me for cheap clothe, and maki took her on the family's twice a year visits to paris and treated her to a finishing school, really, treated her to refined living, and what was

interesting about -- and that maki understood the role that fashion played in getting people to her events, but she said -- including the reporters, because that's what they wanted to report on, what mrs. maki was wearing. >> host: imagine the press. >> guest: i cannot -- >> -- being interested in that. >> guest: but she said that the reporters never left one of our events without a statement from-miles-an-hour maki about the women's suffrage movement. the other thing that was marvelous about listening to it instead of reading it, is that the historian was interviewing ethel gros not because she had been mrs. makis secretary but because later in life she marries harry hopkins, and harry hopkins, as many of you know, went on to be one of fdr's key

aides, and she historian keeps trying to push her to talk about harry, and ethel keeps wanting to talk about mrs. maki, and she finally sort of connect the two by telling him, i just want you to understand, the reason harry hopkins married me is when he met me, he didn't see a hungarian immigrant, he saw a lady of refinement. >> host: fascinating. quickly go back to the question about how did the movement receive these women. how did they -- >> guest: it was mixed. there are were some people --

saw early they would be key to one of the emerging aspects of the movement, which was a broad-baseed cross-class coalition. so blank had already reached out to working class women, and factory workers, and immigrants, and professional women, and teachers and librarians, middle class club women. and now she could add this piece, and the idea of these parades along fifth avenue was really to demonstrate to men, again, that all kinds of women wanted the vote. it wasn't any longer the interest of a few. >> host: and i just want to say in five minutes we'll open it up for questions. so is that right thinking about questions you want to ask

johanna. how did the -- when did it click is my question? you have so many wonderful stories about the tactics, the rivalry between two of these women. there's some wonderful anecdotes about that. but when did it click? when was it clear that these women, who later did not get the attention or appreciation that you point out they rightfully deserved -- when what is clear they made the difference? they made difference? >> guest: i think it was clear by the mid-1910s. think by 1915, they were such a staple of the movement that they were -- actually, by 1912. in 1912, this middle portrait is alva belmont. alva was mrs. ma kys great

rival, and that's interesting, too. the very fact that two women of a social class would both want to be queen bee of suffrage was pretty interesting. but in the early 1910s, harriet blatche tried to get them to join the paraded, and the parades at that time are controversial for women to -- first of all, a parade is seen as a very male, almost military kind of function. secondly, the idea that women would be walking in the streets was offensive to them. maki was horrified. belmont retreated to her home in long island. they just -- there was a great deal of fear, not just among the elot women but also the middle class women, that they would be

for had radicals or streetwalkers. in 1912, and maybe this is the turning point -- alva belmont decided that public opinion had shifted and would accept women of her standing walking in the streets. she led the -- a del gages, contingent in that year's parade, and several journalists commented afterwards that the push she gave the movement, the public acceptance, the cover, was a singular contribution. so i don't know if that answers -- >> host: it does. there's so many fascinating questions. how hard was it for the -- i guess the -- you want to call them the intellectuals of the movement to accept the idea that it took this appeal to society

to close to appearance, to broaden the popular appeal of the movement? >> guest: i think was very hard. think they resisted a lot. they were accustomed to doing things their own way. there was also a great deal of tension over tactics, as you mentioned. there were sort of mainstream -- a mainstream movement called the imagine american women's suffrage association, which at it peak had 2 million members, the be light. and they were very -- the goliath and they were very much mainstream, they did legislative appeals, they did petitions. they courted the president, wanting to get his endorsement. there was a smaller sort of rag tag group of radicals headed by alice paul, called the national

women's party, and in 1917, alice paul starts picketing the white house. we are at war in europe, and a lot of people find this in -- with the era of jingoism pervading the society. this is a jailhouse door pin that was made for all the suffer suffragists who went to jail for the right to vote, and it -- to me it's a meditation on the difference between moderate and radical and makes me sort of ponder which one is more effective at bringing social change. maybe all of these things

contribute. maybe the fashion ability of the gilded ones, and the mainstream legislative appeals of the main mainstream suffrage activists and the radicals maybe pushing us further than our comfort zone. >> host: one of the enduring questions. i'm about to turn it over to the audience. why do you think, though, that essentially these women were forgotten for so long? i'm not aware of them. maybe they were written about. >> guest: i don't know the answer to that. i think -- i don't know. i would be curious what readers think about why. to me they're compelling figures, as i mentioned, not just for their substantive role but for their delightful excesses. so i don't know why they've been ignored. think there were agendas.

after suffrage is finally enacted, at the federal level in 1920, a lot of memoirs get written, a lot of papers are burned, which surprised me. some of the main figures in the suffrage movement burned their papers, including -- i mean, a lot of major players. so there's a lot we don't know, but i think there's a settling of scores, that these women were resented, they were wealthy, they were autocratic. these were not little delicate creature. one thing i learned from ethel is that these women were accustomed to running huge estates. they were business women. they were executive. they had huge staffs to run. when they got into the suffrage

movement, they didn't for the most part join already existing movements or organizations. they formed their own. they wanted to be president. and so. >> host: all right. questions. i've got more but i want to give you all a chance. we're a little more than halfway into the hour. some of you -- let see. hands -- and there are two microphones. one over here -- just one there. so step up to the mic. >> i wonder if you know who i they burned their papers, that's one question. i also wonder if they used their money to support anybody else's suffrage movement, and specifically if they had any connection to the radicals, and i also wonder -- >> host: wait a minute. wait a minute. >> guest: that's a lot of questions. >> host: you can come back in a minute. why did the burn their papers. >> guest: when i went back to

school i asked my husband do you thick have enough brain cells to do this? can you keep track of the questions? >> host: yes. >> guest: on question of burning papers, its goes bag a lock way. susan b. anthony burned her papers. the feeling of i'm going to leave my authorized biograph and then i'll burn everything that might contradict it. >> did men do that, too? i don't know. >> host: the other question, did they support other causes. >> guest: so this is a very important question. i had a mentor early on in the process at harvard. his name is svn beck art, he is other into macro history and he was interested in my work because he had written about the moneyed men of murk disof new

york but didn't mention the women. we had coffee when i was at cambridge, and he said to me, how many of these women do you have? and i am thinking like a journalist, and i said, way too many. i have 24 already. and i'm thinking, how am i going to tell a story, weave a narrative. it's like -- he said to me that's 100. and i said, i probably could because i had been reading biographies and at the bottom of the newspaper copy would be also in attendance were mrs. so and so. but i'd been ignoring them because i already had too many. so i said, yeah, think i can get to 100. he said you need to get to 200.

you need to find out everything you can about them. what church they belonged to, what political party they affiliated with. what causes they support. what clubs they joined. whether their money was new or old, whether they were divorced, whether they had children, whether they wrote. and this took six months out of the research. i stopped going on trips and i just did this spreadsheet and one thing it taught me is how they are not a monolith, and die want to say, sometimes all i started with in the morning was the description of someone as mrs. husband's name. that's all i had. and it took me sometimes all day -- i looked at census records, birth records, death notices, wedding announcements,

and i was so triumphant when i got her first name and maiden name. felt i has excavated these people. but what the spreadsheet taught me was how myriad where their motives and you cannot talk about -- on the question of radicalism, three of these 200 uber wealthy elite women, did join alice paul's more radical organization and they went to jail for their right to vote. one of them is louis havameier one of the great art checkers in the country. she was good friends with mary kasat and her husband was henry havameier, president of the sugar trust that the federal government eventually busted up

for antitrust. but they had a lot of money and went often to europe to visit mary, and they had an incredible collection that now actually undergirds much of the metropolitan museum's collection. >> host: fascinating. >> guest: and she went to jail. she -- alice paul asked her to come to washington to light a figure of woodrow will sin in effigy. and so -- she is not a kid. at the time she is 63 years old, and she comes to washington and she never quite lights the match. in fact she says in an article later, if i had managed to light him on fire issue probably would have gotten a life sentence. but she elects, rather than paying five dollar fine, she elects to go to prison, and this

radicalizes her, and she writing poignantly about, i was in jail thinking, wheres my uncle sam? and so that's why i really can't say they were all of one mind. >> host: subject for another book, or two or three. next question. >> what was the impact on their marriages? could you see a pattern. >> guest: oh, thank you. >> host: impact on their marriages. they were all married? >> guest: most of them were, yes. i thank you for the question because i always forget to mention. have a chapter in the book on the men. it's called "mere men" because that's what the newspapers of the day called them. it was derisive term. you mere men who are helping the women. like you're not really men. and they endeared themselves to

me because they took such a beaty from their colleagues. when they marched -- of that 1912 suffrage parade, there were a thousand men marching under the men's league for women's suffrage, and they took more heckling than any other contingent of the parade. they were called all kinds of names, which i'll let you imagine. so, what was the question. >> host: that was it. how did the -- >> guest: most of them were husbands of the women. >> host: some husbands had trouble. >> guest: yes, quite a few. quite a few had trouble, and some marriages faltered over it. >> host: yes. >> i believe that the amendment for women's voting was passed in -- finally ratified in 1919. no it was passed in 1919 and was ratified in 1920.

>> so it was really a bad time for, like, progressive thinks, we had the palmer raided,ty germans being lynched, the klu klux klan coming in. how was it possible to get such a progressive thing passed? >> host: good question. >> guest: i think there's -- the flip side of that is that it was the end of the progressive era. it was a time of many reform causes, and all of them, in that period, seemed to attract a cross-class coalition, a broad tent, so the movements to clean up city hall to rid city governance of political bosses, to sanitize -- >> host: it's okay. >> guest: i know him.

>> host: it's okay. [laughter] under -- >> host: hi, kendra. >> guest: so, my view is just sort of the flip side. that they were the tail end of a progressive era that saw many reform causes over all kinds of issues. even there's some causes even earlier, the audubon society is formed and there's an effort to get women to stop wearing feathers in their hats because it's killing off the bird population. so all kind of reform efforts going on and this is -- in fact max eastman, the editor of the masses in greenwich village and one of the men mentioned in "the mere men" chapter. was a socialist and advocate of

free love. there was a lot -- the whole birth control movement comes out of this era. he says that the women's right to vote was the great fight for freedom in my generation. and that is sort of how i look at it, too. >> host: we have a special guest, now betsy griffith is the author of a book on elizabeth kady stanton. >> an awful woman. and i teach women's hit here at politics and prose and i hope you'll be a guest at my classes. suffrage passes because by 1919 women were voting in enough states and controlled enough electoral college votes the congress would switch rather than have women vote them out of office, be but there are all these complexities. i can't wait to read you book, congratulations, thank you. i'm interested in the money. he's were the emily's list of that era. i know that mrs. belmont was constantly filling alice paul's

carpet bag with cash and would come on the train witness and ms. kat has the leslie magazine money, $300,000 inheritance? were you able to track the fund? were all these women about whom you have written donors as well as supporters? >> guest: that's a interesting question. thank you very much. i think most of them were donors, but the point i was hoping to make in the book was rather different. that aspect of their involvement had been covered before. to me what was more intriguing was not that they wrote checks but they actually stood with the cause. they marched. they gave speeches. they held events. so that's really what i focused on. i do think that alva belmont

probably -- if you did an accounting, she would tip the scales towards the radical side. she had first funded the mainstream as you know, and then she got sort of tired of them and impatient with the mainstream organization because it wasn't really making a difference, and she felt that alice paul could. alice paul was getting attention for different things than celebrity and fashion. she was getting attention for radical controversial cack ticks. >> host: just a quick follow up. if these women had wanted to make big contributions, did they have the ability to do that? did they have enough control over the money in their household to do that? >> guest: i don't know -- i would hesitate to make a global statement about that, but i would guess that most of them, yes. most of them did and most of

them did make contributions. alice paul, as elizabeth said, had -- i mean, alva belmont basically supported alice paul, paid her salary for her whole life, and i was just -- i had this magical event last sunday, almost as magical as this, at woodlawn cemetery in the bronx. they called and they said -- i don't know if you know this but many of the women you write about are buried here and we would like you to come speak and i was delighted. they said, and we're going to invite the descendants and i'm like, oh, my god, what if i got something wrong? it was a charming event, and afterwards i asked to go to the

mausoleum where al very bell -- alva belmont was buried. she said she wanted to be buried with a suffrage -- she wanted a identify mail to officiate but a they couldn't find one. everything shells asked for. 1500 people at the funeral. alice paul was there. harriet stanton blatche, krista bell came from london. margaret thanger was there she had a stellar sendoff, and she had requested that a suffrage banner accompany her to her mausoleum, and be installed next to her grave, and alice paul, according to the cemetery officials, is the one who planted it there, and it hangs there still. it is in deep disrepair and

they're hoping to get the now, -- the new yorkhart historical -- the new york historical society to rapper it. and it shows me how deeply alice paul was indebted to alva belmont for her ss. >> host: myny tidbits from the descendent inside. >> guest: elizabeth kady's great-great -- colleen jenkins came, and we had a ball. the historian of the cemetery put us in a golf cart and drove is around to the key burial sites, and -- >> host: this is at night. >> guest: no. no. >> host: it wasn't yet halloween. >> guest: but the historian for the cemetery insist that we so

stop at mrs. mckie's grave, which has fallen into serious disrepair, sort of -- you can hardly read the inscription on the tombstone, and she insist that i stand behind the tombstone and have a picture taken. she said you have rescued her. and i was just -- wow. >> johanna, is there a high society origin story about who, when and why the suffrages decided to wear white at they're parades? >> guest: there may be but i don't know what it is itch know that harriet stanton blatche was interest the optic -- into the pop ticks ticks anded there hadn criticism in 1911 of the dallying by the suffrage parade and getting organized.

so in 1912, she issued orders, sort of like a general issuing orders to the troops. you will march on time. you will all wear white. macy's had suffrage paraphernalia. some things never change, right? and so -- and she was the one who really instilled in them ad in to show discipline. it's a funny thing for us to think about, that somehow male voters, who were going to judge whether to grant or -- or male legislator who were going to judge whether to grant women the right to vote, would notice promptness or uniforms, but harriet thought it was important to showcase discipline, and this is not -- this is really a tangent, but a similar thing happened during world world war,

when many suffrages who had been peace activists, decide to work in war relief because they feel it will convince the men that they are committed citizens, entitled to vote. >> host: fascinating. eye. >> i'm wondering if many of these society women traveled to england. >> guest: yes. >> and were influenced by the panhurst and the mom in england. englishwoman partially got the right to vote before us and some after. so could you comment on their exposure to -- >> guest: there is a marvelous cross-atlantic conveyans of ideas through the movement, not just among the gilded.

many of the american suffrage leaders took the example from -- the soap box speeches, the parades, the mass rallies, a lot of it was influenced by britain, but sometimes people ask me why are you calling them suffragists? aren't the suffrage yets? and the answer was a british journalist disattended the british activists by calling them little suffragettes and they decided to adopt the word as a badge of honor, but the american activists were mindful of the reaction from american men who might have been threatened by the violence of the british, the british

actually bombed buildings, there were heckling of politicians, assaulting mps, including winston churchill, and they didn't want too import that. and so they went with the gender neutral term suffragists. >> i know that -- was there -- i know that there were also women who opposed. the national association in opposition to women's suffrage, and senator james wads worth russ wife was want and secretary of state lansing's was one. and mrs. anderson of anderson house on mass of who called themselves remon straints? i have not been able to fine the story. >> guest: there were quite a few

of them, and there were quite of few of enemy in the circumstancing. the first chapter in the book deals with the creation of a club in new york called the colony club because it bake a site of debate where suffrage would be good for women of social standing or not. whether they were better off with moral persuasion or i like to call it bedroom influence. and there was also a fear among most -- both men and women that if women got into the dirty, corrupt, cigar-ridden business of politics, it would coarsen them. it would make them less feminine. it would threaten the home. all these things were part of the mantra of what was called

the antis and in the book if have several examples of sisters who differed on the issue. some being antis and some being pros. so, part of the thinking of the antis was a more elitist view, that if you extended the vote to all women, you would be expanding the pool of women who were not of their class, women who were working women and immigrants and they really didn't support that. they -- >> host: sounds familiar to today. >> guest: yeah. they actually called -- the weren't for universal suffrage. they were for educated suffrage. >> host: one last question before we wrap up. i don't see another question here. as a reporter i'm curious about the role the press played in

this. you talk about this at the outset, but they did this, as you say, mindful that they were going to be covered. so, what role did the press play in their ability to be effective or not. >> guest: that's a delicious question, actually. one of the things that i tripped over early and that always bemused me a little is that "the new york times" was famously anti-suffrage. and their editorials were more biting and ridiculing than any others. sort of led the train. but there is an evolution. you can see the press turn at some point in the mid-1910s. and maybe it's the younger people. i didn't delve into the life of the reporters as much. but there's a coming

understanding -- you know, sometimes i think about social change as -- well, someone mentioned that there were women voting in the states, and that is a wonderful reminder that the states sometimes serve as an incubator for social change, and that by 1912 there are 1.3 million women voting in the country. by 1916. woodrow wilson is not reelected without their votes. and social change takes time. there's this evolution of public opinion, what is once radical, like in our time, gay marriage, or medical marijuana or death with dignity statutes, it takes time to acclimate the mainstream, the middle, off you

want to think about it and that's what happened in this case. >> it's a fascinating book. i encourage all of you to dig into. let's thank johanna newman. [applause] >> we have becomes behind the register and johanna will be signing right here. we'll form a line right here. >> host: she's signing books. conversation [inaudible conversations]

booktv has covered many books on feminism, including those by gloria stein mam. camellia polly, phyllis schlafly. and many other authors. if this is a topic that interests you, visit booktv.org, time feminism book in the search bar and watch all the author wes have covered over the years. here's a look at the current best selling books according to amazon:

>> okay. why don't we get started. the program is being record by c-span and being live streamed so we have to start exactly at 5:30 and end exactly at 6:30 so i apologize in advance for cutting off any moments of brilliance on their part or any of yours because of the timing. my name is john yoo and i'm a visiting score here at the am