A set of campaigns in South Dakota about the 1916 suffrage amendment to the state constitution involved so many intersecting ideas, details, and stories, that I’m going to put the narrative together here in one place. This will focus on the two sets of campaigning led by ‘out-of-staters’ that generated a lot of press. Then, on my other pages I’ll be able to link back to this post for these two big-ticket campaigns, rather than repeating so much on a number of timeline, biography, etc. pages.
At the start of the year 1916… The state legislature in Pierre had passed a bill for a state suffrage amendment at their session in the late winter of 1915. It was put on the ballot for November 1916. The South Dakota Universal Franchise League under president Mamie Shields Pyle of Huron was the most active organization working in support of the bill, with the assistance of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union also supported suffrage, but was simultaneously waging a campaign for a state prohibition amendment that was also on the 1916 ballot. Working against the suffrage amendment was the state’s auxiliary of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, led by Ethel Jacobsen of Pierre, which re-formed in the summer of 1916. For the first five months of the year, suffragists’ activity had been of the slow-and-steady variety. The SDUFL worked on getting local suffrage leagues organized, Pyle canvassed voters for their opinion on the bill, and local speakers like Myra Weller, Mary Maguire Thomas, and Nina Pettigrew made speaking appearances [Mitchell Capital (SD), July 20, 1916; The Herald-Advance (Milbank SD), July 21, 1916].
The Flying Squadron Campaign
In late July, Elsie Benedict of Colorado, Rev. Effie McCollum Jones of Iowa, and the “Flying Squadron” arrived in South Dakota for their campaign tour. Their plan was to start with an event in Sioux Falls on July 24th, cross the state to the Black Hills via Chamberlain/Oacoma, and then back east again via Mitchell [Minneapolis Morning Tribune (MN), July 18, 1916; Mitchell Capital (SD), July 27, 1916; The Herald-Advance (Milbank SD), July 28, 1916; Philip Weekly Review and Bad River News (SD), July 27, 1916; et al.; Pierre Weekly Free Press (SD), August 10, 1916; Des Moines Register (IA), November 27, 1916; Deutscher Herold (Sioux Falls SD), November 30, 1916; Jones, “The South Dakota Campaign,” The Woman Voter 7(10) (October 1919), 15].
Elsie Lincoln Vandergrift Benedict (1885–1970)
Elsie V. Benedict was a journalist who was on the editorial staff of the Denver Post [Daily Deadwood Pioneer-Times (SD), August 9, 1916].
Rev. Effie McCollum Jones (1869-1952)
Effie McCollum Jones of Iowa had been working as a Universalist pastor until she resigned to lecture full-time [(includes photo, below) Pierre Weekly Free Press (SD), August 10, 1916].
Another of Benedict’s compatriots on the tour was Emma Smith DeVoe, who had played such a big part in South Dakota’s 1890 campaign but had moved to Washington and led their successful 1910 state ballot campaign. She was also, at the time, president of the National Council of Women Voters. DeVoe arrived in Deadwood from the west on August 1 and was given a welcoming reception in the assembly rooms of the Deadwood Business Club. Nina Pettigrew of Belle Fourche, the SDUFL’s district president for the northwest section, was also a featured guest. DeVoe spoke at the reception and “her talk outlined the plan of campaign which will be adopted in the state and which will start at once and be continued on until after the votes have all been cast at the coming elections in November.” To start the Black Hills leg of their tour, DeVoe was joined by Benedict and Jones. Local women Nina Pettigrew, Katherine Powell, and Rose Bower joined them at points as well [Daily Deadwood Pioneer-Times (SD), August 2, 1916, August 3, 1916, August 4, 1916; Madison Daily Leader (SD), August 5, 1916; Philip Weekly Review and Bad River News (SD), August 10, 1916].
On their way to the Black Hills, Effie McCollum Jones and Elsie Benedict connected with SDUFL vice-president May P. Ghrist. They visited Vermillion, Yankton, Mitchell, White Lake, and Chamberlain. Their tour stops typically started with a strategy meeting with local women supporters, a street rally led by Benedict, and then a public lecture by Jones. They took pledges and collections for funds and sent any cash back to SDUFL headquarters for Pyle as they had opportunity. On the automobile trip between Mitchell and White Lake, Jones fractured a rib and had to visit the sanitarium there to get “all strapped up.” When their train out of Chamberlain was delayed 45 minutes, Jones called the conductor “an Anti evidently.” On their train trip west, Elsie talked to twenty men and ten women for 10 min. at Belvidere, people had gathered ahead but the train stopped less than 2 min. at Interior, while “at other places no one appeared” [The Dakota Republican (Vermillion SD), July 20, 1916; Vermillion Plain Talk (SD), August 3, 1916; Jones to Pyle, August 4, 1916, RA07463–RA07466, and Jones to Pyle, August 17, 1916, RA07467–RA07468, Box 1, Correspondence, 1910, April – 1916, December, Pyle Papers, USD].
Their planned Black Hills schedule was publicized by Nina Pettigrew:
- August 3-4: Rapid City
- August 5-6: Hot Springs
- August 7: Custer and Deadwood
- August 8: Lead and Belle Fourche
- August 10: Sturgis
“Mrs. Benedict is famed as an open air speaker and is a voter in Colorado. Mrs. DeVoe is president of the National Council of Women Voters and is a voter in the state of Washington…”
Daily Deadwood Pioneer-Times (SD), August 3, 1916.“The squadron has been represented at everything, varying from evangelistic tent meetings and a Sunday School picnic to street meetings, mass meetings, receptions and band concerts.”
Custer Weekly Chronicle (SD), August 12, 1916.
At Rapid City, they held a street meeting from 7:15 to 8, but it started raining at collection time, so donations were small. The next day, thirty people attended the strategy meeting, and Jones wrote: “Tonight, Elsie speaks between reels at the picture show where they have given her ten minutes. My meeting is in the tabernacle after the revival meeting is over, so it will not be a giving crowd” [Jones to Pyle, August 4, 1916, RA07463–RA07466, Box 1, Correspondence, 1910, April – 1916, December, Pyle Papers, USD].
At Rapid, according to a letter by Jones, Pettigrew and Benedict had some kind of an argument. Though Benedict had apologized, “it seems wiser not to keep so many people in one place, anyhow, so Mrs. Pettigrew and Mrs. DeVoe went somewhere else today” and will meet up then split again, with Pettigrew and DeVoe going to Custer and Benedict and Jones going to Hot Springs. Jones relayed, “I am the official pourer of oil on the waters though, and we are all serene again” [Jones to Pyle, August 4, 1916, RA07463–RA07466, Box 1, Correspondence, 1910, April – 1916, December, Pyle Papers, USD].
At Deadwood, the schedule for “suffrage day” on August 7th started with an informal public reception and tea for Jones, Benedict, and DeVoe at the home of Mable Rewman (who had worked as DeVoe’s secretary in Washington in 1910 before Rewman’s marriage and move to Deadwood). DeVoe spoke on her campaign experiences, Jones talked on “the proper way to conduct a campaign,” and Pettigrew spoke on fundraising. Those assembled pledged over “1100” (that’s what the OCR text read… $1,100 seems high… maybe $100). The refreshments included “delicious punch and wafers.” That evening, the speakers held a formal rally; “Mrs. Pettigrew was the first speaker of the evening and in her talk reviewed the progress of the movement in South Dakota and told of what had been accomplished, starting at the beginning or the fight for suffrage in this state and continuing up until the present day.” Jones and DeVoe were the primary speakers for the evening [Daily Deadwood Pioneer-Times (SD), August 4, 1916, August 8, 1916]. Benedict did not speak in Deadwood on the August stop, but already planned to return in October [Daily Deadwood Pioneer-Times (SD), August 9, 1916].
At Lead–“the city of mills,” Rose Bower played her cornet to attract an audience to Benedict’s street meeting on Dickinson’s corner at Main and Bleeker Streets — “when they reached there they saw something which Lead has seldom seen–a young woman with a wonderful voice, asking the voters of South Dakota to vote for the enfranchisement of women this fall” and they “blocked the streets for over two hundred feet in all directions, and not a man stirred from his position after Mrs. Benedict began her talk until she had finished her argument, and when she did she was greeted by a storm of applause.” Another newspaper called Benedict “she of the wonderful voice, profound and convincing argument and pleasing personality.” She then led the crowd down the block to the Grier Monument that stood in front of the Homestake Opera House. Jones then spoke inside the theater; she had spoken at the Assembly Hall the night before [Lead Daily Call (SD), August 8, 1916, August 9, 1916; Daily Deadwood Pioneer-Times (SD), August 9, 1916].
After their time in the Black Hills, they returned east through Pierre on August 12-13, where Jones spoke at the Grand Opera House [Pierre Weekly Free Press (SD), August 3, 1916, August 10, 1916]. They then stopped in Ft. Pierre, Highmore, and Miller. Next at Redfield, no local supporters made arrangements for lodging/entertainment. A Methodist minister, Rev. Herbert Hartt offered the use of his church for their meeting. A woman who sold Barcley corsets offered $0.25 of each corset she sold during the campaign. At their accommodations in the hotel, Benedict had “a bed-buggy room and slept little in consequence” [Jones to Pyle, August 17, 1916, RA07467–RA07468, Box 1, Correspondence, 1910, April – 1916, December, Pyle Papers, USD].
In August, the NAWSA’s national “Golden Flier” tour also passed through South Dakota, with speakers Alice Snitzer Burke and Nell Richardson of New York giving speeches from their yellow car for two weeks.
Madison Daily Leader (SD), July 25, 1916, August 17, 1916; Hannah J. Patterson, ed., The Hand Book of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and Proceedings of the Forty-Eighth Annual Convention held at Atlantic City, N.J., September 4-10 inclusive, 1916 (New York, 1916), 89.
After Redfield, they went to Faulkton, Ipswich, Aberdeen, and then Webster. At Webster, Jones reported that rain had disrupted their plans by making roads “quite impassable.” They had planned to speak at the opera house, but changed the location to the rooms of the local Commercial club, because “a small crowd will feel more enthusiastic in a small room than in a large one.” Mrs. Hunter helped the meetings be a success despite the rain. From Webster, they went on to Clark, Howard, Brookings, and Huron [Jones to Pyle, August 21, 1916, RA07469–RA07470, Jones to Pyle, August 22, 1916, RA07471–RA07472, Pyle to Jones, August 23, 1916, RA07473, and Jones to Pyle, August 31, 1916, RA07474-RA07475, Box 1, Correspondence, 1910, April – 1916, December, Pyle Papers, USD].
At Watertown, they met with local suffragists at the library rest room, Benedict spoke at the courthouse square–“a brief but incisive address”– accompanied by the Fourth Regiment Band, and Jones and DeVoe led a women’s organizing meeting at the Methodist Episcopal church [Saturday News (Watertown SD), August 24, 1916, pg 1, pg 5].
At their stop in Madison, the Lake County U.F.L. arranged for Jones to speak to the league “along lines of organization, publicity and methods of financing the campaign,” for Benedict to speak on Egan Avenue and Fourth Street, then a parade of Campfire Girls and Boy Scouts to process the crowd down the street to the auditorium at the high school for Jones’ evening lecture. At her street meeting, Benedict gave an answer to the idea that voting will lead women to be masculine and neglect their home, saying “that she had been a voter for a number of years, yet she took good care of her husband and devoted the regulation amount of time each day to curling her hair” — and she told the crowd that there were a lot of male “sissies” that were still effeminate despite their ability to vote [Madison Daily Leader (SD), August 25, 1916, August 28, 1916, August 29, 1916, August 30, 1916]. In correspondence, Jones called the Madison arrangements “inadequate.” Jones was taken to a private hometo stay, but DeVoe and Benedict were put up at a hotel. There was only a small group at the afternoon strategy meeting. Madison supporters were more full of plans for what would come, and Jones detailed which women they had met who would do work in the county [Jones to Pyle, August 31, 1916, RA07474-RA07475, Box 1, Correspondence, 1910, April – 1916, December, Pyle Papers, USD].
“There is no danger that women will become masculine if equal suffrage carries. They will still cling to the little eccentricities peculiar to their sex—for instance, I went without my supper tonight rather than miss curling my hair for this occasion.”
Saturday News (Watertown SD), November 2, 1916.
When they stopped in Flandreau, Jones reported that women were sent to meet them on arrival, but that a boarding house was the accommodation. The county fair being held at the time drew away any potential audiences — those attending the fair or hosting people in town for the fair. She wrote that DeVoe and Benedict had approached the fair’s management about speaking at the fair but that they were refused a platform. Local suffragists had inquired about paying for a booth but couldn’t raise the $10 fee [Jones to Pyle, August 31, 1916, RA07474-RA07475, Box 1, Correspondence, 1910, April – 1916, December, Pyle Papers, USD].
At Dell Rapids, Gina Smith-Campbell hosted them at her house because the hotel was quarantined for infantile paralysis. The street meeting was small, and they had about thirty women at Library Hall for a forty-minute meeting. Smith-Campbell believed many of the local women to be opposed or indifferent, so advised them against pressing a collection of funds [Jones to Pyle, August 31, 1916, RA07474-RA07475, Box 1, Correspondence, 1910, April – 1916, December, Pyle Papers, USD].
At the end of August, the next stop was Sioux Falls, where the meeting with local supporters was small, and at the street meeting, “an altercation arose between Elsie and a man who was accused by another hearer of being an anti spy so our collection was a failure and the meeting broke up in a whirl of excitement” [Jones to Pyle, August 31, 1916, RA07474-RA07475, Box 1, Correspondence, 1910, April – 1916, December, Pyle Papers, USD].
After the Flying Squadron ended their tour, Emma Smith DeVoe stayed to speak on suffrage for the W.C.T.U.’s state convention in Madison and at the Corn Palace festival in Mitchell, where she met up again with Elsie Benedict. That fall, Benedict also spoke at the Modern Woodmen’s Labor Day picnic at Alsen and in Tyndall on October 20 [The Dakota Republican (Vermillion SD), September 7, 1916; Madison Daily Leader (SD), September 13, 1916; Huron Weekly State Spirit (SD), September 28, 1916; The Citizen-Republican (Scotland SD), October 5, 1916, October 19, 1916].
Other speakers came in from out-of-state in early October. Another speaker who campaigned with street rallies was Maud McCreery of Wisconsin, who spent eight weeks touring in seven counties [Huron Weekly State Spirit (SD), September 28, 1916; Madison Daily Leader (SD), October 28, 1916, October 30, 1916, October 31, 1916, November 1, 1916, November 4, 1916]. Mary Baird Bryan gave press-grabbing lectures in Mitchell and Watertown [Mitchell Capital (SD), October 12, 1916; Saturday News (Watertown SD), October 12, 1916]. Then in October, Helen Guthrie Miller of St. Louis, the NAWSA vice-president, arrived in Pierre [Pierre Weekly Free Press (SD), October 19, 1916].
In November, DeVoe and Benedict reconvened in the Black Hills with Mabel Rewman. DeVoe and Rewman spoke at Terry and Terraville. Benedict and Garcia(?) Erickson (also from Denver) held street meetings in Lead and Deadwood. At Deadwood, the speakers gave a street rally from an automobile parked on Main Street in front of the Franklin Hotel–“although the evening was chilly and a cold wind prevailed most of the time they were speaking, none left the crowd.” The Pioneer Times reported a “good sized crowd, and among those assembled were many women” with “Votes for Women” pennants. Mabel Rewman introduced DeVoe first, then Benedict. They spoke for an hour-and-a-half. Benedict was reportedly easy to hear–“in the open air on a busy street, she threw her voice to the very limits of the crowd and everyone heard her distinctly.” At the same time, Lucy Price, an anti-suffragist, was scheduled to speak at Assembly Hall in Lead, and Ethel Jacobson appeared with NAOWS’ Mrs. R.C. White at the auditorium in Deadwood [Lead Daily Call (SD), November 2, 1916; Daily Deadwood Pioneer-Times (SD), November 2, 1916, November 4, 1916; Custer Weekly Chronicle (SD), November 11, 1916].
The Anti Campaign
In late October 1916, the state auxiliary of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage started its campaign tour with lead speakers: Minnie Bronson of New York and Lucy Price of Cleveland [The Dakota Republican (Vermillion SD), July 27, 1916; Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, SD), October 19, 1916; The Dakota Republican (Vermillion SD), October 19, 1916; (ad) October 19, 1916; Mitchell Capital (SD), October 19, 1916, November 2, 1916; Des Moines Register (IA), November 27, 1916]. According to the Sioux City Journal (IA), October 24, 1916, they were accompanied also by Clara Markeson, who worked for NAOWS as an organizer. Their schedule was planned to be:
- October 20: Vermillion, City Theatre
- October 21: Yankton, opera house
- October 23: Sioux Falls, city auditorium
- October 23: Mitchell
- October 24: Madison, courthouse
- October 25: Brookings, opera house
- October 26: Watertown
- October 27: Redfield
- October 28: Aberdeen
- October 30: Huron
- October 31: Pierre, opera house
- November 1: Rapid City
- November 2: Hot Springs
- November 3: Lead
- November 4: Deadwood
Minnie Bronson was general secretary of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. She had been born, raised, and educated in Iowa. She had done extensive work for national and international exhibitions, and had done work for the federal departments of Education and Labor. She first visited South Dakota to see about organizing anti-suffrage supporters in 1910 [Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, SD), October 19, 1916; Paula M. Nelson, “Defending Separate Spheres: Anti-Suffrage Women in South Dakota Suffrage Campaigns,” in Lahlum & Rozum, Equality at the Ballot Box (Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2019), 150].
Lucy Price ()
Lucy Price spent her early years in Sargeant County and Fargo in Dakota Territory. She was then educated at Vassar College and worked as a teacher and journalist in Ohio, where she worked for the Cleveland Leader. Though she had initially supported suffrage, she changed her opinion and became a noted anti-suffrage debater and speaker. She participated in public debate events with Fola LaFollette of Wisconsin (who had also visited SD to campaign in 1910 and 1914) [Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, SD), October 19, 1916; Nelson, “Defending Separate Spheres,” in Lahlum & Rozum, Equality at the Ballot Box, 151].
Helen Guthrie Miller, the NAWSA vice-president, came to South Dakota and spoke in the same locations in the days following the Antis’ talks in Sioux Falls and Vermillion. In Sioux Falls, she spoke at a women’s club, at a college, and a Republican meeting [Pierre Weekly Free Press (SD), October 19, 1916; The Dakota Republican (Vermillion SD), October 19, 1916; Vermillion Plain Talk (SD), October 19, 1916; Des Moines Register (IA), November 27, 1916; Nettie Rogers Shuler, ed., The hand book of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and proceedings of the Forty-ninth Annual Convention, held at Washington, D.C., December 12-15, inclusive, 1917 (New York: NAWSA, 1917), 72].
According to Miller’s report to NAWSA of her visit to Vermillion, “these ladies [Price/Bronson] came into town practically unheralded, paid their own expenses, and hired a picture show at which to speak. Your representative [Miller] was met by a large delegation of suffragists, taken to the same picture show, offered freely for this use, to answer the arguments made by the antis. The following morning I spoke at the Methodist Church, and in the evening at a Union Meeting of all the churches, the following day at the State University, and when I tell you that all but eight of the women students signed a petition asking for suffrage you will know the sentiment existing in South Dakota.”
Shuler, ed., The hand book of the NAWSA and proceedings of the Forty-ninth Annual Convention (1917), 72
In Yankton, Benedict had sent (or led) stenographers into the opera house to record Price’s arguments, so that Benedict could address them point-by-point on the street afterwards. According to a report printed in the Scotland SD paper, she “received enthusiastic applause” after each point [The Citizen-Republican (Scotland SD), October 26, 1916; Des Moines Register (IA), November 27, 1916; Deutscher Herold (Sioux Falls SD), November 30, 1916].
“Mrs. Benedict at Yankton… began the demonstration of her method of destroying our meetings and capturing the prohibition vote for suffrage. Gathering about her such local suffragists as she could induce to don their yellow nulips(?), carry their waving pennants on sticks, and follow her, she assembled them on a street corner near our hall before our meeting, addressed the crowd gathered by curiosity, and then announced that upon the conclusion of our meeting she would speak again on the same corner and refute every statement made by our speakers. Then she marched her yellow caparisoned column into our hall in the midst of our meeting, ostentatiously took down the remarks of our speakers, and as our meeting approached a close, rushed from the hall with her followers, and on the adjoining street corner, started to deliver her version of what our speakers had said, and her denials and counter statements. These were mainly to the effect that our speakers represented the saloon and vice interests. This performance was repeated at Mitchell, Brookings and Watertown, and with modifications at Pierre, Rapid City and Hot Springs.”
Des Moines Register (IA), November 27, 1916.“The whole affair was amusing to the men voters who took all the speeches in, and drew the conclusion that if women get the franchise, future elections will be real interesting.”
The Citizen-Republican (Scotland SD), October 26, 1916.
At Watertown, Price and Jacobsen made their speeches at Goss Hall, the opera house downtown. At Mitchell and Watertown, Benedict also held street rallies nearby their theaters. The News reported that “suffrage pennants were visible everywhere within a radius of a block” and a good portion of the Antis’ small crowd had gone in from Benedict’s rally at the corner of Kemp & Maple [Saturday News (Watertown SD), October 26, 1916, November 2, 1916; Des Moines Register (IA), November 27, 1916]. Emma DeVoe visited Watertown about the same time, and spoke with local women at the library about organizing a local suffrage league [Saturday News (Watertown SD), October 26, 1916].
At Madison, Lucy Price and Ethel Jacobsen met up, after speaking in Sioux Falls and Mitchell respectively, to speak at the courthouse. Part of her speech was to lift up the good laws and government that men had created. She also argued that different spheres were an effective partnership, joking that women may want to do men’s work, but men would never do women’s work [Madison Daily Leader (SD), October 21, 1916, October 23, 1916, October 24, 1916, October 25, 1916].
About their stop in Brookings, there are multiple accounts. For Bronson’s speech, Elsie Benedict and her gathered supporters tried to enter the theater, but manager E.H. Carlisle, who supported suffrage generally, refused to allow them to enter with their banners and pennants, asking they be set in the office until the speech was over. When Benedict refused, she was ushered outside. When they relented and left the banners, they were allowed into the theater, and verbally heckled Bronson and Jacobsen. Both sides claimed the ejection was most violent towards themselves. Benedict put her account out through suffrage newspapers and editorials, while Carlisle, supported by the local sheriff made his account, which was printed in advertisements paid by Antis. Carlisle noted that he had voted for both suffrage and prohibition on multiple elections. Senator Robert F. Kerr, a prominent politician and former professor at SD State College, wrote to Pyle as a witness to side with Carlisle and argue that Benedict’s tactics were hurting the cause [Des Moines Register (IA), November 27, 1916; Deutscher Herold (Sioux Falls SD), November 30, 1916; Nelson, “Defending Separate Spheres,” in Lahlum & Rozum, Equality at the Ballot Box, 153-154].
According to The Remonstrance, the Boston newspaper of the anti-suffragists:
“In South Dakota, the suffragists under the leadership of Mrs. Elsie Benedict of Colorado, organized a systematic interference with anti-suffrage meetings. Where such meetings were announced, Mrs. Benedict at the same hour would make suffrage speeches at the nearest street corner, and then lead a crowd into the hall where the anti-suffragists were holding their meeting, and with a waving of suffrage banners, and much noise and shuffling of feet interrupt the speaker. Sometimes, they tied ‘votes for women’ bands on dogs, and turned them loose to disturb the meetings. At Brookings, Mitchell, Yankton and other places, the suffrage demonstrations were of such a character that, if they had been made by Republicans at a Democratic rally, or by Democrats at a Republican rally, they would certainly have led to rioting and police interference.” At Brookings, Benedict hit Carlisle “and then ran down the aisle, shrieking questions to the speaker.”
The Remonstrance Against Woman Suffrage (January 1917), 4.Another Anti account claimed she hit him three times in the face [Des Moines Register (IA), November 27, 1916].
An anti-suffrage German newspaper nicknamed Benedict, “Maledict” [Deutscher Herold (Sioux Falls SD), November 30, 1916]. An April issue of The Remonstrance called the suffragists’ activities in South Dakota, and in West Virginia, “an organized campaign of violence” [The Remonstrance Against Woman Suffrage (April 1917), 8].
In Pierre, Lucy Price spoke at the Grand Opera House, on Upper Pierre Street. They were given a reception at the Burke home. Elsie Benedict held a rally on the street corner on Pierre Street and Capital Avenue, in front of Straight’s drug store, were “she loudly attacked the anti-suffragists’ views.” She was also confronted by Charles McLean, over statements that she repeated against him (see details below) [Madison Daily Leader (SD), November 2, 1916; Pierre Weekly Free Press (SD), November 2, 1916; Forest City Press (SD), November 8, 1916; Schuler, Pierre since 1910, 219].
SDSHS Image of Upper Pierre Street showing the opera house and the drug store in the Hyde Block.
At Lead, Lucy Price, an anti-suffragist, was scheduled to speak at Assembly Hall [Lead Daily Call (SD), November 2, 1916].
The McLean Case
Charles McLean of Dubuque IA came to South Dakota in 1916 to work against suffrage with Bronson and Jacobsen. The suffrage campaign in their course of denunciations of the ‘Antis’ also wrote that McLean was spending time in Deadwood between the bank “owned by Deadwood’s ultra-wet mayor, and the Mansion, her most notorious resort” (a brothel, I’m guessing). Ruth Hipple had written it in an article for the Woman’s Journal in October 21, 1916, which was distributed in South Dakota and reprinted in South Dakota papers. He denied the report, including in-person at the street rally held by Benedict in Pierre, and sued for defamation. Hipple was induced to sign a retraction (in the presence of her husband) that McLean published [The Dakota Republican (Vermillion SD), October 26, 1916, November 2, 1916; Vermillion Plain Talk (SD), October 26, 1916, November 9, 1916; Deutscher Herold (Sioux Falls SD), November 30, 1916; Des Moines Register (IA), November 27, 1916; The Woman Citizen 4(27) (January 24, 1920), 1752; Nelson, “Defending Separate Spheres,” in Lahlum & Rozum, Equality at the Ballot Box, 154-155]. In February 1917, May Stevens of Redfield wrote to Pyle about the McLean case — “we are keeping perfectly quiet about it as we told you when in Huron, and I do hope that you have been able to ferret out some certain evidence that will destroy the whole of this trouble” [May F Stevens to Mrs JH Pyle, February 6, 1917, RA07488, Box 1, Correspondence, 1917, Janurary- December, Pyle Papers, USD]. In December 1918, the money owed to McLean was still on the minds of the campaign leadership [Catt to Pyle, December 2, 1918, RA12008 and RA12009, Box 4, Correspondence, 1918, December, Pyle Papers USD]. Eventually, a case with McLean v. E.B. Merriman (a newspaper publisher in Redfield) was decided for Merriman at the South Dakota supreme court because “the accounts published could not be proved to be malicious” [The Woman Citizen 4(27) (January 24, 1920), 752].
McLean’s account of the stop in Pierre:
“In her street corner speech following our meeting at Pierre, Mrs. Benedict, after repeating her familiar denunciation of our speakers as the representatives of the liquor Interests, took up and ridiculed my warning and denial. She denounced me for asserting that Iowa has statewide prohibition in the face of the notorious fact that Dubuque is one of the worst rum-soaked holes in the country. She asserted the truth of the charges the Woman’s Journal had published concerning my conduct at Deadwood, demanded to know why I had not sued for libel if the charges were false, and added that she would like to ask me a question. Being present, I stepped to the curb and announced that I was ready to answer the question. ‘Don’t interrupt the speaker,’ shouted a man who turned out to be a clergyman. I replied that I had been asked to answer a question and wished to know whether the lady wished her answer now. ‘Not now,’ Mrs. Benedict responded in a lower tone, ‘but when I am through’. When she had finished I again stepped to the curb and again the stout-lunged clergyman attempted to howl me down, but this time Mr. John Hipple, editor of the suffragist paper at Pierre, the Capital Journal, interfered to say that I had been asked a question. I then in a few words defended the statement in my letter that Iowa has statewide prohibition, and denied the charges against me… Three days later the author of these libelous charges in the Woman’s Journal, Mrs. Ruth B. Hipple, press chairman of the South Dakota Universal Franchise league, signed a retraction of the same in the office of my attorneys, Horner, Martens and Goldsmith. Mrs. Hipple was advised before signing the retraction that I intended to publish it immediately, and I did so.”
Des Moines Register (IA), November 27, 1916.
Funded by the Liquor Lobby?
Suffragists frequently claimed that Jacobsen and the NAOWS speakers were funded by “liquor interests” seeking to defeat suffrage in service of defeating prohibition [Mitchell Capital (SD), November 2, 1916; Des Moines Register (IA), November 27, 1916]. This claim was repeated in other histories of the suffrage movement (Reed and Easton). The Antis denied the claims at the time. Historian Paula Nelson recently wrote that brewers perhaps donated funds to the German-American Alliance (the Staatsverbund), but Bronson and Price had no ties to that group and were operating on shoestring budgets. Nelson posited that the suffragists’ insistence on liquor funding was to deflect from the presence of women working earnestly and publicly against women’s suffrage [Nelson, “Defending Separate Spheres,” in Lahlum & Rozum, Equality at the Ballot Box, 151]. German-language newspapers in South Dakota were largely anti-suffrage and ran announcements, advertisements, and editorials in support of Bronson and Price’s events and against the suffrage amendment [Deutscher Herold (Sioux Falls SD), October 19, 1916, November 2, 1916, image 9, image 10].
History in South Dakota 
