“It’s very hard to keep enough courage from one day to another, to work against this blank wall of indifference which is so much more killing than opposition.”
Gertrude Hunter, published in The Suffragist, October 13, 1914
Gertrude Hunter solidified her stand as a suffragist while studying the organizing tactics of women on the East Coast. There, she met women working in department stores and factories. She wrote back to her friends in Minnesota that nothing could have convinced her more of the necessity of the ballot than the conditions of these women, who toiled for 11 hours a day in filthy conditions for meager wages.
Hunter set out to persuade others to join the movement. When she returned to Minneapolis, she founded the Women Workers Suffrage Club, hoping to recruit local workers. Hunter declared, “Working women need the ballot as a weapon against the exploitation of their employers.”
Persuading the public was by no means easy. While campaigning for the Congressional Union (CU), Hunter encountered opposition. Nothing was more demoralizing, though, than audience members who simply did not care about the cause. Yet Hunter rose above the indifference and the opposition. She continued to write for The Suffragist, the CU’s national publication, and speak out for votes for women.
Related Resources
- Gillmore, Inez Haynes. The Story of the Woman’s Party. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1921.
- Hunter, Gertrude. “The Legal Aspect of the Suffrage Case.” The Suffragist 5, no. 85: 7.
- Zahniser, J. D. “The Fifteenth Star: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party in Minnesota." Minnesota History 67, no. 3 (Fall 2020): 154-161.