Colorado Women: A History

7. The Progressive Era

157 In a crowded room at the Astor Hotel in New York City in November 1913, Helen Ring Robinson was introduced as the first woman state senator in the state of Colorado. In a nation in which only eleven states had granted women full voting rights, Robinson was an exotic creature to those awaiting her speech on woman’s suffrage.1 Some were there to be inspired; others were waiting for an opening in which to heckle her. On a lecture tour of five northeastern states, Robinson was forced to rely on skills developed in her earlier career to handle the “antis” in her audiences. She had been an educator at Wolfe Hall and at the Wolcott School, as well as an editor for the Rocky Mountain News, so she knew how to draw upon her personal charm, unwavering confidence, and a strong command of the facts to refute her opponents’ arguments. To dispel the physical stereotype of female politicians as women who had “faces like vinegar jugs,” the state senator dressed in a dark skirt and white S e v e n The Progressive Era (1901–1919) DOI: 10.5876/9781607322078.c07 Figure 7.1 Helen Ring Robinson, Colorado’s first female state senator, drew crowds to her suffrage speeches in New York in 1913. Courtesy, History Colorado (Scan #10030252), Denver. 159 T h e P r o g r e s s i v e E r a high-necked blouse adorned with a silver brooch. She customarily wore her long hair piled high on her head in a fashionable bun. Detractors criticized her for trying to fulfill a man’s role and for neglecting her family. In response, she reminded them of something she had told a Denver news reporter soon after she was sworn into office: “I am going to be the housewife of the senate. There will be so many men there that I shall let them look after themselves and I shall take it upon myself to look after the women and children . . . I believe a woman who has qualified as a capable mother and housewife can qualify as a capable legislator. I hold my new responsibilities to the people of the state as sacred as I hold my responsibilities to my husband and my daughter.”2 At the Astor Hotel, Robinson expanded on that theme, telling New Yorkers that every city needed motherliness: “Some of the women want to leave all these things to the men, who have always been proverbially careless housekeepers. Business interests get along very well in the hands of men, but women are more interested in persons. Laws will not get by a woman without her seeing how they will affect the individual.”3 Like other activists for women’s rights before her, she used commonly held beliefs regarding women’s natural nurturing capabilities to argue that qualities that held her in good stead as a mother would be equally valuable for a female politician.4 Two years later, Robinson returned to support New York suffragists. Encountering recurrent criticism of Colorado from easterners, she jumped to her state’s defense, emphasizing that it provided an eight-hour day for its cannery workers while the same workers in New Jersey labored “as long as flesh and blood” could stand it.5 Back home, Robinson discussed her experience as a novelty from a state seen as backward and uncivilized. Unfazed by her reception from easterners, she explained that she was glad to be heckled because it gave her the opportunity to set the record straight regarding woman’s suffrage. Her aim was “to allay that haunting, panicky fear among the men that when the women get the ballot they would take the American home out in the back yard and shoot it full of holes.” She knew that some audience members came to see what “sort of creature a woman senator was.”6 After her speeches, they left disappointed because her petticoats and unshorn hair belied their image of a female politician. But the Wellesley College graduate did not disappoint the women voters in her home state. During her two terms as state senator, she pushed for a variety of progressive legislation. 160 T h e P r o g r e s s i v e E r a A Heroic and Progressive Woman The arrival of a new century generated enthusiasm and hope that many of the...