From "Cincinnati Post," September 17, 1904
The early years of the Twentieth Century were almost welcoming for Socialist candidates in Cincinnati elections.
Although Boss Cox’s Republican machine maintained an iron-fisted grip on electoral offices in Cincinnati, the growth of organized labor and the formation of progressive political parties offered a wide range of viewpoints in the years prior to World War I. Socialist candidates often placed third after Cox’s Republicans and the lackluster local Democrats when ballots included candidates from the Prohibition, Progressive, Single-Tax, Farm-Labor and Independent parties.
Women could not vote in national elections until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, but Ohio permitted women to cast their ballots in school board elections starting in 1894. That extension of the electoral franchise allowed women to become candidates for positions on the school board. By 1904, however, despite a handful of female candidates, not a single woman had been elected to a seat on the Cincinnati School Board. The Socialists hoped to change that.
On September 3, 1904, more than 200 members of the Socialist party gathered in Workman’s Hall at 1314 Walnut Street and nominated a slate of candidates that included presidential electors and candidates for county offices including sheriff, coroner and infirmary director. Also nominated for the upcoming election were three candidates for at-large seats on the school board and all were women: Florence Crambert, Hattie Fowler and Iva Morrison. The Socialists intentionally chose three women to emphasize the party’s support for women’s suffrage. Except for their political and social convictions, the trio could hardly have had less in common.
Harriett “Hattie” Fowler was a widow, aged 61, who lived with a sister in Over-the-Rhine. She was identified in the 1900 Census as a “spiritual speaker” and ten years later as a Spiritualist. In other words, she led séances.
From "Cincinnati Post," September 19, 1904
Iva Morrison was 33, mother of seven children. Her oldest child, a daughter, was 18. Her youngest, a son, was not quite 5. Ida was not employed outside the home. Her husband was recorded in the 1900 Census as a salesman, but he was actually the janitor for an apartment house located at the foot of Main Street, just north of the Public Landing.
Florence Crambert was 30. She was single and lived with her parents in the West End. She was employed at the Leopold Newburger & Brother Cigar Company as a cigar roller, a very common occupation for young ladies in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She was active in organized labor, as we shall see later.
Despite their varied backgrounds, the three women published a detailed platform, summarized in the Enquirer [September 18, 1904]:
“Among other things these ladies demand kindergartens for all children who need them, the introduction of the idea of freedom in education and evolution in industry to be taught. They want vacation schools established, night schools for adults; right of trial for teachers dismissed, and pensions for the old or disabled. They want the teachers to elect the principals, and the same salary for female as male teachers in the same work. Also free text books, and meals and clothing when needed as well as free medical service. More buildings, but not so large; better playgrounds, baths, gymnasiums and the state to print all school books. They urge the investigations of all corporations depending upon public franchises for their existence.”
As Socialists, they prefaced their educational platform with a preamble outlining the political and economic principles on which it was based. This they published in the Cincinnati Post [September 17, 1904]:
“As Socialists we advocate, of course, first the nationalization of all the means of production and distribution for use and not profit, and democratic control and management thereof by the people. This naturally would replace the present indirect capitalist control of Government by a direct working class control of government, assuring equal opportunity of a living to all, and the full product of their toil to all actual producers of wealth.”
The Socialist Party made a strong showing in the 1904 election, with presidential candidate Eugene Debs polling more than 400,000 votes nationally for a third-place finish. Locally, no Socialist candidate racked up more than 6,400 votes. The three Socialist women attracted even smaller totals—less than 5,200 votes apiece—mostly because some precincts lost or misunderstood the school board ballots. In comparison, Republican candidates each collected majorities in the 50,000-vote range.
Still, the Socialist candidates showed potential for future impact. The head of the local Socialist organization, Ernst H. Vaupel, foresaw a bright future for Socialism as the days’ “robber barons” consolidated their grip on industry:
“The evolution of industry of the past four years clearly foreshadows great strides toward monopoly, logically creating a political realignment along the lines of self-interest of the exploiting and the exploited classes.”
A columnist in the Cincinnati Post [December 1, 1904] saw the recent success of the Socialists as a sign of an emerging existential question:
“When the people get their eyes open, there will only be one issue, namely. ‘Shall the country be ruled by a party of the corporations or by a party of the people?’”
The Cincinnati Socialist organization was all but eradicated during World War I because the party opposed the war and actively discouraged men from registering for the draft. Charged with treason, most of the local leadership spent the next five years in court, in prison, or both until they were cleared in the 1920s. The party disappeared for years afterward.
None of our distaff Socialists ever ran for public office again. Hattie Fowler appears in the newspapers for the next decade as a speaker at Spiritualist events. Iva Morrison relocated to San Bernardino, California, where she died in 1944.
Florence Crambert was back in the news throughout the winter and spring of 1910 as she led a long, bitter, but ultimately successful strike by the employees at the Newburger Cigar Company. By this time, she had moved from the cigar-rolling department into the back office as a stenographer and later as a bookkeeper. The newspapers made sure to describe her as the prettiest of the “girls” walking the picket line. Florence was 36 at the time.
Intriguingly, Florence married for the first time when she was 46 years old. Her husband, Maurice Dessauer was a double “nepo baby.” Maurice was a foreman at the Newburger Cigar Company—the very management Florence had picketed a decade earlier. It’s safe to say he got his job because his father worked at that factory and his father got his job because he married one of the Newburger daughters. Maurice and Florence traveled in Europe and lived in New York and California. When Maurice died, Florence remarried, aged 70. She lived to be 73 and is buried in Los Angeles.
Facebook Comments