Background
Rheta Childe Dorr was born November 2, 1866 in Omaha, Nebraska, United States.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
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(What Eight Million Women Want by author Rheta Childe Dorr...)
What Eight Million Women Want by author Rheta Childe Dorr is one the most important books on the women's suffrage movement in America. Rheta Childe Dorr was an early supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and was published as a writer inthe New York Evening Post and Hampton's Magazine. What Eight Million Women Want is a collection of Dorr's writings on Women's suffrage, and is a great resource for those interested in learning more about the suffrage movement and is a high quality paperback reprint from the original publication and is highly recommended for those who are interested in the writings of Rheta Childe Dorr.
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(Originally published in 1917. This volume from the Cornel...)
Originally published in 1917. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
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editor journalist Political activist writer
Rheta Childe Dorr was born November 2, 1866 in Omaha, Nebraska, United States.
In 1890 Childe went to New York City to study at the Art Students' League and decided that she would become a writer.
She began working at the age of fifteen, over the objections of her parents, so that she could become independent and prove her industry. She was conservative by nature but became a rebel upon viewing a tombstone inscribed "Also Harriet, wife of the above. "
Rheta wrote articles for the New York newspapers, which her husband found to be an unacceptable activity. They soon parted by mutual consent, and Rhea returned to New York with their young son, determined to make a living as a journalist.
Dorr was shocked at how she was treated in New York City. Editors would not put her on the staff simply because she was a woman, and when she complained that the rates they paid for freelance articles could not support a family, they said they could find other women to work for those rates. She finally got a break by persuading Theodore Roosevelt to be photographed (something he hated) and was rewarded with an ill-paying job on the New York Evening Post, which she left within a year. Her first overseas assignment was to cover the coronation of a new king in Norway, and on the way back she attended the International Woman Suffrage Alliance meeting in Copenhagen, where she met prominent British suffragists. "The Woman's Invasion" Returning to New York almost penniless, Dorr resolved to be done with the society pages that passed for women's journalism. She proposed to the editor of Everybody's that she go underground as a worker and write about her experiences. She spent a year working in a laundry, a department store, on an assembly line, and as a seamstress but was often too exhausted to do more than make notes about her experiences. A cowriter named William Hard was assigned to help her, but Dorr resisted giving her notes over to him. She was shocked to see the magazine begin a series with her title, ideas, and experiences but with the byline of William Hard. She hired a lawyer and at least prevented the publication of a book by Hard exploiting her work.
In 1910, with the assistance of Hampton's Magazine, Dorr published What Eight Million Women Want, an account of suffrage clubs, trade unions, and consumer leagues that had sprung up all over Europe and the United States. In 1912 she went to Sweden, Germany, and England to interview leaders in the women's movement, and she spent the winter of 1912-1913 in Paris assisting British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst in writing Pankhurst's autobiography, My Own Story. When she returned to the United States, she went to work for the New York Evening Mail and wrote a daily column, "As a Woman Sees It. " Not everyone was moved by her arguments: interviewing Woodrow Wilson in 1914, she asked him about woman's suffrage. He replied, "I think that it is not proper for me to stand here and be cross-examined by you. "
Having twice been to Russia, Dorr was anxious to observe the 1917 revolution. One night she lay in her hotel bed listening to the murder of a general in the next room.
Since her son Julian was serving in the army in France, she asked editors to send her back to Europe. When the French government refused to grant her press credentials because she was a woman, she signed on as a lecturer with the YMCA. She walked into a mess tent where her son was eating. Astonished, he cried, "Mother!" and no soldier would sit down until she found a chair. Mothers were unquestioningly better received than female war correspondents. Later Dorr covered the Women's Death Battalion in Russia and described an incident in which fellow soldiers broke into their barracks in order to rape them but were held off by the women at gunpoint. In addition to her many wartime articles, she also wrote A Soldier's Mother in France (1918) for women on the home front. Dorr, along with Louise Bryant, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and Bessie Beattie, pioneered the way for women to become war correspondents. After spending many more years in Europe, and writing more books, including her autobiography, A Woman of Fifty, Dorr died in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1948 at age eighty.
(What Eight Million Women Want by author Rheta Childe Dorr...)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
(Originally published in 1917. This volume from the Cornel...)
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She was a member of the Socialist Party of America.
Quotations:
"Russia had become a barbarous and half-insane land. .. . Oratory held the stupid populace spellbound while the Germans invaded the country, boosted Lenin into power and paved the way for the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. .. . Russia was done. "
"Although I was a female, I had a man's ability to earn a very good living. I knew that because my services as a reporter and writer were sought by the then most distinguished newspaper in New York. It was a mark of ability to be asked to join the staff, a mark of special ability if you were a woman, because in those days very few women could get a job on a newspaper anywhere. Yet because of my sex I had to accept a salary hardly more than half that of any of my male colleagues. Moreover, I was given to understand that I could never hope for a raise. Women, the managing editor explained to me, were accidents in industry. They were tolerated because they were temporarily needed, but some day the status quo ante (woman's place is in the home) would be restored and the jobs would go back where they belonged, to the men. "
Women's National Republican Club, National Woman Suffrage Association
When John Pixley Dorr, a man twenty years older than she, visited from Lincoln, they fell in love and were soon married. She was swept away by his good looks and love of books. They lived in Seattle for two years, where their son Julian was born.