November 17, 1911

A large number of Vassar students and Poughkeepsie residents heard Inez Milholland ’09 declare two reasons for woman suffrage at an equal suffrage meeting in the Collingwood Opera House, Poughkeepsie. Milholland,who had carried a banner in the first suffrage procession in New York City in 1910, “devided her subject into two heads,” reported The Vassar Miscellany. “Women want the vote, first, to introduce their point of view into the government and, second, to protect the interests of women. That the government needs exactly the element that women will bring into it—the human point of view, the conservation of life—was one of the main features of Miss Milholland’s talk.” Milholland, the report added, declared also that “when the government of the state was purely protective, the efficient citizens were the fighters, and then it was only fair that the fighters should be the voters. Now that military defence as the basis of government is out of date, brains instead of brawn are coming to the valuable element in politics.”

Professor of English Laura J. Wylie ’77, president of the local Equal Suffrage League, was among several members of the Vassar faculty in attendance.