Motherhood and reform in the new South: Texas women's political culture in the Progressive Era

Between the 1890s and World War I middle-class white women in Texas emerged from their culturally prescribed space of home and church to become social reformers, suffragists, and finally voters. They discovered in the home economics and child study movements the rationale for expanding "woman's sphere" into public life, and in voluntary associations the entree into politics that they lacked as individuals. Led by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs, and the Texas Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, organized women promoted social welfare reforms and expanded their own educational opportunities and legal rights. Pressure from women' s associations helped create a College of Industrial Arts for women, institute a juvenile court system, and introduce kindergartens into the public schools. Their legislative committees helped secure pure food, child labor, compulsory education, and married women's property laws. By 1913 the frustrations of pursing these goals through traditional "woman's influence" led to a rebirth of the suffrage movement, which had twice failed to establish a permanent foothold; the new association became one of the strongest in the South. The demonstrated effectiveness of women's voluntary associations as political pressure groups, especially in helping the prohibitionist Progressive wing of the Democratic party depose a demagogic governor, James Ferguson, strengthened their position in bargaining for suffrage. With the Democratic party split over the issues of prohibition and "Fergusonism" in 1918, the Texas Equal Suffrage Association was able to convince the Progressive leaders that the surest method of electing their candidate for governor was by enfranchising women.