Votes for Women

Votes for Women (1912)

Named by historian Kevin Brownlow as “the first important suffrage film”, this melodrama follows suffragist May Fillmore in her fight to sway Senator Herman, whose vote could pass a key reform bill. After exposing him and his fiancée Jane Wadsworth to the dire living conditions of a motherless tenement family—unsanitary housing, child labor, and workplace exploitation—Jane turns against her negligent fiancé and joins the suffrage cause. Ultimately, both Herman and Jane’s father are persuaded to support reform, and the film ends with the characters proudly taking part in a suffrage parade. (Note: This silent narrative film is distinct from Edison’s Votes for Women (1913), a Kinetophone short that recorded real suffragist leaders delivering speeches.)

Director: Hal Reid

Casts

	Edgena De Lespine as Jane Wadsworth
	Gertrude Robinson as
	Sue Balfour as
	Pearl Egan as
	Gladys Egan as
	Charles Herman as
	Edward P. Sullivan as
	J.W. Backus as
	Jane Addams as Self
	Frances Maule Bjorkman as Self
	Florence Maule Cooley as Self
	Mary Ware Dennett as Self
	Harriet Laidlaw as Self
	Inez Millholland as Self
	Harriet May Mills as Self
	Mrs. L.H. Ozedam as Self
	Anna Howard Shaw as Self
	Mary Beard as

Crew