Ushering in a “New Era,” 1907–1909

Abstract

A new generation far more attuned to Gotham’s resources took over the campaign’s management beginning in 1907, reconfiguring the relationship between suffrage and the cityscape. This chapter focuses on three leaders of the reconfigured movement—Maud Malone, Harriot Stanton Blatch, and Carrie Chapman Catt—and their efforts to recruit teachers by championing pay parity, and to rekindle elite women’s interest in the campaign. National leaders also increasingly recognized that Manhattan could enhance their organization’s prestige, profile, and treasury. In 1909, they unveiled lavish new headquarters on Fifth Avenue, convinced that the city’s dense newspaper industry could broadcast their message to the rest of the nation.