"A Squelcher for Woman Suffrage" (Puck cover, 6 June 1894)
A woman in a very wide dress and hat is turned away from a voting booth too narrow for her, while a policeman and election officials look on; the caption asks how she can vote 'when the fashions are so wide, and the voting booths are so narrow.' The tell: a joke about clothing stands in for the question of rights.
Puck ran this cover on 6 June 1894. A woman in a very wide dress and hat is turned away from a voting booth too narrow for her, while a policeman and election officials look on, and the caption asks how she can vote 'when the fashions are so wide, and the voting booths are so narrow.' The booths carry the printed instruction 'Ballots must be prepared in these booths'. A straw man is at work: a joke about clothing stands in for the question of voting rights.
Propaganda techniques used in this cartoon
- Date
- June 6, 1894
- Period
- Pre-1914
- Made by
- Puck (Keppler & Schwarzmann, New York)
Full record
Region, Country, Medium, Issuer type, Regime, Leader, Audience, Purpose, Themes, Event, Source, Rights
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Cartoon
- Issuer type
- Media
- Regime
- Cleveland Administration
- Leader
- Grover Cleveland
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Themes
- Gender and suffrage, Elections and party politics
- Event
- US Woman Suffrage Campaign
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, retrieved October 10, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (published 1894, before 1931); LoC: no known restrictions on publication
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LCCN 2012648727. "A Squelcher for Woman Suffrage" (Puck cover, 6 June 1894)
