Ever Victoria!

Part 6

Having broken into the boys’ club of Wall Street, Victoria determines to crash the male monopoly of Park Row, the newspaper district. She funnels proceeds from the brokerage into the establishment of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, which prints its first issue in May 1870. “Upward and Onward!” the masthead declares, above the identification of ownership and responsibility: “Victoria C. Woodhull & Tennie C. Claflin, Editors and Proprietors.” In fact Tennie has little to do with operation of the paper; Victoria and James Blood do the heavy work. “This Journal will be primarily devoted to the vital interests of the people, and will treat of all matters freely and without reservation,” Victoria asserts in her introductory editorial. “It will support Victoria C. Woodhull for President with its whole strength; otherwise it will be untrammeled by party or personal considerations, free from all affiliation with political or social creeds, and will advocate Suffrage without distinction of sex!”

            Freedom from party is essential, Victoria says, since the existing major parties are as hopelessly anachronistic as the status quo from which they spring. “Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly affirms that the Democratic party has long been only the shade of a name; that the Republican party is effete, and only coheres by reason of place and power.” The paper will press forward on all social and political questions. “Conservatism is impracticable,” she declares. “Progress is the only principle worthy of a live, intelligent, independent Journal.”

            The paper will take the high road in treating its competition. “We shall in no instance, and under no circumstances, descend to personal journalism in our remarks on the opinions and conduct of other newspapers.” Victoria explains what she likes about her journalistic peers. “In James Gordon Bennett we see only the profound administrative sagacity, the indomitable pluck, and the wonderful special aptitude which, starting upon nothing, has built up an organ of opinion that circulates throughout the world.…In Horace Greeley, without endorsing his views or intending to pin our faith to his sleeve, we recognize the master mind which through good report and evil report, has done more to create public opinion than that of any one other living man.…In Mr. Manton Marble we only recognize the magnificent intellect and superb style which have made the World a marvel of critical acumen, logical force, and broad massive treatment of all the topics what touch the interests of the nation or of mankind.”

            But these other editors are too timid or too slow on the central issue of the day. “We demand suffrage for women,” Victoria’s first Weekly reiterates. “Primarily as of right; secondarily for its uses.” These editors, and even some suffragists, misunderstand the women’s movement. “It is pre-eminently a Radical movement, for it seeks to remodel the framework of society, so far as the relations of the sexes are concerned, and professes to place women on a footing never yet conceded to them in the history of mankind.”

            The paper profiles one of the leading suffragists in terms at once complimentary and caustic. “Mrs. Cady Stanton is of middle height and large but not unwieldy, and active in her movements. She was born in 1816. Her usual dress is a robe of rich dark material relieved by the usual embellishments of lace or appropriate trimming and contrasted with crape or cashmere shawl, trinkets few but solid and valuable. She is extreme in her opinions on the subject of female attire but she subscribes to the prevailing fashions in her own proper person, and affects no singularity. Her serene, benevolent, full massive features, stamped with intellect and set off by their coronal of crisp curls abundant in volume, but of silver white, attract notice in every assemblage.… Mrs. Stanton’s appearance compares strikingly with the family portraits of Imperial Austria; she has the liberal Austrian nose and lip, the large well opened eye, and the calm placidity which for the most part accompanies high social rank; it may well be imagined that had Mrs. Stanton been born in purple, she would have worn her power becomingly.”

            Politics are the paper’s central concern but not its sole subject. It runs poetry, book and theater reviews, baseball box scores and a serialized translation of the latest novel by France’s foremost woman writer, George Sand. Massachusetts congressman Benjamin Butler gets a column on what capitalists owe to labor. An unsigned column called “The Sixteenth Amendment” starts with advocacy of the vote for women but broadens into commentary on issues confronting women in daily life. A companion column is entitled “Man’s Rights; or, How Would You Like It?”

            Readers respond more avidly than Victoria could have hoped. The Weekly’s circulation climbs rapidly to more than twenty thousand. Advertisers clamor for space. The Hercules Mutual Life Assurance Society of the United States parades its eponymous hero in full manly form. The Carbolic Salve Healing Compound boasts of being “Recommended by Physicians.” Dr. Walker's California Vinegar Bitters is “A Great Medical Discovery.” The Eureka Diaper will revolutionize infant care. De Bing’s Pile Remedy eases hemorrhoids. The American Patent Sponge Company contributes to the same soothing end with its “Church, Chair, Car and Carriage Cushions.” Pheland & Collender, maker of Standard American Billiard Tables, defends its high prices by saying that “The Best is the Cheapest.” The Erie Railway informs readers of schedule changes. Madame E. M. Meyers offers condolences and widow’s weeds at the New York Mourning Store. Hudnut’s Rheumatic Remedy is “Warranted to Cure Rheumatism, Gout, Neuralgia.”