Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government

Suffragists Maud Wood Park, Pauline Agassiz Shaw, and Mary Hutcheson Page were among those who in 1901 founded the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government (BESAGG) "to promote a better civic life, the true development of the home and the welfare of the family, through the exercise of suffrage on the part of the women citizens of Boston." After 1920, BESAGG became the Boston League of Women Voters. For further historical information see Lois Bannister Merk, Massachusetts and the Woman Suffrage Movement (Ph.D. thesis, 1961).

From the description of Records in the Woman's Rights Collection, 1916-1920 (inclusive). (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 232008748

Suffragists Maud Wood Park, Pauline Agassiz Shaw, and Mary Hutcheson Page were among those who founded the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government (BESAGG) in 1901. Its purpose being "...to promote a better civic life, the true development of the home and the welfare of the family, through the exercise of suffrage on the part of the women citizens of Boston..." (1918 By-laws), BESAGG was symptomatic of both the widening of suffragists' interests and their desire to expand their constituency by attaching themselves to other social reforms.

Although originally BESAGG focused equally on suffrage and on the concerns (such as poverty, vice, street conditions, and prison reform) that it shared with other civic reform groups, by 1910 the organization concentrated almost solely on suffrage, convinced that without the vote women could not effectively improve government. BESAGG joined other Massachusetts suffrage organizations in using tactics borrowed from militant British suffragists, such as house-to-house canvassing and open-air meetings and speeches. In addition, BESAGG educated women about the functions of government so as to prepare them to be responsible, well-informed, voting citizens. After 1920, BESAGG became the Boston League of Women Voters. For further historical information, see Lois Bannister Merk, Massachusetts and the Woman Suffrage Movement (Ph.D. thesis, 1961), Schlesinger Library microfilm (M-19), or Sharon Strom, "Leadership and Tactics in the American Woman Suffrage Movement: A New Perspective from Massachusetts," Journal of American History 62 (September 1975): 296-315.

From the guide to the Woman's Rights Collection (WRC), (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)