National Citizen and Ballot Box

Matilda Joslyn Gage

The National Citizen and Ballot Box was a monthly journal deeply involved in the roots of the American feminist movement. It was owned and edited by Matilda Joslyn Gage, American women’s rights advocate, who helped to lead and publicize the suffrage movement in the United States. Gage bought The Ballot Box, a publication of a Toledo, Ohio suffrage association, in 1878 when its editor, Sarah R.L. Williams, decided to retire. Gage renamed it the National Citizen and Ballot Box and included her intentions for the paper in a prospectus: “Its especial object will be to secure national protection to women citizens in the exercise of their rights to vote...it will oppose Class Legislation of whatever form...Women of every class, condition, rank and name will find this paper their friend.” Gage became the National Citizen and Ballot Box’s primary editor for the next three years (until 1881), producing and publishing essays on a wide range of issues. Each edition bore the motto “The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword” and included regular columns about prominent women in history and female inventors. Gage wrote clearly, logically, and often with a dry wit and a well–honed sense of irony. Writing about laws which allowed a man to will his children to a guardian unrelated to their mother, Gage observed: “It is sometimes better to be a dead man than a live woman.”