Sold – After a Lifetime of Struggle, Anthony Is Angered That Women Are Still “Pets”

Anton Heitmuller, a Washington businessman over the course of half a century (from 1890-1940), billed himself as “Specializing in Selling Collections of Autographs,/Manuscripts, Historical Broadsides and/Curios”. He had a penchant for self-promotion, and a knack for being clueless in making his offerings and tactless in his sales methods. In early 1905 he approached Susan B. Anthony and asked her organization to purchase a collection of the signatures of the great men of the preceding century. Why he would offer a group of signatures of men, and only men, to the head of an organization dedicated to the equality and advancement of women, is unknown, but his communication angered Anthony and led her to sum up her life’s work in a single letter.

To be a pet is not to be an equal

Typed Letter Signed on her National American Woman Suffrage letterhead, Rochester, N.Y., February 11, 1905, to Heitmuller. “Your communication of February 4th is received. I have no doubt that your autographs are very fine and the portraits of all the distinguished men you mentioned must be fine also, but I am especially interested in the autograph signatures and the pictures of distinguished women. When you get a collection of autographs and portraits of the distinguished women of the last century – of Mary Woolstencraft, Frances Wright, Ernestine L. Rose, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Paulina Wright Davis, Lucy Stone etc. etc., I will talk about patronizing you. But while women are by the law excluded from a voice in the government under which they live, I can only work for their emancipation. I know you think women are the pets of society. That they may be, but to be a pet is not to be an equal, and what I want is for women to be equal before the law in every respect.” The tone of this letter, in which Anthony dresses down Heitmuller before issuing her battle cry, is one we’ve never seen before, and is clearly of great significance.

The theme of women being treated like pets bothered Anthony and stuck in her mind. A few days after sending this letter, on February 15, 1905, under the auspices of the Rochester Political Equality Club, a party was held to celebrate her 85th birthday in the home of William Channing and Mary Lewis Gannett. In response to all the tributes, Susan B. Anthony replied, “you may compliment women, pet them, worship them, but if you do not recognize their claim to justice, it is all as nothing.”