This dissertation offers a new narrative for the local woman suffrage movement in nine rural counties in Texas. I argue that, unlike cities, where women used dense organizational networks to create a coherent suffrage movement, conservatism inherent in rural Texas denied suffrage advocates the means to achieve similar objectives. Rural women nevertheless used the suffrage campaign to articulate feminist sensibilities, thereby reflecting a process of modernization ongoing among American women. Rural suffrage advocates faced unique obstacles, including the political influence of James E. Ferguson, who served as Governor for almost two administrations. Through Ferguson's singular personality, a propaganda campaign that specifically targeted rural voters, and Ferguson's own tabloid Ferguson Forum, rural voters found themselves constantly bombarded by messages about how they should view questions of reform in their state. The organizational culture that sustained suffrage organizations in urban Texas failed to do so in rural Texas. Concerned for their status, rural women scorned activism and those who pursued it. Absent an organized campaign, the success of suffrage initiatives in rural Texas depended on locally unique circumstances. Key factors included demographic trends, economics, local politics, and the influence of frontier cultural dynamics. The tactics and rhetoric employed by rural suffragists in Texas generally reflected those used by suffragists nationwide. While rural suffragists mustered arguments grounded in natural and constitutional rights, rural voters responded more to the claim that votes projected woman's feminine virtue into public life, which accommodated prevailing attitudes about woman's place. The First World War supplied rural suffragists with patriotic rhetoric that resonated powerfully with Texans. Rural Texas women successfully reframed public dialogue about women's roles, articulating feminist ideas through their work. Unlike rural clubwomen, suffragists pursued the ballot as a means to improve the status of all women. Feminist ideas increasingly obtained with women in visible leadership, and eventually reached all rural women, as countless hundreds registered to vote, and still more educated themselves on political issues. In doing so, rural women in Texas joined women across America in challenging the limits of domesticity and envisioning a fuller role for women in public life.

This thesis has demonstrated that Indiana played a major role in the American reform movement usually associated with the Populist and Progressive eras. Through an analysis of the issues brought before the Indiana General Assembly and a discussion of successful and unsuccessful progressive legislation, this study has shown that Indiana was a progressive state and therefore in the mainstream of the American reform movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition, the thesis explored the voting records of the various legislators between the decades from 1890 to 1910 and arrived at some general conclusions concerning the origins and development of progressivism in Indiana. Finally, brief biographies of some of the outstanding progressive legislators were included in the study.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1957. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: leaves 378-390.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1959. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. "Bibliographical essay": leaves [377]-398.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1965. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliographical essay and bibliography: l. 241-256.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1956. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 532-544).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1965. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliographical essay: leaves 99-105.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin, 1961. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-139).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1964. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (10 leaf at end).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1958. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 558-567).