?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
Ross, Edmund Gibson (1826-1907) Special Message to the Council of the 28th Legislative Assembly.
Santa Fe, NM: Santa Fe New Mexican, 12 February 1889.
Large octavo broadside protesting a proposed bill (Council Bill No. 108), "an act to prevent women from entering saloons for the purpose of drinking therein," pale beige paper, small pinholes in top left corner, printed in two columns, one other small hole in the blank margin at the top, overall crisp and large-margined, 8 1/4 x 6 in.
Ross was the 13th Governor of the New Mexico Territory between 1885 and 1889. In this open letter to the Legislative Assembly of the Territory, he writes, "The title of this bill is misleading. While it declares itself to be an act to prevent women from entering saloons for the purpose of drinking therein, it goes further, and prohibits them from going there to earn an honest livelihood, as many do. [...] This bill is not only useless legislation, but is legislation in a vicious direction, in that it presupposes that women are something less than rational beings as compared with men, and must be hedged about with statutory enactments to keep them from degradation and vice. [...] The spirit of the time and of our institutions, and the public policies of America combine to establish a broadening and elevating sphere for woman, and to make her the equal of man in all public and social rights before the law. She is no longer a toy, a slave, or a nonentity, but has become a moral, social, and political force--recognized as such everywhere."
