Ada James' family were pioneers in Wisconsin. Moving to Richland Center in the late 1840s from New Hampshire, George H. James opened a hardware store. David G. James clerked in his father's hardware store after serving in the Union Army and started courting Ada Briggs. After a three year courtship they were married in 1869. Shortly after the birth of a son, in August 1869 (Oscar B. James), Ada B. James died of tuberculosis.
By 1870 David James had taken over the hardware store. Business was good and he prospered, becoming prominent through activity in the G.A.R. The letters of this period, after his grief over his wife's death, show him turning to Laura Briggs, Ada's eclectic sister. Laura gave up teaching school to learn telegraphy as a profession at Oberlin College. D.G. insisted on helping her financially, and in the process fell in love with her. After a year or two of resisting marriage for the cause of pioneering in women's employment in telegraphy, she reconciled her conscience to the relative ease of marriage to D.G. They were married in 1873. Their first child, a son, was born in 1874 and died a year later. In 1876 Ada was born, Beulah in 1878, and Vida in 1887.
Laura Briggs James initiated the family interest in woman suffrage. In the late 1870s she was active in founding the Woman's Club of Richland Center, a group using the title as a mask for its suffrage activities. By 1920 this group was the oldest active suffrage group in Wisconsin. She attended the Wisconsin State Suffrage Conventions through 1903, apparently as secretary, since the minutes of the conventions are in her copybooks.
Despite complaints of ill health, she was also active and interested in other movements. She subscribed to magazines espousing spiritualism, the great I AM, birth control and sex freedom, Unitarianism, and socialism. Among her papers are several spirit messages from an aunt, Mrs. Eastland, and from her daughter Beulah who died of Bright's Disease in 1901, one month after she had married Robert DeLap. Laura Briggs James died in 1905.
Ada Lois James was born and grew up in Richland Center. The town claimed her activities and thoughts for most of her life. After graduating from high school, she taught school for a time, dabbled in painting and poetry, and tried to overlook her increasing deafness. She was moderately active in suffrage work in this period, but her interests were primarily social. These activities were side-lights against the focus of her life at this time --Charles Bingham Cornwall. In 1897 they were supposed to marry, but the opposition of parents and friends led her to delay. Eventually the affair broke off, and though, according to her diaries, there were other proposals of marriage, she never fell in love again. The letters of this courtship are very few, and seem to have been weeded. Her diaries show a sense of emptiness and a feeling of being “a nun in the world.” She emphasized love as the most important element of life, directing this feeling eventually to pacifism and social work with the Richland County Children's Board.
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin and receiving treatment which arrested without curing her deafness, she assumed a prominent place in the suffrage movement. From this period on she and her father were leaders in the struggle for suffrage. In the summer of 1908 she went to Europe with three of her friends for two months. They kept an elaborate, illustrated (by Ada) journal of the trip.
In 1911 D.G. became a state senator, introducing a suffrage bill which passed the legislature but was defeated in a state referendum in 1912. The campaign of the Political Equality League, aided by the national woman suffrage organization, was defeated, Ada claimed, by the brewery interests who feared the strength of women in the WCTU and thought their vote would bring prohibition.
The material covering the 1911-1912 campaign opens with a few scattered letters to Senator James concerning various matters, including employment in the Capitol elsewhere and bills pending, a few of which were compulsory testing of cattle for tuberculosis, marking graves of Civil War veterans, and the Pension Law; but the bulk of the material covers the two years from 1911 to 1913, when Ada James was president of the Political Equality League, and later her activities in the Wisconsin Woman's Suffrage Association when the two organizations were combined.
The Political Equality League of Wisconsin was organized April 4, 1911, at the home of Dr. and Mrs. George W. Peckham of Milwaukee by women from various parts of the state who had worked during the previous winter to secure passage of the suffrage bill in the Wisconsin legislature. The following officers were elected: Ada James of Richland Center, president; Sarah James, Oshkosh, secretary; Mrs. W.M. Water, Richland Center, treasurer; and Mrs. Ben Hooper, Oshkosh, auditor. The vice presidents were: Henrietta C. Lyman of Madison, Mrs. George W. Peckham and H.A.J. Upham, Milwaukee, and Rose Swart and Mrs. B.C. Gudden of Oshkosh.
The object of the league was to organize campaign committees in every county and in this way reach the voters of the state. Headquarters were opened in the Wells Building in Milwaukee and many letters are to be found in the collection concerning this venture. A clipping bureau supplied the office with everything written by Wisconsin newspapers on the subject of suffrage. A press committee was appointed to answer all adverse articles and to correct all misstatements on woman suffrage that might appear in the press. In July speeches were made from automobiles and in the parks and on the street corners. During the month of August eighty-one outdoor meetings were held in eight different counties as people would not go inside a hall during the intense heat. In September the county and state fairs presented opportunities for making speeches and distributing literature. Late fall and winter brought conventions, institutes, and clubs into activity, and an effort was made to get suffrage speakers of national and international reputation among whom were Harriet Grim, Belle Case La Follette, Reverend Olympia Brown, Sylvia Pankhurst, and others. Considerable correspondence is to be found concerning all of these matters.
Hundreds of dollars worth of literature was distributed and articles of special interest mailed to farmers. The press committee, of which Theodora Youmans of Waukesha was chair, issued a weekly bulletin which was mailed to more than 500 newspapers in the state and frequent large meetings were held in theaters and churches under the direction of the campaign manager, Crystal Eastman Benedict. Harriet Grim spent several months lecturing in the state for the league and Alice Curtis devoted her time to county organizations for the campaign. Despite these efforts, the measure was defeated in 1912.
Both the Woman's Suffrage Association and the Political Equality League were active during the campaign of 1911-1912, but some weeks after the election the two organizations were combined under the name of the former and Mrs. Youmans of Waukesha was chosen president and Ada James a member of the committee. Although work started on a 1913 campaign, the letters in this collection stop late in 1913 and continue in 1914 with suffrage bulletins.
From 1914 to 1918 the letters take on a slightly different tone. Pure food laws, the Prohibition Party, peace, and the Woman's Party are mentioned and in 1917 Miss James severed her connection with the Wisconsin Suffrage Association to become a member of the National Woman's Party. In a letter dated November 20?, 1917. she explained her position to Mrs. Youmans:
It has been understood for some time that I was working with the Woman's Party, the W.S.A., or any organization which seemed to be doing effective work. I have believed for years that it is as deadly to suffrage to have one organization as it would be to politics to have but one political party. I have gone all over this before so I think my position is clearly understood and that everyone of the W.S.A. board knows that I was converted to the methods employed by the Woman's Party. I believe so earnestly that they are doing good that I am humiliated and ashamed to be out of Ocoquan [the workhouse near Washington, D.C., where Suffragette pickets were imprisoned]. You do not see it in this light but I am sure you know me well enough to believe that I am true in my conviction always--except perhaps in this Ocoquan matter, I cannot bring my weak self to leave my father, but I am making no excuses for myself, believing as I do I should be there.
Mrs. Youmans replied November 22, 1917:
We are sorry to have you leave our organization but I know that your heart hasn't been with us for a long time. Such being the case a separation is probably best. There is no question in the mind of anyone who knows you that you are doing what you think to be right. I must confess that it seems to me you would not be benefiting yourself or anyone else by going to jail so I am glad that your father is acting as a deterrent in that direction. Be assured always of my warm personal feeling for you. We may work along different channels for a little while but I fancy that we shall all be working together for certain civic ends when the Federal Amendment is finally passed and endorsed.
During World War I Ada James developed a belief in pacifism which remained with her throughout her life. She subscribed to organizations such as the War Resisters' League, leftist and socialist organizations, and opposed the continuance of the National Guard, ROTC, state militia, and federal troops in the 1930s and early 1940s. She was bitter about lack of participation in the League of Nations and military aid to Japan in the 1930s.
Unfortunately there is a gap in the diaries between 1921 and 1929, the period in which she was most active politically on the state level. This was due partially to her discovery of her cancer, which was eventually cured, and to her father's death. As a result, though she had aided in the founding of the Children's Board in 1920 and had established the James Memorial Fund in 1922 to supplement the board's activities, she was relatively inactive on the board until 1930, when she became an active case worker and eventually chairman of the board. She resigned this last in 1949.
Women had barely received the vote before Miss James found herself in a heated political situation. Levi H. Bancroft, whose record on prohibition and suffrage she judged to be lacking, had been appointed judge. In the spring primary of 1921 he campaigned for re-election to the position. Ada James persuaded Sherman E. Smalley to campaign against him for the Republican nomination. Smalley won, despite the recount demanded by Bancroft.
After the primaries, lawsuits descended upon all who had been active in the campaign. Bancroft began with four slander and libel suits against R.P. Hutton, head of the Anti-Saloon League; P.L. Lincoln, a lawyer and cousin of Ada; Judge Smalley; and Ada herself.
The case against Smalley was dismissed, and the one against Hutton was suspended. Ada and Lincoln continued their countersuits until the springof 1922 when, by mutual consent and an apology from Bancroft, both were dropped.
In 1922 the association begun with Robert M. La Follette Sr., in the suffrage campaign and continued in the Committee of 48, was strengthened when Ada James became vice-chairman of the Republican State Central Committee. Several letters from Belle Case La Follette show a close harmony in this year and in 1923, when Ada became president of the Wisconsin Progressive Association. The Progressive “honeymoon” ended with a split caused by La Follette's support of Blaine's candidacy for governor for a second term. When he claimed political expediency, Ada quoted his earlier idealism, resigned as president of the Progressive Association, and actively opposed Blaine and the “Madison Ring.” Blaine won despite her opposition and remained in office until 1927.
The conflict of practical politics and intense idealism turned her to concentration on social work and the Children's Board. She continued to be active in the prohibition movement and campaigned against allowing taverns to be licensed in Richland Center after the repeal of prohibition. Her major interest, however, remained the Children's Board.
In addition to relief and charity, she used the James Memorial Fund established in 1922, to provide medical care and psychological examinations for both adults and children in Richland County. The results of these medical and psychological clinics, conducted with the aid of the University of Wisconsin Sociology Department, led her to consider birth control and sterilization for the unfit.
Noting that half of Richland County's tax revenues were used for the support of those in institutions and for relief and charity, she felt it fairer to both the unfit and capable members of society that the increase of the mentally and physically incapable be ended. She proposed with others that sterilization and supervision be used wherever possible rather than institutionalization.
Ada James became allied with the birth control movement in the late 1920s, when she grew disgusted at legal restrictions on information and materials that would permit parents to space children for the sake of health and economy. She fought for laws authorizing the dissemination of contraceptive information and materials by doctors and authorized clinics. The right to be well born involved preventive measures before birth as well as improvement of environmental factors after birth.
During the 1930s she made several studies of the observed geometric increase of the moronic and imbecilic families in Richland County. She demonstrated the burden thrown on the county in terms of disease, crime, institutions, and the care of offspring. One of the results of these studies was a pamphlet, “A Little Story of Human and Economic Interest.” The materials for this and other speeches and articles were derived from the case files she built up asa social worker for the Children's Board. These cases vividly demonstrate the need for work in rural sociology.
She opposed entrance into World War II, and in later years her beliefs remained those of the reformer, humanitarian, and pacifist. After resigning as head of the Children's Board in 1949, illness came frequently. She died in 1952.
