Financial History Issue 122 (Summer 2017) | Page 23

and energetic, hurrying along at an “unla-
dylike” pace, and barging into brokers’
offices, where she was not always wel-
come. Once, when a businessman ordered
her out of his office, she struck him with
her umbrella and was arrested for assault.
Collection
her settlements or her husband’s financial
standing, with the vague promise of a for-
tune thus held out to her.”
Favor responded that her circular was
no different from those routinely distrib-
uted by male brokers and that her transac-
tions “were conducted upon strictly busi-
ness principles.” She did not endanger the
savings of the poor, as she “took no orders
for less than 100 shares,” and she provided
a valuable service to women investors
who were otherwise at a disadvantage,
“because their facilities for information
were not equal to those of men.”
Another woman, Mary Gage, also
opened a brokerage business for women in
1880 which was championed by the wom-
en’s rights movement. Gage, the daughter
of prominent suffragist Frances Dana Gage,
was previously employed as a clerk for the
Equal Rights Association and the US Trea-
sury Office in New York City. Mary Gage
established her “ladies’ exchange for rail-
road and mining stocks” at 71 Broadway in
Lower Manhattan because she had person-
ally experienced “much inconvenience and
annoyance in transacting her own opera-
tion” with male brokers.
According to the official History of
Woman Suffrage (1886), “after Miss Gage
was fairly settled, other women who had
labored under the same disadvantages
began to drop in, their numbers increasing
daily.” That Gage was clearly following the
example and mission of Victoria Woodhull
was not mentioned, as the suffrage move-
ment has jettisoned Woodhull as a liability.
Most women who tried their hand at
stock brokering received a chilly reception
on Wall Street. Such was the case of Soph-
ronia Twitchell, a women’s rights activist
turned businesswoman. She worked as
an agent for the Equitable Life Insurance
Company in San Francisco and specu-
lated heavily — and successfully — in min-
ing shares. She moved to New York in
1880, where at the age of 50, she opened a
business on lower Broadway as a broker in
mining securities.
Although she ran “a genuine stock busi-
ness” and sometimes made “a great deal
of money,” she was very unpopular with
other brokers. They may have resented
her success, and they certainly resented
her manner, which for a woman was
unusually forthright and outspoken. She
was a familiar figure on Wall Street, tall
Print advertisement for “Duke’s ‘Preferred Stock’
Cigarettes,” featuring a woman reading ticker tape.
Twitchell’s combination of brokerage
with women’s rights no doubt reminded
some people of Victoria Woodhull. Yet,
while Woodhull was depicted as a beauti-
ful siren seducing the likes of