Ida Crouch-Hazlett (born Ida Estelle Crouch, c. 1870 – 1941) was an American political activist prominent in the suffrage and socialist movements. Crouch-Hazlett is best remembered as a prominent orator and organizer for the Socialist Party of America during the first two decades of the 20th century. In 1902 Crouch-Hazlett became the first female candidate for U.S. Congress from Colorado when she ran for a seat in the House of Representatives.
Biography
Early years
Ida Estelle Crouch was born c. 1870 in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of two college-educated schoolteachers. Crouch grew up in Monmouth, Illinois, where she attended elementary school, before enrolling in the Monticello Seminary of Godfrey, Illinois. She was an 1888 graduate of Illinois State Normal School (an institution that would later become Illinois State University) at Bloomington and later did course work at Stanford University, where she studied economics, and the Chicago School of Social Sciences following completion of her training as a teacher at Illinois Normal School.
Crouch was married at a fairly early age to N. Hazlett, who died not long thereafter.
After graduation, Crouch-Hazlett ran for local school board on the ticket of the Prohibition Party. Following that unsuccessful attempt, she held a series of positions as a teacher of elocution in Illinois, Colorado, and Wyoming, an occupation that helped her to craft her skills as an orator.
In 1894, Crouch-Hazlett turned to journalism, working as a newspaper reporter. Crouch-Hazlett worked for newspapers in Chicago, Denver, and Leadville, Colorado, and St. Louis. She continued to work as a journalist through 1900. While in Colorado Crouch-Hazlett was first exposed to the bitter class struggle between miners and mine-owners, which further shaped her political views.
Political career
Crouch-Hazlett's first foray into politics came in 1896, when she was named a national organizer for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Crouch-Hazlett was one of the NAWSA's professional organizers who toured the length and breadth of California during the unsuccessful 1896 election campaign, joining such stalwarts of the movement as Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Anna Howard Shaw. Crouch-Hazlett continued on the staff of the NAWSA until 1901, touring the country for the organization and conducting public lectures building public support for women's right to vote.
Shortly after the start of the 20th century, Crouch-Hazlett began to see the fight for socialism as a central component of the struggle of women for equal rights and she made advancement of the socialist movement a central part of her political efforts. She joined the fledgling Socialist Party of America (SPA) around the time of its formation in 1901 and thereafter became one of its most prominent female voices.
In 1902, Hazlett became the first female candidate for U.S. Congress in the state of Colorado when she ran for the House of Representatives on the Socialist ticket.
After the 1902 campaign, Hazlett continued without pause taking her oratorial skills on the road on behalf of the Socialist Party as one of its national organizers. Crouch-Hazlett spent the better part of the next two years, holding public lectures and thereby attempting to help build state and local organizations for the new political party. She remained one of the SPA's touring national organizers through 1904.
Crouch-Hazlett was a delegate of the Socialist Party of Colorado to the 1904 National Convention of the Socialist Party and a Socialist Party of Montana delegate to the 1908 Convention.
Following her time as a Socialist Party traveling lecturer, Crouch-Hazlett settled down as an organizer for the Socialist Party of Montana, an organization at the time of about 450 dues-paying members active in 25 "locals." Hazlett was named editor of the Socialist Party of Montana's newspaper, Montana News, in December 1905.
One historian has called Crouch-Hazlett "a most different administrator" of the party newspaper, noting that she preferred to play the role of "roving reporter" and leaving the technical and administrative details of newspaper production to her close political associate, State Secretary James D. Graham. Her time traversing the massive state of Montana in this period involved Crouch-Hazlett closely with the Western Federation of Miners. Her association in the labor movement also had a certain participatory element, as during the course of her life, Hazlett was herself a member of the Knights of Labor and the American Labor Union, ultimately unsuccessful rivals of the American Federation of Labor.