The first instance of the "widow's mandate" (a widow running for her spouse’s seat), was Mae Ella Nolan in 1923. Such candidates had often been unpaid congressional assistants, and campaigned on their hands-on experience. Boston Herald cartoonist Franklin Collier disagreed with the logic of this practice in this 1920s original artwork for the newspaper. Collier’s alter ego, Otto Grow, grumbles about women in Congress. The potential results of women taking their spouses’ places as police, coaches, and dentists unfold, reinforcing the notion that some jobs should not be open to women.
