Was it Susan B. Anthony who had the famous exchange w/Debs, which went: Debs: "give us socialism and we'll give you suffrage;" SBA: "give us suffrage and we'll give you socialism." Well you got yer suffrage, so where's our socialism?
Slightly more seriously, the run-up in U.S. public spending is not wholly dissimilar from that in Europe, where I would guess that suffrage had been achieved earlier than in the U.S.
mbs