WINNING EOUAL SUFFRAGE IN
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REPORTS OF COMMITTEES
OF THE
College Equal Suffrage League of Northern California
IN THE
CAMPAIGN OF 1911








WINNING EQUAL SUFFRAGE
IN CALIFORNIA
REPORTS OF COMMITTEES
OF THE
College Equal Suffrage League of Northern
California
IN THE
CAMPAIGN OF 1911
Published by the National College Equal Suffrage League

COPYRIGHT, 1913
BY THE
COLLEGE EQUAL SUFFRAGE LEAGUE OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

INDEX OF REPORTS.
Page
60
Introduction
7
President's Foreword, Suggestions on Successful Organization-
Charlotte Anita Whitney...
13
State Press Work-Mabel Craft Deering.
17
Hearing Before Judiciary-Cornelia McKinne Stanwood.
25
Committee on Dramatics-Ethel Moore...
28
Pankhurst Lecture
30
Central Headquarters-Londa Stebbins Fletcher.
32
Supplying Speakers ...
34
Public Meetings in San Francisco—Constance Lawrence Dean.. 36
Literature Committee-Kate Brousseau....
43
Committee on Design-Louise Herrick Wall.
46
City Circularizing—Adelaide Brown...
51
Publicity Reports for San Francisco—Ernestine Black.
53
Window Display
56
Public Luncheons
57
Country Campaigning-Ida Finney Mackrille.
58
Rural Campaigning-Londa Stebbins Fletcher.
Automobile Campaigning-Ida Finney Mackrille.
61
Blue Liner Report-Louise Herrick Wall....
Groups of Allied Activities:
Presenting Equal Suffrage to Teachers-Dora T. Israel. ... ... 73
Presenting Equal Suffrage to German Organizations-Lorraine
Cerf ...
74
Presenting Equal Suffrage to Lodges—Clara Schlingheyde.... 75
Presenting Equal Suffrage to Native Daughters..
76
Presenting Equal Suffrage to Commercial Bodies—Rachel L. Ash 76
Temporary Headquarters:
At Palace Hotel—Stella Wynne Herron..
78
At State Fair-Blanche Morse..
79
On Market Street-Dora T. Israel.
80
In Oakland-Ethel Moore...
81
Propaganda Through Advertising Mediums—Genevieve Allen... 83
Putting Up Bay Signs-Londa Stebbins Fletcher.
84
Foreign Advertising—Belle Judith Miller..
86
Street Car Advertising-Ernestine Black.
87
63
college, og
Vassar

Page
Cooperative Enterprises:
Central Campaign Committee-Mabel Craft Deering.
90
Lantern Slides as Propaganda.
94
Labor Day Float....
96
Campaigning in Sacramento—Mary Roberts Coolidge.
98
Post Card Day-Frank Baker Patterson.
..102
Oakland Election Day-Mary Roberts Coolidge....
. 104
Woman Suffrage Election Day, San Francisco—Louise Her-
rick Wall
.. 107
Automobile Campaign in San Francisco—Ernestine Black. .....113
Informal Report on Finances-Fannie W. McLean...
115
Treasurer's Report-Anna E. Rude..
118
Appendix:
Forms for Cards and Posters...
119
Miscellany
131

OFFICERS
OF
COLLEGE EQUAL SUFFRAGE LEAGUE OF
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Elected May, 1911
MISS C. A. WHITNEY (Wellesley), President.
DR. ADELAIDE BROWN (Smith) First Vice-President.
MISS C. C. JACKSON (Cornell), Second Vice-President.
MISS LILIEN J. MARTIN (Vassar), Third Vice-President.
MISS BELLE MILLER (California), Recording Secretary.
MISS GENEVIEVE COOKE (California Woman's Hospital), Corresponding
Secretary
MRS. GENEVIEVE ALLEN (Stanford), Executive Secretary.
DR. ANNA RUDE (Cooper Medical College), Treasurer.
DR. RACHEL L. ASH (California), Delegate to Council.
DIRECTORS.
MISS ETHEL MOORE (Vassar).
MRS. FRANK DEERING (Califor-
nia).
MISS KATE AMES (Stanford).
MRS. C. C. HALL (Elmira).
MISS F. W. McLEAN (California).
MRS. THOS. HAVEN (California).
DR. KATE BROUSSEAU (Univer-
sity of Paris).
MRS. C. H. HOWARD (California).


INTRODUCTION.
The news of the success of our campaign in California, that,
on October 10th, 1911, gave the right of suffrage to the women of
the State, had scarcely been confirmed before letters began to pour
into the headquarters of the College Equal Suffrage League from
almost every State in the Union, asking advice and suggestions for
organizing and conducting a like campaign.
To meet this demand, which was most urgent from the States
with a campaign immediately ahead, the directors of the College
League, at a meeting on October 14th, 1911, resolved, “That the
chairman of each committee write an account of the work done by
her and her committee, these reports to be printed in concise form
and bound together for filing, and for the benefit of campaigners
in the other States." An editor was then chosen. The reports pub-
lished in this volume are the result of that resolution.
Months have passed in collecting and revising the scattered
material, and in an effort to fill up gaps in the story. The history
of hasty, unrecorded work-one task having sometimes gone through
the hands of five successive volunteer chairmen-has been curiously
difficult to trace. An advantage of the method of presentation
chosen by the League, of telling the story of the campaign through
signed reports of chairmen of committees, is that something of the
vividness of first-hand experience is retained; but the defect of the
method is equally apparent, for like the "spot light,” it brings out
one group of facts sharply, only to leave adjacent groups in dark-
ness, and, in this way, there is often a serious loss of perspective.
For instance, the Blue Liner report gives, with copious detail,
an account of the campaigning work done in about twenty-five
towns in four counties, but of the work accomplished by our East-
ern helpers, by Miss Jeanette Rankin, Mrs. Helen Hoy Greeley,
Mrs. A. C. Fisk, Mrs. Stanislawski, Miss Margaret Haley, Mrs.
Catherine Waugh McCullough, Miss Helen M. Todd, and Miss Gail
Laughlin, in building up organizations in thirty counties of the State,
through weeks and months of traveling and speaking, we have only
the sketch that makes a part of the Central Campaign Committee's
report. Happily, the record of their efforts exists in another, and
more substantial, form in the splendid gains in the country vote
shown in most of the counties where their work was done.
In the report on City Circularizing, we have a clear account of
how three city districts were circularized, but no reports have been
procurable of the same work in the circularizing of the 10,000 school
teachers and the trustees and boards of education of the State; the
circularizing of the voters of Contra Costa County, of the 43rd
District of San Francisco, and of many social and business clubs.

8
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
These unrecorded tasks are, numerically, more important than those
of which we are so fortunate as to have a record.
By this, it will be seen that these reports cannot be accepted
as a consecutive story, even of the recent active campaign of the
College Equal Suffrage League of Northern California, but rather
as types of individual pieces of work which become more consecu-
tive as we approach the central headquarters, where the activities
centered.
As, in most cases, we have only the reports of the chief chair-
man of committees, the work in San Francisco, in consequence,
seems to occupy too large a place on the stage. In reality, the
activities generated at headquarters reached out in every direction.
The San Francisco public meetings, arranged by the College League,
were paralleled in all the bay cities, Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda,
and many smaller towns, where they were carried through by other
College League chairmen. Alameda was especially energetic in
arranging for large drawing-room meetings, teas, garden fêtes, and
church gatherings, at which the suffrage amendment was presented.
The Merchants' Window Displays, in suffrage colors, in these towns
and in Sacramento were well carried out, and yet for them the San
Francisco report must stand as type.
A fact that is significant, in this State where women vote, is
that the most active workers for Equal Suffrage, immediately upon
acquiring the vote, formed themselves into organizations whose
object was to work for the civic betterment of California. When
our citizenship was a month old the College Equal Suffrage League
founded the California Civic League, which now has thirty centers
in as many towns in Northern California, and a dues-paying mem-
bership of about three thousand, three times as large as the College
League had at the end of the campaign. The building up of these
new organizations drew the life-blood from the parent organism.
Instead of having in California an old guard, who delights in noth-
ing so much as the recounting of campaign adventures, we have the
vigorous ranks of a new soldiery striving with all the old enthu-
siasm, and a growing self-discipline, toward the realization of a
purer and better California. In searching into obscure details for
these reports the editor has, a score of times, been told, "I have
forgotten about that. The new work is so interesting,” or, “I feel
that the real service for us to do for equal suffrage is, not to look
back, but, by the quality of our citizenship, to make good.”
Like the trees of our forest, the new growth has sprung up
and absorbed, in many places, even the traces of the old, which gave
it life. No spirit could be more in accord with our old hopes and
prophecies, nothing better substantiate our claim that the suffragists
were not working for notoriety: but to an editor in search of facts,

Introduction
9
this indifference to publicity on the part of chairmen whose reports
she is pledged to publish, has had its disadvantages.
In reviewing the work, as a whole, of our northern branch of
the League, it is evident that in spite of the hurried and uncalcu-
lated zeal of much that was done, certain distinct principles of
general application do emerge. We have won experience that we
believe may be of value to another State in undertaking the same
work. By our mistakes, we have learned which of the Hills of
Difficulty could have been better scaled by another approach, and
by our successes, we know the potency of determined work.
We realize that it is of first importance that any State with a
suffrage amendment pending should have a firm, active suffrage
organization at work some years before the opening of the final
campaign. Even in States where the indifference of the male elec-
torate is the strongest enemy to be overcome, the association should
be doing preparatory work. This early activity will save an im-
mense amount of intense and often wasteful labor during the last
months of a campaign, and make the outcome more secure.
In forming such a working organization it is essential that a
large group of efficient women who believe in the principles of
equal suffrage should be gathered together and lifted to a state of
earnest enthusiasm, that officers of a wide range of capacity may
be presented as material for the nominating committee. This can
best be done when a distinguished speaker has created public inter-
est by giving a series of talks on the need for equal suffrage in
relation to the problems of modern life.
In selecting the president of a league for a campaign, the
prime requisites are integrity, intelligence, and just as essential as
either, the habit of trained work. The amount of labor that falls
on the chief director of a campaign is so great in amount and so
concentrated in quality that almost no amateur worker is suffi-
ciently seasoned to endure the strain. The president of our League
had the discipline of seven years of work as a secretary of organized
charity, and under pressure could endure sixteen hours of office work
a day. Among the other chairmen of committees who endured
unfalteringly, it was noticeable that every woman who made a
marked record for work, had already served a real apprenticeship.
I believe that this is significant and should be considered in appoint-
ing chief chairmen for committees.
One of the best plans for strengthening interest throughout a
State is, of course, to arrange a series of meetings, through women's
clubs already organized, at which a strong and agreeable speaker
will be given time for a half hour's talk to the members. From
this group, she should start an independent suffrage society. Never
try to work for equal suffrage through the machinery of a club

IO
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
a
organized for other purposes, or all your power will be absorbed by
friction and dissipated in heat.
In California this vitalizing work had been led by Miss Anthony
and Dr. Anna Shaw, fifteen years before the recent successful cam-
paign, and their converts and followers had been disseminating that
influence throughout the State during the years of quiescence be-
tween the unsuccessful campaign of 1896 and the successful one of
1911. About ten years after the defeat, Mrs. Maud Wood Park, of
Boston, founded the College Equal Suffrage League of Northern
California, and gathered a group of vigorous, young college women
into a band of progressive workers. In looking back it is easy to
trace to these three influences and to the press work done by Mrs.
Ida Husted Harper,—later carried on by Mrs. Frank P. Deering,-
the initial interest in this movement in California. They established,
years ago, many separate little centers of conviction and enthusiasm
through the small towns of the State, as well as in the larger centers
of population, and in starting our active campaign, we had these
deposits to draw upon.
The knowledge of the great value of this early work to us
makes it clear that a strong speaker, coming several years ahead
of the legislative crisis, is of pre-eminent importance to open the
way, to enlist the sympathies of the women, and through them,
the voters. Of course, the practical question arises, how can
weak suffrage organization, with no money in its treasury, pay for
the expense of an accomplished speaker? The most economical
plan is, of course, to develop a good local speaker from one of the
women's clubs of the State—a woman whose experience in genial
debate and in forming organizations would fit her to go out to the
towns in all parts of her State to start fresh organizations. An
active canvass of all the women's clubs would be apt to develop the
presence of a woman who already warmly believes in the importance
of the work, and who, with encouragement and further study, could
fit herself for such a series of talks at less expense than would be
involved in bringing a speaker from a distance. When a need is
strongly felt and definitely stated, the first step is already taken
toward filling it. Need your speaker, find your speaker, and the
money to send her out can be raised. Had such an organizer-
no more eloquent than a score that we had during the last
months of our work—gone over this State two years ahead of the
campaign, and had her new leagues been kept alive by correspond-
ence with the parent body and a lively yearly convention, we would
have had a welcome for our speakers when the campaign was on,
instead of having to dry out our fuel before we could kindle the
first blaze.
In all honesty, it is safe to say that none of the work that was
done for equal suffrage before or during 1911 was wasted, but this
one

Introduction
II
report should attempt to establish not absolute so much as relative
values. The question is, what pays best in results for the invest-
ment of time, brains, money and work? There are several doubt-
ful points, to my mind, that have not been absolutely cleared up,
either by contact with facts at first hand, or by the reports of com-
mittees. One of these is: How much time should be given in
trying to effect a close coöperation with other suffrage organiza-
tions? Another: Does city circularizing bring as large results
for the effort expended as country circularizing? A third: What
is the value of the suffrage debate as a method of propaganda ?
This last is, to me, the least difficult. If through debate an audience
can be reached that will listen to arguments for equal suffrage on
no other terms, debate it must be; but to suggest or institute suf-
frage debates, I believe, after much observation, to be based on
bad psychology. The anti-suffrage tradition rests so largely upon
custom and repetition that even a mock debate strengthens the prej-
udices of listeners by re-stating, however grotesquely, their own
case. I think we must frankly acknowledge that people are not all
convinced through reason, and that although the proposition that
women should vote is seriously and profoundly true, it will, at first,
be established with this class of people much as the virtues of a
breakfast food are established, -by affirmation. You would find no
wise advertiser paying for "space" to insinuate doubts as to the
value of his commodity, and it is equally unwise to propose a
debate that “darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge."
Perhaps the wise counsel would be to be always ready to accept
a challenge to debate with established opponents, but never to create
such opponents by instituting debates. In High Schools, where
boys are at an age to feel peculiarly sure of sex superiority, it
seems especially unwise to precipitate a taking of sides.
That other classic device, the suffrage prize essay in schools,
is of unquestionable value. We found that to carry the prize offer
through all the schools of the State would cost about seven hundred
dollars. The plan would have been carried out but that it was
undertaken too late, when examinations and summer vacation were
at hand. This is the sort of enterprise to begin work on months
in advance of an active campaign, as one of the educational methods
that through slow seepage gradually permeates the tissues of so-
ciety. A single individual will sometimes give all the money to
carry out a specific piece of work of this sort. As in all contests
it is important to state, once for all, in a clear way, the conditions
of the contest, and at that time to refuse to answer further ques-
tions. Otherwise, endless correspondence will ensue.
We came to see, that in using money to bring arguments to the
people, that our best plans were those that advertised themselves.
For example, the speaking and singing for equal suffrage of Madame

I 2
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
Nordica, in Union Square, was an event of front-page importance.
Something that all the money of our treasury could never have
secured; in a lesser way the quick turning to account of the pres-
ence in San Francisco of the suffragist, Baron de Constant, Presi-
dent of the Peace Conference of the Hague, in his peace mission
around the world, linked our movement with a figure of world
interest. The use of the vaudeville troupe of Australian boys who,
by our arrangement, gave an equal suffrage performance and car-
ried banners saying "Our mothers vote. Why don't yours?," and
the presence of a woman suffrage float in the Labor Day parade,
each, in different degrees, had this same sort of value. They were
demonstrations that seized the imagination, and got themselves
talked about.
The most valuable of our directly paid for advertisements were,
I think, the huge bill-board posters, because by their size and
phrasing they commanded comment. The least effective use of
money for paid advertisements was, probably, the insertion of col-
umns of suffrage argument in the newspapers. As a general axiom,
therefore, use money in doing things so brilliantly well that their
success brings voluntary notice. Make of the public tongue your
town-crier, and you need not hire the town press.
If in this volume there is no definite recognition or thanks
given to the men of California, to whom we owe our success, it is
not because we have forgotten, or can forget. The speakers of
trained capacity who gave us time and tireless service made us
feel, as part of their generosity, that our cause was their cause, and
our success their personal triumph, that theirs was the service that
rewards itself in serving.
And with those many thousand others, throughout the State,
who voted to share with us their citizenship, we rejoice to share
both citizenship and humanity.
It is well that we have not hoped to make adequate acknowl-
edgments, for we can never requite the unrecorded labors of hun-
dreds of women who worked with us, without thought of recogni-
tion, in utter self-forgetfulness.
The purpose of these reports has been simple and practical.
Those who have coöperated in writing them have tried to make a
record, definite, fresh and hope-inspiring, for other campaigners.
We heartily believe in the value of suggestion, because we, our-
selves, gained so much from the ideas that we captured and re-
worked from every available source, and we expect that, in turn,
the rough technique of our own campaign will be perfected in
other States.
The Editor.

THE PRESIDENT'S FOREWORD.
Suggestions for Successful Organization.
In making an active campaign for equal suffrage, no matter
how vital other reforms may appear, let equal suffrage and equal
suffrage alone be the issue of your organization. If your associa-
tion allows itself to become identified with Socialism, Women's
Christian Temperance work, Prohibition, reforms for working
women, or any other measure, it will be at the expense of alienat-
ing the interest of some of the friends of your own cause.
Reasonable advocates of other reforms can often be made active
suffrage workers, when it is brought to their attention that their
own special work can be carried forward more effectively after
women have the ballot. In California we had vigorous and com-
petent help from other bodies of social workers, who, for the time,
laid aside their own paramount interest to work with us in our
campaign.
The planning of a campaign is the first work of a president
and her board, but as the actual work must be carried out in com-
mittee a president should put her best effort into building up strong
committees and in discovering fit chairmen. In this the president
should insist on the advice and coöperation of her board.
mittee once formed should be held responsible for the work for
which it was created, and though the presiding officer may have to
spend much time in keeping the committee up to its business, it is
far more advantageous, on all accounts, that she should do this
than that she should perform any part of its work, since the as-
sumption of a committee's duties destroys its interest and useful-
A committee may be reorganized and should be strengthened
and refreshed by new members, as its work unfolds.
Whenever it is possible, volunteers should be placed at once
upon some committee, because real work should be supplied for
everyone. Experience in our campaign convinced us that when a
woman was set actively to work her interest kindled and her neu-
trality warmed into partisanship. Sometimes a single errand to the
printer's or a trip to arrange for a permit from the Chief of Police,
was enough to draw in a new enthusiast, who, from that hour, felt
that the work of the League was her own intimate concern. The
vigor of a league may be measured by the number of its healthy and
well-sustained enterprises, and this demands a body of ardent and
intelligent workers, constantly reinforced by new members.
In selecting a chairman for the Publicity Committee it is essen-
ness.

14
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
tial, we found, to have a woman who had had professional expe-
rience in newspaper work, who knew the intricacies of the newspaper
offices, and something of the personnel of the papers' managements,
but-I must add this word of caution—not a woman who, during
the campaign, was in the employ of a paper, lest this should stand
in the way of the other newspapers feeling that they had free and
impartial news rights. A chairman thus experienced in newspaper
methods is often able to prevent the publication of news prema-
turely, or is able to handle a news item, that threatens mischief,
so that instead of its being injurious it becomes of positive ad-
vantage.
For the Chairman of the State Press Committee, newspaper
training is no less essential and, added to that, she should know the
history of the whole movement, in its widest sense, and be able to
link everyday developments of the world's news with her own prop-
aganda, and so keep a vital hold upon the country newspapers
throughout the State, so that they will continue to welcome her
contributions, because of the news value that her adroitness gives
to them.
For the Chairman of the Committee on Literature, who must
decide upon the leaflets or pamphlets to be published, not only a
woman of literary ability is needed, but one of wide outlook on
life, one who knows the different interests of various parts of the
State, and is quick to see what groups of people can be reached in
different ways, and what points should be emphasized for each
group. The literature should fit those for whom it is intended. The
principal leaflet which we used in circularizing the teachers and
the National Education Association Convention, which met in San
Francisco, was written by one of the best-known teachers of the
State, and our leaflet for farmers and fruitgrowers was written by
one who had been prominently identified with the agricultural inter-
ests of the State for years. A Chairman of literature who is re-
sourceful in arranging for this type of original material for propa-
ganda will, by this quality, add nothing to the expenses of her de-
partment and will keep the material fresh and adapted to local
interests.
A Treasurer must, of course, be a woman experienced in the
keeping of accurate accounts; and an inflexible rule should be made
by the board that no bill shall be audited or paid unless the purpose
for which the expenditure was made is written upon it.
For in-
stance, a bill for printing should bear on its face the date and name of
the particular meeting for which the expense was incurred.
No greater piece of good fortune can befall any League than
to secure a campaign treasurer like ours.
One of the gravest puzzles of organization is involved in the
effort to attain a thorough coöperation between all the different

The President's Foreword
15
suffrage societies of a State or city. How much time and effort can
be wisely expended in harmonizing the work and plans of all? In
an effort to attain such coöperation we had an Interleague Confer-
ence, formed of representatives from all of the societies for equal
suffrage in San Francisco, and we found that this body of eighteen
was much too large for swift decisions, on a variety of complex
activities. It is inevitable that the most conservative, or the most
obstructive, members of such a group must either be converted, or
swept along protesting, by the more enterprising majority. A small
body of strong representatives should gain much by a short weekly .
conference, and if the chairman insists that no new plan can be
submitted, except in writing, and that no member may speak more
than once to a motion-until all have spoken—it is possible to
control the waste of time to some extent. Perhaps the best plan
is to coöperate on matters that show an unmistakable gain from
large concerted action, such a plan as election day work at the polls,
and to leave separate plans to be handled by each group, reporting
upon them, in a very general way, at the weekly conference, to
prevent any unfortunate interference of dates or engagements.
With frankness and forethought there need not be the least rivalry
between people who are all working for one end, and something is
certainly gained by the experience of special groups in planning for
the sort of people whose needs and interests they know best.
In all of the work, it should be borne in mind that a suffrage
campaign is an educational campaign and must be kept clear-cut,
clean and open. Invite interested members of the society, from
time to time, to the meetings of your board, or executive commit-
Every campaign will develop workers of good judgment and
enthusiasm who will be invaluable assets in the work, and though
such a worker may not become a voting member of the directorate,
she should be made so welcome a guest at your councils that you
can avail yourself of her experience and suggestions. No chairman
of an important committee should ever be excluded from the board.
Unity of aim and method, harmonious progress of plan and develop-
ment can be attained only in this way. An intelligent visitor,
who is present during the discussion of an important policy, who
hears the pros and cons as they are advanced, gains a comprehen-
sion of a situation which is apt to bring both herself, and, eventually,
the group to which she belongs, into harmony with the board's
carefully worked out policy. Full and accurate information about
any of the plans of the organization should be easily accessible to
all members, and they should be encouraged to get a working
knowledge of the progress of the work.
The president should remember that she is, first of all, presiding
officer of the board, and that her chief duty is to see that the busi-
ness of the board is conducted as quickly and efficiently as possible.

16
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
She should not hesitate to use her gavel, nor to hold members of
the board to business methods of debate and procedure. But she
will weaken her board as a whole, and, therefore, her organization,
if she assumes duties and responsibilities and makes decisions that
rightfully devolve upon the board. She should never be drawn into
any conference or correspondence that is not known to her directors,
and that may not be freely told to any member. In this way, only,
can she command the respect and confidence of her fellow-workers,
and upon this depends the position of her organization in the out-
side world. She must remember that no one person can develop a
strong organization, and that her function is to bring out in her
board and in her membership the spirit of good team-work. She
must bring as many members as possible to the front-giving them
as far as possible opportunities to carry out plans that enlist their
special capabilities, and accord to them due credit for all such work.
Let her not be afraid to put responsibility on others.
The president may well consider herself an understudy to
every committee chairman and should stand ready to fill in gaps
and avert failures in any work that has been undertaken, always
bearing in mind that the committee should, when it is possible, be
made to do its own work. It is more essential that a president
sees that no piece of work, to which her league has put its hand
or its name, fails, than that she inaugurate many new enterprises.
Above all, every worker for equal suffrage must believe in equal
suffrage as a great, world-wide movement—an essential part of a
moral and spiritual awakening; believe in it so firmly that faith
begets courage and enthusiasm; and never forget that because it
is a great, educational movement the foundation of work must be
laid with all sincerity and truth.
Charlotte Anita Whitney, President.

PRESS WORK IN THE CALIFORNIA CAMPAIGN.
The press work for the California campaign began almost five
years before there was any campaign and this seed sowing may be
done in any State long before a suffrage amendment is secured.
When I took up the press work in California in 1906 it had been
ten years since any systematic press work had been done in the
State. In 1896 there had been a suffrage campaign in California
which had been lost. At that time vigorous press work had been
done by Ida Husted Harper, National Press Chairman, who was
in California during the campaign, but of all the California papers
which had published press matter at that time only thirteen re-
mained on the list which was forwarded to me on application at
National Headquarters. Mrs. Austin Sperry, the then president of
the California State Suffrage Association, had asked me several times
previous to 1906 to take the press chairmanship as I had been a
newspaper woman. I had always selfishly refused on the ground
that I was too busy.
After the earthquake and fire in San Francisco in 1906 I found
myself with more time on my hands than I had ever had before or
ever expect to have again. There were no street cars or telephones
in the city; almost everyone I knew had left town for places where
more comforts were to be had; I lived on a little island entirely
surrounded by miles of burnt homes; there were no theaters, no
parties, no distractions of any kind. Feeling it our duty to remain
in the city during the reconstruction period I said to myself, “What
can I do for suffrage?” and the press work occurred to me. I told
Mrs. Sperry I would undertake it and was at once appointed press
chairman for the entire State. A letter to the National produced
the slender list of the faithful thirteen to which the National had
been sending its news notes for ten years. From a newspaper I
borrowed the latest newspaper directory and found that there were
about 700 papers in California. The National sent me a copy of a
letter which had been used successfully in asking editors to use
suffrage matter. This letter contained a brief list of questions
which the editor was asked to answer. With it I enclosed a sample
of the sort of matter the National sent out with a stamped and ad-
dressed envelope for reply. I had 700 copies of this letter and the
list of questions printed so that they looked as though each sheet
had been typewritten, I wrote in the editor's name and the name
of the paper on a typewriter and signed all the letters. I have
some copies of both letter and question list which I should be glad
to furnish on application. The National furnished me the thousand
copies of news matter which I enclosed with the letters. The four-

18
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
teen hundred envelopes were addressed and the press work of Cali-
fornia was started.
Almost 400 of the editors replied and most of the replies were
favorable—that is, the editors agreed to print at least part of the
matter which would be regularly sent. Some were willing to take
it weekly, some fortnightly and some only monthly. Very few
wrote saying they did not want it. Those who were violently op-
posed to suffrage probably threw the letter in the waste basket,
though a few felt that the two-cent return envelope bound them
morally to reply. After waiting a certain length of time I went
over the list and sent a second letter to those from whom I had
not heard at all. A good proportion of replies was received from
these men, the first letter having probably been buried under the
debris of the editorial desk.
From that time, weekly, or fortnightly or monthly for five years
the press matter went out regularly. At first all the material was
that published by the National and furnished free to any State
association which will distribute it. There was always criticism
of the character of the articles from certain local women who knew
nothing of the traditions of suffrage and had not been trained under
the great leaders. They thought the matter supplied to the local
papers should be local in character-news that Mrs. So and So was
organizing a suffrage club in San Francisco. I held that what we
wanted in the papers was propaganda and that the fact that suf-
frage was working well in Colorado, with some of the laws initiated
by the women voters, and that Norway had just enfranchised its
women, was important for California men to know and that the
fact that suffrage was gaining so largely all over the world—a fact
unknown to those who did not read a suffrage paper—was most
important in breaking down prejudice. For five years the men in
the interior of California got little notes on the progress of equal
suffrage mixed in with all their news. They became accustomed
to the idea that equal suffrage was being adopted everywhere and
to-day they know far more on the subject than city men who con-
sider themselves so well informed. Occasionally when something
of real importance in suffrage affairs happened in California, which
was not often in those days, I would have the item typewritten and
include it in the service. After Progress, which used to be used as
part of the news service, was absorbed by the Woman's Journal, we
used marked copies of portions of the Journal for our newspapers.
While the material in the Journal was excellent, the form was not as
good for republication as the multigraphed sheets furnished by the
National Press Bureau. There is always a certain prejudice against
using reprint matter and if a State could afford it and wished to use
the National service it would be wiser to select extracts from the

Press Work in the California Campaign
19
Journal and have them multigraphed. The importance of neat-looking
copy, ready to set up, and short items, cannot be overestimated.
This steady pounding by means of the local press went on weekly
for almost five years. Then suddenly, almost unexpectedly, our
amendment went through the legislature and we found ourselves
at the beginning of the shortest campaign any State has ever had
to face. Only eight months in which to cover the largest State in
the Union except Texas-only eight months to do propaganda
work which many States had failed to do in two years! None of
our existing associations were officered throughout as they would
have been had we foreseen a campaign, for many women who will not
take office in an “off” year will take it when the battle is hot.
As soon as the amendment went through, Southern California
became very active from a suffrage standpoint and appointed a press
chairman of its own to handle the counties south of the Tehachapi
pass, which forms a sort of natural division of the State. Up to this
time I had been supplying the papers of Southern California as
well as of Central and Northern California, but I now sent a list
of the papers I had been supplying to the Southern California
chairman and relinquished that field to her.
I felt that now that a campaign was on the thing to do was
to secure a press chairman in every county-some good worker
who would see that the material was used in her county papers.
The ideal person was of course one sufficiently prominent to have
influence with the local papers, but influence and industry do
not always go hand in hand. There are forty-eight counties in
Northern and Central California and I set as my standard securing
a chairman for every one. This time no printed or multigraphed
letter would do. As fast as I heard of names of women who be-
lieved in suffrage I wrote personal, appealing letters. Sometimes a
prompt acceptance came, sometimes a curt or "too busy" refusal.
More often, no answer came at all. I knew that my letters had
been received for all bore a return address. Sometimes twenty
letters went to a single county before a chairman was secured.
During this time we were continuing the service to the individual
editors, but as fast as chairmen were secured the county was
checked out and the material sent to the county chairman. The
weakness of my former press method was that we had no way of
knowing how much of our material was being used. When we
started the press work we asked each paper to put us on its mailing
list, on the theory that they would value our press material more
if we asked them for something in exchange and did not do it
entirely gratis. But though they promised, comparatively few of
the papers were received and these irregularly. When we did
secure copies of the country papers we often found our material in
type and from that we judged that it was being rather extensively

20
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
used. A press clipping bureau is not of much value in the early
stages of press work, for the items are small and inconspicuous and
easily overlooked. The ideal way, of course, would be to subscribe
for each paper, but few States, especially those with no campaign
on, would have money enough for this.
As soon as a press chairman was secured she was asked to
write to each editor in her county asking him to use regularly the
material she would send him until the day of election. As soon as
she received the editorial answer the press chairman notified me
of the number of papers she was to supply and where there were
two or more in the same town she notified me of that also, for, of
course, two or three weekly papers in the same town will not print
the same items but must have different news of equal value. All
this data was put under the chairman's name under the name of her
county. During six months I secured seventy press chairmen. In
many of the larger and more populous counties I had two or three.
Sometimes one woman would supply the county seat papers and
some other woman would take the rest of the county. Some active
press chairmen secured their own assistants. Most of the assistants
I secured. At the end of the campaign I had every county in
Northern California except one organized for the press work. How
I worked to get that one county and complete my list! But I
never was able to secure the name of a single suffragist in that
county. Had I not been so busy I should have inserted an adver-
tisement in the one county paper. I sent the material direct to
the one paper in the county and think it must have been published
for the county-a very remote, sparsely populated mountain county
--carried for suffrage.
I continued to use the National material throughout the cam-
paign but of course added largely to it. Many of my county chair-
men, like Mrs. Finley of Santa Rosa, Mrs. Eversole of Ukiah, Mrs.
Martin of Santa Rosa, Mr. Edward Berwick of Pacific Grove, Dr.
Frances Louise Newton of Woodland, Dr. Goodwin of Stockton,
and Mrs. Steele of Siskiyou, wrote well and contributed much
original matter to the columns they supplied. I was delighted to
have them do this yet my aim was to supply enough matter so
that any earnest, capable woman, even though she were without
literary ability, could keep her papers well supplied. During the
last five months of the campaign I wrote hundreds of editorials
and California news items, keeping all as short as possible. At
first I had these typewritten for the county chairmen, but as the
number of these increased every week, as did the number of papers
they served, typewriting became too onerous for my amateur help-
ers and too expensive to pay for. After that the matter was multi-
graphed, and every week my little girl and I folded at least five
hundred pages of printed matter and sometimes many more for

Press Work in the California Campaign
21
men
the county press service. The clipping bureau was now of great
service and enabled me to keep track of what my chairmen were
doing. If the papers of the different counties did not show up
well in the weekly batch of clippings I wrote to my chairman to
find out what was the matter and if she was found inefficient re-
placed her. The vast majority did perfectly splendid work and at
the end of the campaign the clippings averaged a thousand a day
for some days.
This sort of ceaseless hammering cannot but have its effect.
One effect of the early press work, however, was that the editors
themselves were converted as we found when we began to do
country organizing. Usually the local editors and the local clergy-
were the best suffragists in the town. The anti-suffragists
tried to do their press work from a central press bureau in San
Francisco and flooded the country papers with their arguments
and literature during the last six weeks. Very little of this found
its way into print and the antis complained bitterly that they could
not get "fair play" in the country papers. The fact of the matter
was that ninety per cent. of the editors were, by this time, suf-
fragists and were just as anxious to have the amendment pass as
we were. I don't think twelve newspapers in Northern California
published the anti items, for I saw the anti clippings as well as
our own.
In Ukiah there was a strong anti paper edited by Senator San-
ford, who had bitterly opposed the amendment in the Senate. We
answered all of his editorials in the two rival Ukiah papers, or in
the Sacramento papers which are taken in Ukiah. His county was
carried for suffrage. There was a rather strong anti paper in
Lassen County. That county carried for suffrage. A good deal of
anti matter was published in Salinas and in San Rafael. Outside
of these places the publication of anti matter was negligible. Of
course the papers which were representative of the liquor interests
published reams of anti stuff, but no one saw it except people who
were already against the amendment. I had one assistant, Miss
M. Fay Coughlin, who spent all her time answering anti material
as it appeared, correcting misstatements which appeared editorially
or in news columns, and answering adverse editorials.
Much of the original editorial matter appearing in the local
papers was excellent and the very best editorial on anti literature
appeared in the Stockton Mail, when the editor of that paper gave
his reasons for not publishing the anti press matter. That editorial
I had syndicated and it appeared in hundreds of California papers.
Each San Francisco and Oakland paper, which agreed to use
our matter, had a chairman of its own, but much of this space nat-
urally was used for the publicity department of the College League,
toward the end of the campaign, and came under a special chair-

22
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
man, Mrs. Orlow Black. Much of the regular country press serv-
ice, however, appeared in the San Francisco papers as well. During
the last six weeks of the campaign I spent much time getting state-
ments of why they believed in suffrage from leading San Francisco
men and women. These were signed and appeared in the Examiner
in a special department edited by Miss Mary Fairbrother, secretary
of the State Association. Practically all the leaders of the San
Francisco bar contributed signed statements to this department, and
many well known business men appeared as well. Among others
Mr. James Lees Laidlaw, the New York banker, sent me a five
hundred word telegram, which was published above his signature.
This was marked with blue pencil and sent to every officer and
prominent employe of every bank around the bay, for we were not
very popular in banking circles.
One effect which we made was, I consider, a complete failure.
We spent eighty dollars in two weekly installments with a press
association which furnishes ready set type to the country news-
papers. Two or three women from the country had written to ask
that we send suffrage material in this form to the country papers,
as such material saves the paper the expense of setting up type and
is sometimes used when matter to be set would not be used. I
made careful selection of papers in which we had not had much
space and sent a column of matter to almost sixty papers for two
weeks just before the close of the campaign. So far as I know
we had not more than five columns published. This was rather
expensive—a rate of sixteen dollars a column. It proved to me
that if a paper really wanted to publish our matter, it would set it
up. I should not advise ready set up matter unless suffrage ma-
terial could be inserted in New York or some central place whence
come the "patent insides” so largely used by country newspapers.
Another warning-do not pay to get your matter inserted in
papers. If you pay one, all the others come down on you like a
flock of vultures. If a county paper refuses to publish suffrage
matter except as an advertisement let it go, even if it does seem
important. You only lose friends by paying some papers and not
paying others, and no suffrage association can afford to pay all.
As to the expense of the press work. During the five years of
quiet press work, the work cost only five or six dollars a week, not in-
cluding the printing of envelopes. During the six months of the
active campaign it cost from ten to twenty dollars a week, but it
was well worth it.
Almost every paper of prominence in California endorsed suf-
frage or remained neutral on the subject. The Los Angeles Times
was always an enemy. One of the large Oakland papers was secret-
ly opposed and at least one of the large San Francisco papers, per-
haps two, would have been pleased to see the amendment defeated,

Press Work in the California Campaign
23
but so strong was the movement that none of these San Francisco
bay papers dared to come out in opposition. It would have meant
the loss of thousands of subscribers and the business managers knew
it. The San Francisco Call endorsed suffrage editorially and made a
spirited fight for the amendment. The Examiner advised the voters
to vote for the amendment, as did the Post and the Bulletin. The
Chronicle remained neutral and made no recommendation on our
amendment. The Sacramento Bee did splendid service for suffrage
and had a long list of very strong suffrage cartoons which undoubt-
edly did much to carry the Sacramento Valley. The Sacramento
Star was our friend, so was the Union. So were The Star and the
Daily News in San Francisco-organs of Union Labor—so was the
Oakland Enquirer, and the San Jose Mercury. The list is as long as
it is splendid and I wish that all might be enumerated here.
The last week of the campaign we were prepared for the usual
"roorback”—the eleventh-hour campaign fiction which is the device
of shifty politicians the world over. This had been effectively used
in Oregon by the antis and consisted there in the assertion published
broadcast in the country papers of Oregon that Colorado and the
other equal suffrage States had not increased in population since they
adopted equal suffrage. Of course, the statement is not true, but
it had great effect in Oregon, as that State is very anxious, like all
Western States, to grow. Of course, we could not know what par-
ticular form the fiction machine of the antis would take in California,
but the last weeks of the campaign I guarded all the avenues I could
think of and simply flooded the country papers with facts about
Colorado—its great growth, the high wages for men and women
which prevail there, its good laws-everything we could find that
was favorable to Colorado, as we thought the antis would probably
choose something from Colorado to attack. But they did not. In-
stead, not having any machinery in the country, they made use of the
big city papers to come out with full page advertisements on the
morning before election. In these display ads. they published mis-
quotations and partial quotations from Judge Lindsey's book, “The
Beast," and from eastern leaders of the suffrage movement, including
Mrs. Catt and Mrs. Blatch. The quotation from "The Beast” was
designed to make it appear that equal suffrage was a failure in Colo-
rado and the quotations from the ladies were incendiary and de-
signed to make the ignorant voter believe that the suffrage leaders
were unsafe persons to follow. It was interesting that the antis
made no quotations from speeches made by the California leaders,
though hundreds of thousands of suffrage speeches had been made
during the six months just closed. We held a hasty council of war,
denied the quotations in friendly sheets and exposed the quotation
from "The Beast,” showing how garbled it was, but decided not to
publish our reply in the form of an advertisement, though we had

24
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
the money, because it seemed to us that no fair-minded man would
pay any attention to anything appearing in the form of a paid ad-
vertisement at the last moment. Had the statements been true they
would, of course, have appeared earlier in the campaign when we
could have answered them.
My advice to other States, summed up briefly, would be: Get
local women to look after local papers; be sure to have a far-sighted
woman in control, because inestimable harm may be done by a
wrong move; begin early and keep hammering on "How it works.'
Few people deny the justice of equal suffrage nowadays; all the
argument turns on expediency. I think signed statements of local
magnates, telling why they believe in equal suffrage, are most im-
portant. Each prominent man and woman has a following.
Among the most popular material sent out were the suffrage
songs and short suffrage poems; news items which were suggestive
to women in the country towns, such as getting tradesmen to put
up suffrage leaflets in their packages; a description of the Suffrage
Float in the Labor Day parade in San Francisco; a description of
the San Francisco shop-windows, decorated for suffrage; short items
on the antis, as, for instance, that "the founding of an anti-suffrage
society is like forming an association not to discover the South Pole."
This last item went the rounds of California as an editorial note.
My last installment to the country chairman included this "Ap-
peal,” which was published in almost every country paper in Cali-
fornia. It was much more personal than most of the work I had
sent out, and, perhaps, for that reason was more effective.
!
“Appeal of the California Women.
every brothel
“The women of California appeal to the fair-minded, clean-souled
men of California to help the women defeat the vicious elements of
the slums of the larger California cities, on October tenth. The ap-
peal is made especially to the men of the smaller towns and the
country districts. The organized vicious interests have concentrated
and are spending a quarter of a million dollars in San Francisco and
Oakland in an effort to defeat the woman suffrage amendment on
October tenth. What does this mean? It means that
keeper, every keeper of a dive and low saloon, feels that it will be
bad for business if women have the ballot. Fair-minded men of
California, in favor of the square deal, vote for Senate Amendment
number 8, fourth place on the ballot, on October tenth, and see that
every man that you know votes for it, too. Unless the men of the
country help the womanhood of California the splendid fight the
California women have made will go down to defeat by the pur-
chasable and slum vote of the great cities.”
Mabel Craft Deering, Chairman.

REPORT ON THE HEARING BEFORE THE JUDICIARY
COMMITTEE OF THE SENATE.
The work of placing the suffrage plank in the Progressive Re-
publican platform was done by the pioneer suffrage organizations of
Northern and Southern California, and the honor lies with them.
The work of the College League for Suffrage came when the bill
was before the Legislature.
The first work we did was to send a suffrage letter to every
member of the Legislature, signed by the officers of our league.
Then, as college women, we made a direct appeal to the college
men. Fortunately, the power in the Legislature was in their hands.
The Governor, the Speaker of the House, the chairman of the Judi-
ciary Committee and many of the leaders on the floor were graduates
of the State University. So our College League members, scattered
all over the State, wrote letters to their friends and classmates in
the Legislature. Some sent telegrams, others night letters; in every
way we told them we wanted the vote. In many cases encouraging
answers came to the league from these letters.
Our next appeal was to the legislators through leading news-
papers of the State Capital, with the three following advertisements,
written by Miss F. W. McLean:
California Branch Na-
tional College Equal
Suffrage League
Urges
California Branch Na-
tional College Equal
Suffrage League
Urges the Bill
California Branch Na-
tional College Equal
Suffrage League
Urges the Bill
Submitting Full
Equal Suffrage to
the Voters of
California.
Equal
Suffrage
for
SUBMITTING
FULL EQUAL
SUFFRAGE
TO THE
VOTERS OF
CALIFORNIA
MEN and
WOMEN
WHY?
Women Need It.
Men Need It.
-Pure Food
-Pure Water-
-Clean Milk-
-Clean Streets-
-Adequate Garbage
System-
-Good Schools
The State Needs
It.
BECAUSE
What women need
the ballot?
The WAGE EARN-
ER to protect her in-
dustrial interests!
The MOTHER to
protect her children's
interests!
The HOUSEKEEP-
ER to protect the
household interests!
The TAXPAYER to
protect her property
interests!
The PHILANTHRO-
PIST to protect hu-
man interests!
ONE CAUSE of our
lack of civic patriot-
ism is the excess of
women teachers in the
schools.
THE REMEDY is
not to dismiss the
teachers, but to change
their idiotic political
classification.
85 per cent. of the
public school teachers
in California are wom-
en.
The public school
must teach citizen-
ship. Is it fair to
ask disfranchised in-
dividuals to teach cit-
izenship?
WOMEN ought
to GIVE their
help.
MEN ought to
HAVE their help.
The STATE
ought to USE
their help.
Are these not mat-
ters of the HOME?
Who controls these
things?
City officials.
Who elects city of -
ficials?
Men.
Is this fair to the
women?
Who are responsible
as HOME keepers ?
Women are HOME
keepers, but they are
citizens also.
The right use of the
ballot helps right
of the HOME.

26
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
These advertisements cost twenty-five dollars.
At this point the president of the Woman's Suffrage Party tele-
graphed, asking us to send representatives, at twenty-four hours'
notice, to appear at the hearing of the Judiciary Committee of the
Senate. Miss Anita Whitney, Miss Ethel Moore, Mrs. Walter Starr
and I responded, although both we and our friends felt that we
were doing a daring thing. Not one of had ever made a suffrage
speech, not one of us had ever seen a Legislature. Up to this time,
the activities of the League had been confined to polite discussions
in fashionable drawing-rooms and hotels, in most impersonal and
conservative tones.
The hearing before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate was
set for the evening of January the eighteenth. We four met on the
early morning train, armed with suffrage literature. We did not
know which one of us would be called on to speak, so we divided
up the material according to our individual preferences, and each one
of us was prepared, in a sense, by the time we arrived in Sacramento.
When we reached the capitol we learned that the hearing had
been moved to the Senate Chamber. At this moment Mr. Braly, of
Los Angeles, a powerful friend to our cause, came to us to offer his
services. Mrs. Charles Farwell Edson, also of Southern California,
in whose hands had been placed the framing of the entire program
of the suffrage side of the evening's debate, sent word that the Col-
lege League could have five minutes for its appeal to the committee.
Our group decided that the time be divided between Miss Moore
and me; so we again worked over our material.
When the hour for the hearing came, the gallery, aisles and
lobby of the Senate Chamber were filled with men and women,
standing to hear the California women represent the two sides of
the question. Pages ran back and forth, and there was the stir and
repressed excitement of an occasion. Mr. John W. Stetson, the chair-
man of the Judiciary Committee, sat on the rostrum. Senator Lee
Gates announced the debate of the evening, and presented Mrs.
Edson, of Los Angeles, who introduced, in turn, one after another
of the group of California women who spoke for suffrage. The
speakers had been chosen to give representation to as many kinds
of California women as there was time for on the program.
Mrs. Elizabeth Gerberding, of San Francisco, opened the debate;
Miss Maude Younger spoke in behalf of the working women; then
came Miss Moore, who spoke from her experience of her work for
children in the State. My plea for suffrage was for the sake of the
women themselves—that they needed the ballot for their own devel-
opment. The next speaker, Mrs. Coffin, representing the California
Suffrage Association, appealed to the legislators to stand by the
suffrage plank in their party platform. Mrs. Shelby Tollhurst, of
Los Angeles, closed the debate with brilliance and conviction. Then

Hearing Before Judiciary
27
Mrs. Caswell, the only speaker on the anti-suffrage side, arose and
with dignity read a paper for fifty minutes, giving nearly as many
reasons why all women, and California women in particular, were
unfit for the ballot. She was warmly applauded, and then the chair-
man adjourned the committee.
On January 26th, the Senate voted on the bill-35 for it to 5
against; on February 2nd it came up for final decision in the As-
sembly.
Assemblyman Rogers of San Francisco—an ex-pugilist-ad-
dressed his opposition in the form of cross-questioning Speaker
Hewitt:
"Does it take 54 votes to pass this measure?"
"It does.”
“Then tell me, are there 54 men in this Assembly weak enough
to be led by women ?”
"I don't know if there are 54," answered the Speaker, "but I
know there is one."
When the roll was called there were 65. The vote stood 65-5,
and the decision as to the right of suffrage for women was before
the men of California.
Cornelia McKinne Stanwood.

REPORT OF DRAMATIC COMMITTEE.
ور
The English play, "How the Vote Was Won," was in rehearsal
while the suffrage amendment was still before the Legislature and
was presented for the first meeting of the campaign in San Fran-
cisco, the afternoon of February 4th, before members and guests of
the College Equal Suffrage League to a “capacity house.”
In order to assure the success of the play the cast was selected
with great care both as to ability and social prominence. It was the
humor of the play that appealed to every one. Amid shouts of
laughter we enlisted for our cause the sympathies of the audience,
and before the afternoon was over enrolled many new members for
the League. Following this initial performance the play was repeated
by the company of amateurs fourteen times in San Francisco and in
towns about the bay, as invited by colleges, clubs and other organ-
izations. Early in our histrionic career two of the cast, Mrs. W. A.
Starr and Mrs. Edward Stanwood, wrote the new version of the
dance-song, "Reuben and Rachel."
We found the ideal program a straight suffrage talk of twenty
minutes, or two fifteen minute talks, then the song and dance—“Reu-
ben and Rachel”—and then the play. Several times audiences had
been beguiled to see the play, not knowing it was suffrage, and the
promoters had not dared to force upon them serious argument, too.
As interest in our performances spread, there was demand
from all over the State for copies of the play. Other groups gave
the play in Los Angeles, Pasadena, Fresno, Colusa, San Jose, Stock-
ton, Parkfield, Nordhoff, Hayward and Martinez.
To open a suffrage campaign at any time we recommend strong-
ly this same play for overcoming prejudice because it is so much
more amusing than any other suffrage play that we know. We read
at least a dozen, some submitted locally, others sent from the East,
and others ordered from England.
Under our auspices "The Converting of Senator Jones," by Miss
Mary Lambert, of Oakland, was given at Yountville, and "Lady
Geraldine's Speech,” by Beatrice Harraden, was given twice in Pied-
mont.
After all “the play's the thing," and if you can arouse interest
and hearty laughter at the same time, so much the better.
Marion Craig Wentworth read "Ariane et Barbe Bleue," by
Maeterlinck, also the third act of "Votes for Women," in San Fran-
cisco under the auspices of the League. Although this admirable
program was beautifully rendered, the audience was not as large as
it should have been. Just as on the only two occasions when ad-
mission was charged for “How the Vote Was Won,” people were
not willing to pay to be converted to suffrage.

Report of Dramatic Committee
29
was
The last venture of the dramatic committee was the Pageant of
Progress in Piedmont Park, Saturday afternoon, September 23rd.
The five scenes might be called: Woman in Paganism, Woman in
Feudalism, Woman in the State, Woman in the New World, Votes
for Women.
There were three hundred participants, men, women and children
from all walks of life—university circles, fraternal orders, professional
and society women, high school students, playground children-dif-
ferent localities, Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, providing different
scenes. The chairman of each scene a good suffragist, but
hardly any of the other participants had ever before been associated
in any way with the suffrage movement.
As the object of the pageant was to arouse interest rather than
to make money, the committee decided in order to draw a crowd that
it would be better to charge an admission only sufficient to cover
the expenses, which in the end amounted to $340, chiefly for cos-
tumes, music and printing.
The many performances of the play "How the Vote Was Won"
were financed on the same principle. In order to present our sugar-
coated pill before as large audiences as possible, the cast was willing
to go anywhere for expenses, or an average of ten dollars a per-
formance. As it happened, that was all the organizations were will-
ing to pay, or, in some cases, could afford to pay. Our houses were
almost without exception full to overflowing, aggregating, at a
moderate estimate, between ten and twelve thousand persons.
Ethel Moore, Chairman.

REPORT ON PANKHURST MEETING.
At a League meeting on the 4th of March we were told that
Miss Sylvia Pankhurst was in Los Angeles; that she, like her mother
and sister, was a good and persuasive speaker and would come to us
for $300 a night. We saw that a vivid narrative of the militant suf-
frage movement in England would make a good foil to our own
bloodless campaign in California, and would turn popular attention
sharply to the subject of "Votes for Women.”
Another group of fellow-workers for political equality agreed to
take charge of a San Francisco meeting for Miss Pankhurst, and sent
a delegate to us asking that we join with them to make a “big suc-
cess of one meeting in town”; but our directors felt that some stri-
king piece of propaganda was needed to open the campaign in Oak-
land, Berkeley and Alameda, so they decided to sign with Miss
Pankhurst's manager for the evening of March 11th, for Oakland.
When arrangements were made by wire with Miss Pankhurst's
manager, less than six highly-saturated days remained in which to
make plans, for it was March and the rain fell. Our committee
counted a scant score and we were only known to each other as
people—not as workers, which is quite another thing. It seemed a
colossal undertaking to the handful of us who made ourselves respon-
sible for the lecture, with its five hundred dollars of inevitable ex-
pense. But it was well that our work began under disadvantages for
it was a trumpet-call, and whatever of ingenuity or hardihood was in
us was swept right into action.
We found that every theatre or hall of any size in Oakland had
already been engaged for Saturday evening, March 11th, but finally,
after prolonged efforts, a new theatre was especially opened, with the
paint still wet upon it, to receive the English suffragist.
The rest of that hurry-call for Sylvia Pankhurst was an effort
to get the lecture before the people, and in that five days of down
pour what a skirmish it was! Billboard posters are unquestionably
a good method of quick advertising, so a hopeful committee went to
the sign-painter.
"It'll take four days to get your bills out,” he explained, “and
in this weather a bill won't stick on a board anyhow—they'll peel
right off.”
Street-car signs and electric street signs are effective.
know what they cost? We learned. Newspaper advertising reaches
more people than any other sort. A good amusement display in
the dailies would cost as much as several delightful evenings with
the English suffragette.
Absolutely the only thing left was dodgers, dodgers by the ten
Do you

Report on Pankhurst Meeting
31
thousands, and the incredibly difficult and disagreeable task of dis-
tributing them.
And so, as the only possible way to reach the public in time, a
small group of college women gathered up the huge piles of yellow
leaflets, “piles," as one of them said, "too big to think of disposing
of except by burning,” and started forth to distribute them on the
streets of Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda. Sometimes on foot, some-
times in automobiles, always in the rain, they worked for hours,
worked until they were stopped by the awful news that they were
violating a city ordinance by giving out handbills on the street. After
that the distributing was done by the yet slower process of going
from shop to shop and leaving them only where they were welcome.
In this way hundreds more were disposed of.
One member of the league sent her maid to the small town
where the girl had lived, with a great bundle of the handbills, while
she stayed at home and cooked dinner in her place, and the maid
distributed announcements among her friends; another householder
made out lists of every tradesman she owed anything to, or ever
dealt with, and after ordering and paying, asked that dodgers, which
she supplied, should be wrapped with the tradesmen's parcels for the
next two days. To the children of the family and their nurses she
gave more of the handbills to distribute from door to door.
Window-card announcements had to be placed in the three
towns. One white-haired member of the League, who from early
womanhood had looked forward with bright eyes to this day of
happy consummation, was allowed to place cards of announcement at
the very gates of the State University. “It made me remember,” she
said, “the way I was treated twenty years ago when I was trying
to get signatures for a petition for equal suffrage to be brought be-
fore the New York Legislature. It made me know that the world
does move."
As a result of it all, in doubtful weather, more than a thousand
people paid for their seats and crowded to the Pankhurst lecture.
This was our first large College Equal Suffrage League meeting,
and more difficult, perhaps, than any other because purchasers had
to be found for more than a thousand tickets. All expenses of ad-
vertising, theatre hire and the lecturer's fee were covered by the sale
of tickets. It was a good omen for the future.

REPORT ON CENTRAL HEADQUARTERS.
The very first word on the subject of headquarters is an earnest
plea for extravagance. Yes, be extravagant. Discount your future.
That is if you are a live suffrage organization with plenty of young,
vigorous blood—and of course you are; and if your campaign is a
vital issue in the community-which of course it will be, for you will
make it so.
When the College Equal Suffrage League sent out a committee
to select and furnish headquarters, the committee looked askance at
all the commodious, sunny rooms and offices and hurried by with
the feeling that we must rent the very cheapest quarters that "would
do.” And of course our idea of what would do was based on our
resources at the moment, and on our slumberous membership of two
hundred.
We finally selected two small, back rooms with a guilty feeling
that we should have been content with one, although the money
for the six months, until the end of the campaign, had been promptly
subscribed—most of it at the rate of five dollars a month from a few
members of the League. We had in hand $45.00 for the rental of two
rooms; we estimated that the telephone would cost $5.00 a month
(the item of our telephone amounted to from $20.00 to $40.00 per
month).
Had we to do it over again, with the knowledge that our mem-
bership would increase 800%, we should probably have rented three
rooms—sunny rooms, some of them-on a main street, where our
windows would have been an effective advertising feature.
With such an arrangement, one of the rooms could have been
used for the almost incessant conferences of officers and committees.
The telephone, which is a great interrupter, could have been en-
closed in a booth. Another room should have been set aside for the
executive secretary, and there the thousands of pieces of literature
could be received, stacked and sold, or distributed without cost; and
buttons, pennants, posters and postals could be sold and accurate
account kept of these transactions.
In this second room there should also be a long, very long table
for the selection and folding of literature to be mailed to voters,
school teachers and clubs of various sorts. This work was accom-
plished by us through the volunteer services of devoted members,
who were crowded together in a small room, working at a table piled
with miscellaneous matter; there was the din of a score of eager
voices, a typewriter and a telephone creating a small but effective
pandemonium. It is true, a crowded chaos like this creates a certain
zest, and though you follow with difficulty the consecutive narrative
of the "envelope stuffer” on your right, and the earnest diatribe

Report on Central Headquarters
33
directed at the then-reigning sex, from the lightning folder of dodgers
on your left, nevertheless you do respond with a thrill to the impact
of a score of conversational fragments on your eardrum; and the
composite impression produced upon you makes you feel, “We are
really doing a splendid lot of work, and we're bound to win.”
The third room could be effectively used by the volunteer host-
esses of the day, or the clerk, if you have one. The typewriter and
her machine should be installed here. Here, also, in a booth, should
be the first telephone connection, the later connection being in the
officers' room. Every plan of headquarter arrangement should, of
course, be directed to the saving of the time of the president and of
the more essential committee chairmen.
I spoke of volunteer hostesses. The idea is a good one, when it
works. We selected for this service from our membership twelve
women, conscientious and gracious, who promised to give a certain
morning or afternoon of each week to headquarters, to receive the
increasing stream of inquiring visitors. The presence of these
women-dedicated to being pleasant-not only took the strain of in-
terruption from clerks and formal headquarter officials, who had
actual tasks to accomplish under pressure of time, but by their
serenity gave to the visitor that sense of welcome that a preoccupied
officer could scarcely give. The hostess plan broke down at times
,
through pressure of other demands and through the defect, we, no
doubt, lost recruits that would have been of great value.
Headquarter visitors are of every sort. There is the ambitious,
male stranger who comes day after day to fold literature and gradu-
ally becomes importunate as to his qualifications as a public speaker,
"for the cause.” He dreams, no doubt, that “to get in on the ground
floor” with these prospective citizens, would be to create a law
practice, and to pave the way for future political honors.
There is the pretty High School student who gushingly asks for
a button. “I saw a girl with one,” she says, “and I thought it was a
fraternity pin. It is so cute. Only five cents ? Ain't they sweet?
She told me I could get them in this building and I went all over it,
an' then I asked the elevator boy, and he said to come here. I think
they're awful cute. Oh no, I don't want to join. I just want a pin.
Then there are scores of women—every type represented—who
come in to have their long smothered desire for "equality before the
law” galvanized into action and directed toward its goal, the ballot.
To take care of these women, to see that the round and square
pegs are slipped each into her fitting hole, requires, in the manager of
headquarters, not only executive ability, but a capacity for patient
discrimination.
Londa Stebbins Fletcher, Chairman.
"

SUPPLYING SPEAKERS.
One of the headquarters' demands that with us grew until it out-
grew all bounds, came in the demand for speakers. As our traveling
organizers stimulated interest in hearing inore discussion of the pend-
ing legislation, and each day formed new suffrage clubs, the tele-
phone thrilled from morning until night with messages that urged,
requested or demanded speakers for the country towns and remote
county seats.
In the thick of an active campaign it seems intolerable to think
of sparing one good worker for any single task, but this one really
requires all the time and attention of a clear-headed, tactful woman.
To keep the dates and routes of twenty speakers straight, week after
week, to sort out speakers according to the tastes and needs of
various localities, to substitute, apologize and make peace, to send the
Democrat to the Democrats and to keep the silver-tongued bore con-
tented and innocuous at home, all that requires the genius of a maker
of railroad schedules, added to a good working knowledge of human
nature.
The first thing that such a chairman should do, is to make out
a complete list of all available speakers and the times that they can
serve, afternoons, evenings or week-ends-at home or abroad. Each
name should be entered with a little history of the speaker, political
affiliations, business interests, Union Labor proclivities, Church lean-
ings; it will all help in picking out a man for the country demand.
If a group asks to be sent a particular person every effort should be
made to send them what they want. All communications with these
new-fledged suffrage societies must be ceremoniously polite, nothing
has so few skins as a new-born suffrage club, and a fancied rebuff
from central headquarters may extinguish their "brief candle" beyond
hope of re-lighting. We need these children of our zeal so much
more than they can possibly need us, that their nurture is worth
our best pains.
In addition to jottings kept for her own use, the chairman should
keep in readiness short typewritten biographies and newspaper cuts
of the more prominent speakers, for use in the country papers. This
will be the means of getting good write-ups of approaching meetings,
and as the cuts will be returned by the papers and can be used re-
peatedly, the expense is easily carried. We found that by paying
expressage and postage and small items of that sort we got better
service and more notice than would be possible if a small economy
were practiced.
It is not a bad idea to keep on hand a short outline for con-
ducting country meetings. Suggestions for taking up a collection
quickly, for having speakers introduced by local men, and for having

Supplying Speakers
35
well-known people of a neighborhood on the platform at public meet-
ings. Again and again we found that the people in a small town did
not know how their own townsmen stood on woman suffrage until
one of these platform gatherings revealed them to each other, and
warmed them into a heartier interest.
The importance of this piece of work is all that can reconcile a
clever woman to carrying it through, but there is no place where
good judgment will count more in results.

REPORT ON SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC MEETINGS.
During the last six months of the campaign, the College Equal
Suffrage League held more than fifty public meetings. At the
largest of these the attendance varied from 1,300 to 10,000. Each of
these larger gatherings taxed the capacity of the halls, and in five
instances hundreds of persons were turned away. In addition to the
meetings which topped the thousand mark, there were scores of
somewhat smaller ones held in resident neighborhoods, with programs
especially adapted to local conditions. In almost every case where
halls were hired (with seating capacity from two to five hundred)
the demand for seats could not be fully met. At one of these neigh-
borhood meetings, however, only forty or fifty people came, then it
was that the resourceful chairman of the evening adjourned to a soap-
box on the curb, the small but friendly audience following. Here
several hundred people soon collected and what had threatened to be
a failure blossomed into an impressive success.
The first of our large meetings, in San Francisco, was held at
the Savoy Theatre, which had been given to us for the purpose, by
the John Cort management. Dr. Charles F. Aked had just come to
San Francisco, and the international reputation of the brilliant
preacher had set San Francisco agog to hear him. By telegraphic
appointment the enterprising Board of the College League gained Dr.
Aked's promise to speak at this meeting. The Press Chairman for
San Francisco understood the press value of this first secular appear-
ance of Dr. Aked in California and used it to such effect that two
hours before program-time men and women began to gather at the
playhouse.
We realized that Dr. Aked would call out a conservative and
well-to-do element, whose financial support we needed. Boxes were
reserved for prominent people of both pro and anti factions. A box
for the press, as became our invariable custom, assured the reporters
a good hearing.
With the fire ordinance very nearly violated by the immense
audience, which flowed over aisles and stairways, and with hundreds
of disappointed people turned away from the doors, the College
League's first meeting gave those who attended it confidence in the
League's management, while Dr. Aked's stirring address stimulated
them to know more of what he spoke. The full press notices which
this success won did much to advertise the subject of equal suffrage.
It had been determined, after careful discussion, that to pass
baskets through the audience might offend, so attention was called
from the platform, to the fact that ushers would be found at all
exits with baskets for contributions. But the small sum thus gath-
ered from the beautifully gowned women and well-dressed men

Report on San Francisco Public Meetings
37
crowding out, absorbed in eager discussion and apparently uncon-
scious of the wistful, but timid, holders of coin-boxes, was so dis-
appointing that shyness in the matter of passing the contribution box
was banished. From that time collections were taken at all but two
meetings, by means of baskets passed through the audience, and
ushers also stationed themselves at exits, with their baskets held
invitingly. The collection could be taken in five minutes, as the
work was divided into many sections within which two ushers, from
opposite sides, passed to each other their baskets, down alternating
rows.
Contributions were asked for after a stirring address. During
the taking of the collection no diversion was offered, the attention of
the audience was left undivided for the financial business in hand.
During the rest of the campaign, collections, taken at public meetings
in San Francisco and elsewhere in the State, amounted to $1231.83,
given chiefly in small silver coins.
At this first meeting, as at all later ones, there was a large corps
of member-ushers, wearing yellow satin badges marked “Usher,” so
stationed as to cover all work thoroughly, that the audience might be
quickly and comfortably seated. For afternoon gatherings the ushers
wore tailored, or semi-tailored, costumes, and for evening, full after-
noon dress. They were always an effective group, and a convincing
argument against the claim that the suffragist is not essentially
feminine.
In addition to holding in reserve the boxes for especially invited
persons, a section, of two or three orchestra rows, was always roped
off for late-comers, with especial claim to attention, in which the
ushers could seat old people, friends of speakers.
The steady success of the League's public meetings, from this
time forward, was largely due to a careful selection of speakers espe-
cially suited to the audiences before which they were to speak, also
to extensive advertisement of meetings, agreeable conditions of venti-
lation and lighting in halls, and efficient ushering. Our friends went
from these meetings with fresh spirit for combat and fresh ammuni-
tion, and our opponents with bitterness sweetened by the welcome
they had received. The large audiences forced us into the news
columns of the papers, whatever their policy, and brought, even to
home-stayers, summaries of brilliant pro-suffrage argument.
The second large meeting was held at the Central Theatre when
the play, “How the Vote Was Won,” managed by Miss Ethel Moore,
was given. Hon. Thomas E. Hayden was the speaker. With the
exception of this clever play, in itself an admirable suffrage argu-
ment, we decided that we would give no mere entertainment at our
public meetings; every moment was needed to inform and convert.
This Central Theatre meeting was advertised not only through press
notices, but window cards were distributed through the city, printed
on yellow cardboard, and setting forth in bold letters the program,

38
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
time and place. The meeting was meant for beginners in suffrage,
and called out the audience for which it was planned.
The next meeting was one of the most important of the series,
in view of the large Roman Catholic vote of San Francisco. The
Rev. Joseph M. Gleason, pastor of the Church of St. Thomas
Aquinas, Palo Alto, California, a young priest with a scholarly and
a military record, was the speaker whose name was used to draw.
About two hundred window cards were put out in the parts of town
where the Catholic voters most lived. Courageous volunteers distrib-
uted small dodgers announcing Father Gleason's promised talk at the
doors of every Roman Catholic church in the city, standing from five
in the morning until eleven o'clock mass. The result was a packed
house, Father Gleason being well known and his history making
good press copy. Nearly 1500 people were in attendance. Boxes on
this occasion were reserved for prominent supporters of the Roman
Catholic Church, including men and women presidents of church
societies, priests and nuns. Father Gleason's talk was afterward
printed in part and used as campaign material, with excellent results.
A meeting to raise funds was planned to be held June 9th, in
Scottish Rite Hall, a new and beautiful auditorium seating about
1700 people. The speakers selected were Dr. Charles F. Aked, Mrs.
W. W. Douglas, Hon. William C. Ralston, U. S. Sub-treasurer, and
Albert H. Elliot, a prominent attorney, former councilman in Oak-
land, and one of the makers of that city's new charter. Mrs. Alex-
ander Morrison, National President of the Collegiate Alumnae, was
chosen as chairman, and Miss Cornelia McKinne, now Mrs. Stan-
wood, asked for the collection. The gathering being planned to get
moneyed patrons, a large number of vice-presidents, men prominent
in professional and business life, were chosen. With this array of
names to back us, invitations were printed and sent to a blue-book
list, the names of vice-presidents appearing on the back of each card.
The front section of seats was reserved for these especially invited
guests, whose cards were marked, “Present to Usher.” It was ex-
plained to the incoming crowd that “This section is reserved for the
friends of the vice-presidents,” and no one murmured. Window cards
were used to announce this meeting, and the two thousand that
crushed into the place, and the several hundred turned away, showed
that the program was rightly chosen, while the hundreds of dollars
which were poured into the baskets, in cash and in pledge cards,
proved that we had reached those for whom we had planned. The
expense of issuing invitations was justified. The value of our list of
vice-presidents in attracting their friends to this meeting was not
overestimated. The timorous gained courage from finding men that
they esteemed, frankly avowing allegiance to Woman Suffrage.
At all meetings, large or small, pledge cards and membership
cards were left on the seats, or passed through the audience just be-

Report on San Francisco Public Meetings
39
fore the opening of the meeting. These were returned when the col-
lection baskets came by, or as the subscriber left the auditorium.
Suffrage leaflets were also given to every man and woman, as the
audience left the theater. This was the cheapest and not least effec-
tive way that we circularized, since attendance upon a suffrage meet-
ing gave slight evidence of awakened interest and the leaflets were
generally taken with interest and not tossed aside near the hall.
Small meetings, large in attendance, but limited by hall capacity,
were held for several months in residence sections of the city. These
were advertised by the big papers and by the little journals of the
neighborhood, as well as by window cards placed in the immediate
neighborhood, and frequently by dodgers distributed at the doorways
of several hundred homes.
We were told that we would find the Italian quarter of town
hostile to our meetings. As preliminary to our invasion of that sec-
tion we had several small home meetings, then the Rev. E. M. Walz
lent the local Congregational church for two meetings; by that time
we were ready to hire the Italian Theater, with a seating capacity of
1500. We used every available means of advertising the affair, by
wagon transparencies sent through the district, by window cards in
the local shops, and by dodgers in Italian. Automobile speakers,
going through the neighborhood a day or so before, called the atten-
tion of hundreds to the opportunity to hear the subject discussed by
distinguished men and women. Acting on the advice of those familiar
with the neighborhood, we decided to take no collection, as we felt
that this was an audience to be handled with circumspection. In
building up this meeting incalculable service was done by a corps of
prominent Italian ladies, many of them members of the Vittoria
Colonna Club, in creating interest in the meeting and in suggesting
how best to appeal to the Latin mind. Mindful of the people's love
of music, the usual plan of “no mere entertainment” was not followed.
During the evening a vocalist gave several operatic selections that
the audience received warmly.
The meeting was called to order by a prominent Italian banking
attorney, Emilio Lastredo, and he gave a short suffrage. talk in
Italian. He was followed by Ettore Patrizi, editor of L’Italia, the
quarter's daily paper, who made an impassioned plea for our cause,
speaking in his native tongue. Miss Margaret Haley, the “Chicago
school teachers' Joan of Arc," Albert H. Elliot and J. Stitt Wilson,
Berkeley's Socialist mayor, who always drew a crowd, completed the
program. The theater was crowded to the doors, there being present,
we were assured by the police and the quarter residents, "the largest
gathering that had ever attended a political meeting in the Latin
quarter."
A well-advertised meeting for the French voters was less well-
attended and we began to see that with foreigners whose dwellings
وو

40
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
were not closely massed, as with the Italians, the more economical
method was to send speakers to their own gatherings, wherever
opportunity could be made, rather than try to work up foreign
audiences just to hear suffrage. It is, of course, much better to send
speakers who understand the language to these gatherings, even
when most of the foreigners can speak some English. Objections
from the floor and galleries can be more effectively met.
All through the month of September small meetings multiplied
in the Sunset district, in the Mission, at the Nurses' Settlement,
wherever a small hall or a new group could be gathered. Two or
three meetings were reached in the same evening by groups of
speakers who exchanged places by crossing the city. Far out in the
Mission, in the Union Street Valley, in the Harbor View District, in
the Richmond District. To these remoter parts of the city we sent
our best speakers, a small hall audience of five hundred would in-
crease beyond the bounds of the hall. At the Richmond meeting, for
instance, R. C. Van Fleet gathered a street audience of about four
thousand listeners, Albert H. Elliot gathered a second great audience
in the Italian Theater, in the Italian quarter, at which Mme. Adelina
Dosenna, of La Scala, Milan, sang.
So great was the growing interest in the League's public meet-
ings that the directors felt that a final, mass meeting should be held
in Dreamland Rink, the largest auditorium in the city. The plan al-
most terrified the majority of our workers, but those who had
watched our audiences build up from a few hundred to several thou-
sand, felt we must risk it. We found that seats could be so arranged
as to give the effect of a great mob with no more than 2500 present.
With this for comfort, it was decided to make the venture.
agreed that the mass meeting should be representative of every sort
of suffrage organization. All organizations were invited to coöperate,
and they being assured that the College League would bear all expense,
responded favorably. The League did the preliminary work, such
as planning the program, getting the speakers, hiring the hall and
advertising. The other organizations assented to the plans as they
were submitted.
In order that the feeling of full coöperation might be preserved,
the name of the College League was not used in any of the advertise-
ments and the only College League officer who took a prominent
official part on the stage was Mrs. Orlow Black, who asked for the
collection, with the sanction of the coöperators. Mrs. Elizabeth Lowe
Watson, the President of the pioneer suffrage association, the Cali-
fornia Suffrage Association, presided with great dignity and intro-
duced the chairman of the evening.
On the platform were the vice-presidents of all the suffrage asso-
ciations of the city, and ushers were also sent from them. Although
the meeting was as completely a College League enterprise as any
It was

Report on San Francisco Public Meetings
41
we had undertaken-and our most ambitious enterprise—no one
would have guessed it from the arrangements. The meeting cost
more than any other that we held, the items amounting to a few cents
less than three hundred dollars.
On the program were Catherine Waugh McCullough, vice-presi-
dent of the American Woman's Suffrage Association, John I. Nolan,
the Union Labor leader, Rabbi Martin Meyer, Miss Helen Todd,
Factory Inspector for Illinois; Rev. Charles F. Aked, Miss Gail
Laughlin of Colorado, and J. Stitt Wilson, the most prominent
Socialist of the State.
Seven thousand notices of the meeting were mailed by the
League to voters in the central section of the city, and ten thousand
more were given out at doorways and at automobile street meetings.
Window cards were scattered through the town, and three wagon
transparencies, their horses' harnesses a-jingle with bells, were sent
through the city on October 4th and 5th. For three hours, on the
afternoon of October 5th, Von Der Meyden's band, in a tallyho
decked with banners, announced the mass meeting, by playing up and
down the shopping streets, and out in the Mission.
By the afternoon of the day of the mass meeting, the chairman
of automobile street speaking had planned for motors to be in front
of the hall, as success was in the air. All idea of making only an
appearance of a great crowd was abandoned, and the manager of
Dreamland Rink, Charles Goldberg, an enthusiastic suffragist, was
getting out on the floor every available seat he had or could borrow.
At seven the band began to play in front of the hall, and before eight
the police forced us to close the doors, saying we had inside the largest
crowd in the history of the rink, estimating it at a round 6000.
When the meeting opened, 4000 persons, in an overflow crowd,
blocked Steiner street for a square in front of the hall. To these
eager ones we sent out, in turn, every speaker who addressed the
throng within, Mrs. Helen Hoy Greeley having put them in a mood
to hear more by her lively arguments.
Within the hall, the chairman held the speakers to the time
which the public meetings committee had allotted to each one, and
each speaker pounded into the given time fire, and force and elo-
quence that brought forth shouts of approval. The audience was not,
by any means, made up of suffragists only, and the packed throng
and passionately enthusiastic applause startled many into their first
suspicion of what was to happen on October 10th.
The open-minded attitude of our auditors made us wish for more
chances to reach them, in these few, last days, and when on Sunday
night, October 8th, it was suggested that we ought to hold a business
men's noon meeting in a down-town hall, the fact that it would have
to take place within sixteen hours, seemed no obstacle to its being
a success.

42
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
When we approached the manager of the Cort Theater he re-
duced the rent for us to $115.00, but at the same time advised, "You
are taking an awful risk to try to get an audience of any size in so
short a time. No professional man would attempt it. You would
seem to be going to lose on your investment."
We laughed and went to work. The newspapers gave us front-
page notices on Monday of a “Business Men's Equal Suffrage Meet-
ing.” By six o'clock Monday morning, dodgers, announcing the
speakers, were being printed; by eight they were being distributed,
six thousand of them, to business men as they went into office build-
ings, while with permission of the store managers, boys went through
the shops giving them out to clerks; by eight-thirty two wagons with
transparencies were jingling up and down through the wholesale and
retail sections of the city announcing the meeting, "From 12 to 1:30";
at 11:30 a crowd was in front of the theater and at 11:45 we were
obliged to begin our meeting. Albert H. Elliot, who presided, con-
fided to the chairman of public meetings that this hastily planned
meeting had given him his first fright of the campaign, that he had
lost law practice hanging out of his window to see if any one would
attend.
Dr. Aked, who had been steadily enthusiastic, had felt so worn
after his Sunday work that he tried to decline to speak, but then
rallying with his uncurbable ardor had cried over the 'phone, "O, I'll
have to come! I may as well be killed for a sheep as a lamb !"
For two hours and a half our speakers held forth, the audience
changing like a continuous performance audience, each half or three-
quarters of an hour. Albert H. Elliot, R. C. Van Fleet, A. L. Sapiro,
Helen Todd, F. G. Athearn, of the Southern Pacific; Dr. Aked and
Stitt Wilson awoke responses from this audience, made up practically
of business men, which thrilled those who waited the next day's
verdict. All through the crowd as men left, because of business
necessity, they called back, “I won't vote against you, anyway. I'll
leave a blank.” This eleventh-hour concession from these men won
our gratitude for their negative help. The anti-suffrage vote in San
Francisco was distinctly lowered by this meeting, at which we
reached hundreds of men who had been adverse to us. No collection
was asked, our work was almost done. Nothing was to disturb the
spell of the ever-increasing weight of argument that the speakers
were throwing into the scale on this our last and our great chance to
plead with the voters before election,
No, not our last chance, for while the meeting was at its height
Mrs. Black stepped forward to announce that at a great open-air
meeting at Union Square that evening Madam Lillian Nordica would
lift her voice to plead through her music for "Votes for Women."
A few moments later our transparency men were rushing their
horses to the stable to change their signs and go out to publish the
Nordica meeting.
Constance Lawrence Dean, Chairman.

REPORT OF THE LITERATURE COMMITTEE.
Approximately 900,000 leaflets have been printed at a cost of about
$800.00. Postage for sending this literature to teachers and clubs was
$175.00. The following is a list of the leaflets printed :
“Why the Teacher Should Be a Suffragist,” by Fannie W. Mc-
Lean. Single leaflet, two pages.
"What Men Say About the Vote and What Women Say About
the Vote.” Single leaflet, two pages.
"Measuring Up Results in Colorado," by Judge Benjamin Lind-
sey and George Creel. Single leaflet, two pages.
Extracts from "Objections Answered," by Alice Stone Blackwell.
Double leaflet, four pages.
"Jane Addams Wants to Vote," extracts from article by Jane
Addams, in The Ladies' Home Journal. Single leaflet, two pages.
Announcement of Officers of the College Equal Suffrage League
of Northern California, with Statement of the Aim of the League and
Arguments for Equal Suffrage. Double leaflet, four pages.
"Good Citizenship, a True Democracy." Single leaflet, two pages.
Same in French, German, Italian and Portuguese.
“Woman in the Home." Single leaflet, two pages.
Same in German. Single leaflet, two pages.
"To the Farmers and Fruit Growers,” by Milicent Shinn. Single
leaflet, two pages.
"Do you Know?” by Carrie Chapman Catt. Single leaflet, two
pages.
“Some Reasons Why We Believe in Woman Suffrage.” Single
leaflet, two pages.
"For Election Day. A Letter of Advice." Double leaflet, four
pages.
“Vote for the 4th Amendment," two pages.
"Pourquoi les Femmes Doivent Voter." Double leaflet, four pages.
It is but fair to state that the above report must be given in round
numbers because the various orders for printing, not having been issued
by the same committee throughout the campaign, must, in regard to
a few orders, be roughly estimated. Among these uncertain quantities
are some “rush orders” sent in during the two weeks preceding the
election straight from headquarters, instead of through the commit-
tee, and some other literature that was brought, from time to time,
from other Suffrage organizations. The Treasurer's Report shows
a total of $1057.61 spent for literature printed and bought.
This report will serve to show very nearly the amount and char-
acter of the suffrage literature distributed to the people of the State.
One item—that for postage—shows the expense of mailing these

44
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
leaflets only until the middle of June, the time when the Literature
Committee's work in sending circulars to the teachers of the State was
finished. After this date the work of distribution was done, in the
main, by other committees, in country and city circularizing clubs, and
by hand at public meetings.
The first chairman of the College Equal Suffrage League's Liter-
ature Committee, Miss Kate Ames, visited various printing houses
in San Francisco and succeeded in making most excellent terms, namely,
a rate of $109.00 for 160,000 single leaflets (printed on both sides),
or an equivalent number of double leaflets, when printed in lots of
eight. There is very great economy in printing in large quantities,
but the plan presents difficulties at the close of a campaign, since
urgently needed material is often held back from the printer's to fill
out the eight lots. At such a time, the economy should not be con-
sidered and single lots should be printed, when the demand comes.
To avoid delay in waiting to make up the eight lots called for by
the printer's contract, several clubs combined in supplying the material
for eight sets of leaflets, but this device has disadvantages. After one
trial we found it inadvisable to join with other clubs in printing these
large orders, as it gave rise to confusion to the printer and consequent
delays.
A very important ruling was made by the board of directors of
the League early in the work. It was decided that no literature should
be printed that had not first been submitted to that board or to the
executive committee. The necessity for such a ruling is obvious. The
organization must be responsible for all publications sent out under its
name and the greatest care should be exercised in the selection of
suitable material. When we remember that the literature reaches people
of widely differing interests, it is evident that discrimination must be
used in eliminating any material that might alienate any large groups
of voters. The Committee on Literature gladly submitted all manu-
script to the directors before publication, that they might share this
serious responsibility.
The first work of the Literature Committee was educational. A
leaflet called, “Why the Teacher Should be a Suffragist,” by Fannie
W. McLean, was sent as the principal leaflet to teachers throughout
the entire State. Not only to teachers but, also, to members of School
Boards, remembering even the janitor, since he possessed the coveted
vote. The California members of the National Educational Associa-
tion were also circularized.
We found local literature far more effective when it bore the name
of a person well known throughout the State in his or her special line,
not only because of its appeal to local pride, but because such a writer
really understands the interests of his own community better than a
writer from another State.
A useful leaflet of this sort, addressed to the “Farmers and Fruit

Report of the Literature Committee
45
Growers,” was prepared by Milicent Shinn, for distribution in country
districts.
Serious literature, given over to logical arguments for equal suf-
frage, was used to advantage in the early part of the campaign, when
we were most interested in creating a public opinion favorable to equal
suffrage and when we were endeavoring to show that the movement
was the logical outcome of the educational enfranchisement of women.
Later in the campaign when we were working among the mass of more
or less unintelligent voters, we found that single leaflets printed in
large type, and presenting a few arguments in a striking manner, were
more successful.
Before printing and distributing leaflets we carefully studied the
character of the group which this literature would reach. Since Cali-
fornia has a large foreign population, we had leaflets printed in French,
German, Italian and Portuguese. There was no Spanish literature issued
by this committee, because the Spanish voters are found largely in the
southern part of the State and their needs were met by publications
in their language, printed by active organizations in Los Angeles.
A very valuable leaflet was “Extracts from the Speech of Father
Gleason,” which was a strong plea to the Catholic voter. We also
found that “Woman in the Home,” translated into German, was effect-
ive in overcoming the prejudices of the German-American.
Only one leaflet was published by us in reply to the literature that
was distributed by the anti-suffragists. This was a two-page leaflet
called "Vote for the 4th Amendment,” issued during the last week of
the campaign. Such replies were considered unnecessary as most of
the material used by our opponents furnished, in itself, arguments for
Kate Brousseau, Chairman.
our cause.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON DESIGN.
One of the first needs that comes with the establishment of head-
quarters is for letter-heads, post-cards, posters and stickers that shall
carry a suggestive suffrage design. English “Votes for Women” cards
and those in use in the Eastern States are often not suited, by their
militancy, to the spirit of a Western campaign. It is well to make a
collection of all such material, however, as they are at least negatively,
and in some cases, positively, helpful in making new cards.
Our California Committee on Design came to believe that a mul-
tiplicity of designs was an error of waste, not only because of the
extra cost of reproducing new drawings and making new cuts, but
because the scattering of attention was a mistake. The psychology of
advertising teaches us to repeat, with slight variations, a familiar
design until the public eye is caught by the manifold repetitions of
the same arresting idea.
In selecting even these simple little symbols one must get back
to the spirit of the people toward a campaign. In California the gen-
eral attitude of the public toward woman suffrage was not inimical, it
was amused, indifferent, and incredulous. This being the case it
seemed to us especially unwise for us to institute a quarrelsome cam-
paign. It seemed best for us to put forth positive arguments of a
hopeful, constructive sort rather than arguments that ended in criti-
cism or irony. We saw that here our chief need was to place the
subject before the people, again and again, in a way that must hold
their attention and convince the voters that the women of California
were seriously, if good-temperedly, determined to have a just share in
the affairs of the State. We selected as a design for our engraved
notepaper a small medallion showing a sun of gold-color rising over
the sea, beneath it the words in violet engraved on a band of gold-
color, “The New Day"; above, on the same band, the words "Votes
for Women.” Although the enameling in two colors made this
expensive to reproduce we sold much of this paper with matching
envelopes at a slight profit, and also many correspondence cards, en-
graved in the same way. I believe we should have had the design
reproduced, by a cheap printing process, to use on all of our office sta-
tionery to gain the very real advantage of repetition. To be as clever
an advertiser as the automobile man one must link old and new
ventures together, to gain an accumulative effect of persistency and
purpose.
All advertising requires money.
We know that it was much
easier to raise a sum of money for a clearly specified object than for
the general “cause.” In May one of the members of this committee
explained to the Board of Directors the need for the gift of a prize

Report of Committee on Design
47
for a poster to be used for advertising our various enterprises. Im-
mediately fifty dollars was offered for this prize and the committee
set to work to draft a set of terms for the competitors.
As in all public competitions it was important to give all the
information necessary for the contestants in the original terms of con-
test, to avoid a maze of time-consuming correspondence, and to do
equal justice to all competitors. It was necessary to go into the
methods of color reproduction, with the principal firms who do that
work, to find how many colors it would be practicable to use, the size
of paper for economical cutting and other technical points, as these
details must condition the terms of a contest.
The object of a poster contest, as well as of the finished poster,
is advertisement, all the way through. To make newspaper matter of
the contest is not difficult. First comes the story of the offering of
the prize and the terms of the contest, a story about the prize-giver
if that is allowed by the donor. In order to gain newspaper space the
element of news must always be present, of course. A short time after
all the papers had printed our first notice, we announced the name of
the well-known artist who “had consented to act as a judge” in award-
ing the prize, then the name of the art-store that had generously
accorded a room in which the judges were to meet to pass on the
competing posters; later came the story of the number of posters
received and an announcement of the date of the prize poster exhibit;
finally the name of the prize winner, her picture and the reproduction
of the successful poster, all of which kept our active work for suffrage
before the attention of a public. too ready to repeat, “the women do
not want the ballot."
As soon as the terms of the contest were decided upon multi-
graphed copies were sent to all the art schools and private studios
whose addresses we could secure. In our contest we were, unfortu-
nately, not able to draw upon the most experienced draftsmen in the
city, as the amount of the prize did not tempt them to compete. One
hundred dollars is said to be about the sum asked by the professional
poster makers, but we got some very good student work and a few
professional designs. One difficulty that we might have prevented, by
foresight, was the lack of vital ideas in many of the designs submitted
to us, a majority of the designs showed a cold symbolism, without
spirit or interest. This, I believe, would have been prevented, in
large measure, had we shown a group of spirited, modern, English
Suffrage posters at our headquarters, not for imitation but to suggest
more original conceptions than the figure of Justice with her scales,
which appeared in more than half of the competing designs.
In selecting a committee on award we included most of the di-
rectors of the League, as well as several artists, that the award might
be made with the idea of propaganda values in mind, as well as mere
artistic excellence, and also to have a group of people who would un-
ور

48
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
derstand and defend a selection that was the best that conditions allowed
the judges to make.
Fearing that the Poster Show might fail of sufficient public interest
to justify the generous permission given us to exhibit in their rooms
by the foremost book-and-art-shop in town, we decided to combine
with the poster display an exhibition of handcraft work, made by
women and men who actively believed in equal suffrage. This was
an opportunity to put before the public, in a way that was unescapable,
the quality and competence of those who asked for this right. About
six thousand dollars' worth of hand-work was collected in a few
days for this loan exhibition, from the shops and studios of the city.
No work was shown that was not good of its sort. Workers in wood,
leather, copper, jewels and precious metals were represented, as well
as art photographers, painters and sculptors. One case of about fifty
autographed books represented what some of the local and Eastern
writers thought about "Votes for Women.''
In spite of all the pressure we could put upon the color engravers
we did not get our thousand completed posters until six weeks after
the prize poster was in their hands, but we got it in time for the chief
use we wished to make of it. That was for the mid-August window-
display that had been arranged for with several hundred of the promi-
nent merchants of the city. Throughout the city shop windows were
decorated with yellow and the poster explained the reason for the
color, with its subdued brilliancy and its motto. The manager of the
largest jeweler's establishment in San Francisco said: “It is fifteen
years since a card of any sort has been shown in our windows, but
we will display this.” After the week of the window display was
over most of the posters that had been used were returned to our head-
quarters and enough were sold of them, at fifty cents each, to more than
pay for the cost of their reproduction; several hundred others were given
away for advertising purposes to be hung in public places, to insist
once more that women did want the vote.
A miniature copy of the poster was made for "stickers,” in three
colors, and about fifteen thousand of these were sold and distributed
through the mail on letters and papers. They, also, more than paid
for the expense of making. It is important, I think, that these adver-
tising devices should pay for themselves, but since their real end is
spreading the message they carry abroad, as generally as possible, they
should be sold as cheaply as is compatible with that end. The stickers
were sold for one cent each.
We also had post-cards, in black and white, copied from the poster
in two qualities. About fifteen thousand were sold in the one-cent
sort, and about six hundred in the more expensive (two-for-five-cent)
variety.
Before the poster was available we had to meet an immediate need
for office paper, blotters, and post-cards; these could not wait upon
وو

Report of Committee on Design
49
the slow processes of color reproduction. This brought us to the
question of choosing our colors. Some of the directors of the League
shrank from the violent and pestilential associations called up by the
color yellow. “And yet," it was argued by others, "yellow is the
color that has the history of this movement behind it. Before the end
of an active campaign the active workers must be ready to stand more
distasteful implications than a vague suggestion of smallpox flags and
yellow journalism." In looking back I believe we would have gained
nothing by choosing a new and prettier color or by shrinking behind
the neutrality of white. What England has carried to the doors of
Parliament, and Washington to victory, we decided that the women of
California had the courage to uphold.
In a mild, chamois-skin yellow we got out blotters, stamped with
a very simple design showing five stars named for the five "free States'
and with the words, “California Next” printed below. The same design
we had put on some violently yellow paper (this had to be sold, at cost,
to a very courageous suffragist, as nobody else liked it).
A group of foreign post-cards carrying a direct argument in two
languages and another, implicit, argument were gotten out early in the
campaign. From the wholesale makers of colored post-cards we selected
three sorts of cards: one of a Spanish-California scene, one Italian and
one Chinese. On these we had printed in the native language, and in
translation, a request from the American women of California that the
foreign voter would vote for the bill that would enable us to enjoy
the same advantages of citizenship as that enjoyed by the native-born
Chinese, the Italian or the Spanish voter. The irony that was sug-
gested by the plea of women, Americans by five generations, many of
them, to foreigners, for an equal share in the control of an American
State, had its own effect. All of these cards were bought up as
curiosities by suffragists, and few, I fancy, reached the foreigners to
whom they were addressed.
The original duties of a Committee on Design were supposed to
have to do with printed designs, but it branched out and took in adja-
cent fields of enterprise. Decorations for halls and theaters for public
meetings, designs for badges and banners, decorations for temporary
headquarters, part of the work on the Labor Day float—by which the
Woman's Amendment found a place beside the other Labor Amend-
ments in the Labor Day parade and the pleasant task of making the
automobile from which Madame Nordica spoke and sang for woman
suffrage, on Union Square, worthy of her, were among the interesting
pieces of work done by the committee, in its distended capacity.
One of the queerest of the odd jobs that fell to the committee was
to design and interject suffrage "features” into a reluctant vaudeville
show, at the Valencia Theater. A company called “The Australian
Boys” was giving a show and some one suggested that they afforded
one more chance for us to use a public performance to put woman

50
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
suffrage before the general public, because these boys came from a
country which had for years prospered under the reform for which
we worked. A contract was made with the manager of the company
that if we would take seventy-five dollars' worth of tickets to one per-
formance we might put as much suffrage as we could get into their
program for that evening. We decorated the stage with great yellow
banners saying, “Our Mothers Vote, Why Don't Yours?" We inter-
viewed the little sons of the women who vote, to find that, to a boy,
they were proud of their mothers' having an equal share with their
fathers' in affairs. One näif little chap said, “Yes, our mothers vote,
and our fathers too," and they questioned us curiously about our con-
dition of disenfranchisement. All this made good advance stuff,
with plenty of pictures of the boys. We made the stage gay with
flowers and flags, the boys carried saucy little "Votes for Women”
flags in one of their choruses, we inserted suffrage song-and-dance
numbers into the sober British vaudeville. In one scene fourteen of
the boys came on in a chorus each wearing a huge, yellow letter on
his chest; at the end of the song the boys fell into order and the
words, “Votes for Women” suddenly sprang out of the alphabetical
chaos.
When the Australian manager was finishing his ten-minute talk on
how woman suffrage had worked in Australia, scores of yellow balloons,
like big salmon-eggs, floated down from the balconies upon the
audience, bearing suffrage leaflets, as tails to their kites. The Aus-
tralian program was too long, and to get in our acts the suffrage troupe
had to dart on and off the stage, like marauders. There were moments
that seemed to threaten international complications, but, happily, we
all believed in artists, as well as woman's, rights.
In an active campaign every committee finds itself exceeding the
limits of its original activities but I believe no committee is led into
more interesting or droller by-ways than a committee on design.
Louise Herrick Wall, Chairman.

REPORT ON CITY CIRCULARIZING.
Early in the campaign for equal suffrage in California, when
the work seemed so great and the workers so few, the counsel of
the young Progressive Party, which had just learned "how" in the
State, was sought. The immense importance of reaching the indi-
vidual voter was urged upon us.
The distribution of this work, in a house to house campaign,
is ideal, but many factors—the necessity of doing the visiting at
night, when the men of the house were at home; the natural hesi-
tancy of a woman in invading the households of strangers; and,
above all, the vast number of workers required for such individual
campaigning—made the attempt, for us, impossible. The next most
intimate method of appeal to the individual voter was by circular-
ization.
This our committee decided to attempt, but we were hampered
by lack of funds in covering the whole registered vote. After
finding which districts were being covered by other methods, we
selected two of the outlying districts, one of working people and
one of mixed residents. Later, we had the money given us, by the
Susan B. Anthony Club, to circularize a district recommended by
them, also one of extremes and containing many Italian voters.
The initial work consisted of correcting the precinct books of
these districts, to date. This took us to the registrar's office and
made us acquainted with the technique of registration. The precinct
books and envelops-bearing the stamp of the College Equal Suf-
frage League-were then distributed. The envelopes when addressed
were to be sent to one place. This work enabled us to give the
opportunity of active work for equal suffrage to scores of women,
many of whom were contributing in no other way.
When the envelopes were all returned, the "filling bees” began.
The leaflets, two pieces for each envelope, were folded, selection
being made, as far as possible, to prevent sending duplicates to
one house. One general and one special circular was included in
each envelope. We had excellent local Roman Catholic literature,
and were careful to have it reach people to whom it would appeal
particularly.
This work of folding, filling and stamping, took about six after-
noons, and called together eight or ten women each time. They
came at two o'clock, took tea at four, and worked again until six.
They were good propagandists from that day.
These leaflets were mailed on July 26th, just as the public
schools opened, with the idea that the circle of those discussing the
extension of suffrage to women would be increased, and the subject
become of interest before the more vivid campaign began.

52
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
There is no absolute way to ascertain what good is done by
circularizing. But how else, save through the press, can each
voter's eye be reached ?
An indirect good to the worker herself comes out of all work
done. About one hundred women worked on this circularizing who
had, up to that time, done nothing for the campaign, and many of
them continued to be good workers, in other departments, until the
end, as a consequence of interest so awakened.
A complete circularization would, of course, be the logical
method, and when done under well-organized volunteer workers it
costs only one-fifth what a political party pays for the same job.
Circularizing is an individual appeal, takes less time, less money
and fewer workers than house to house precinct work, but, just in
so far as it is less personal than that method, it is less powerful
in winning votes.
We distributed thirty-four thousand pieces of literature, to sev-
enteen thousand voters, at a total cost of $232.80. The Susan B.
Anthony Club gave $61.80 toward this amount.
Adelaide Brown, Chairman.

PUBLICITY REPORT FOR SAN FRANCISCO.
For the final, swift newspaper campaign in San Francisco no
such qualities of devotion or intrepidity were needed as those shown
by Mrs. Frank Deering through the years when, week after week,
she hammered out a peg to hang news upon that the country news-
papers would publish. Any trained newspaper woman could have
conducted this San Francisco wind-up.
We devised a system by which typewritten copy, suitable for
publication, was furnished to each paper three times a week. This
general news of the campaign was written in short, crisp para-
graphs, and we unquestionably got a great deal of extra space in
the papers by sending in copy that could be used as "fillers." In
addition to this a great many “feature stories” were worked up
every week and usually each reporter was given at least one ex-
clusive story accompanied by pictures. Impartiality was rigidly
observed in the manner of giving out these "scoop" stories, by
either a turn-about rule, or on a first come first choice basis. Dur-
ing our short campaign the San Francisco newspapers covered the
suffrage detail regularly and we owe much to the intelligence and
sympathetic attitude of the reporters detailed for this work.
A press report of this sort may be summed up in a few words:
Put someone who knows the business on the job! Otherwise all
the desirable news that gets into the papers will not counteract
what should have been kept out!
Anyone with a trained sense of news value will make news
when copy is short. For example, notes were written to all the
distinguished artists passing through San Francisco asking them to
contribute some pro-suffrage sentiment for newspaper publication.
Gertrude Elliot, E. H. Sothern, and a number of others who could
not endorse it from the platform made a point of telling the
dramatic critics that they earnestly advocated giving women the
right to vote. Such endorsements appearing in the dramatic col-
umn rather than in the suffrage column had a distinct and obvious
value by attracting the attention of readers who might shun the
suffrage news. Mrs. Fisk wrote to us that she had not thoroughly
looked into the subject but believed that it must be just and right
as most of the finest women that she knew believed in it, and at
her invitation the President of the College League and a half
dozen of the members occupied a box at one of the performances
and had a very interesting suffrage talk between acts in Mrs.
Fisk's dressing room. Incidents of this sort make good newspaper
copy that is not grudgingly printed.
Any experienced person appreciates that editors of big news-

54
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
papers are not going to have a hectic flush of enthusiasm over the
fact that Mrs. Smith gave a suffrage tea; the experienced person is
not going to berate the reporter because the revolution in China is
in scare head type on the front page and that suffrage news is lost
in the middle shuffle; but when a suffrage story has a real news
value she is going to make the most of it. Very often there was
multiplicity of material and each committee very humanly consid-
ered its work the most important, but it could be usually figured out
just about how much space we would be likely to get in the papers.
For example, late one afternoon we learned that there had been a
reorganization of the Panama-Pacific Fair board and a shipwreck
up the Coast. It did not require clairvoyant sense to predict that
we would get scant space in the morning papers. We had two
stories to give out: the suffragists had decided to sell postal cards
on the street on a certain day, we were also going to give a number
of meetings in halls in different parts of the city the next night
and they had been inadequately advertised. If the two stories
had been turned in, the post-card story, with attractive photographs,
would have been run, as it had fresher interest than public meet-
ings with pictures of the speakers, so only the story of the meetings
was given out. When news was considered entirely from our
standpoint we strove to furnish interesting pictures and in every
way to make the editors and reporters believe that a breathless,
panting public was eagerly waiting for just that story!
The last night of the six months' suffrage campaign illustrates
the way we had all learned to seize the moment. That morning
at 10 o'clock, Miss Bessie Beattie, a special writer on the Bulletin,
called at my home and said: “Last night, after the theater, I learned
that Madame Nordica is in town and that she is an ardent suf-
fragist.”
We had all been wondering just how we could finish the cam-
paign with a great flourish and furnish good newspaper copy for
the last morning. There was a question about the wisdom of
speaking from automobiles on the last night. We feared that some
undisciplined enthusiast might at the last moment make a statement
that like “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” would turn the tide against
us—and we had about decided not to have any public demonstration.
But the combination of a great singer and suffragist fired the
imagination. In the exhilaration of the last day of the campaign it
did not seem extravagant or fantastic to picture Madame Nordica
making a suffrage speech and singing a patriotic air from an auto-
mobile in Union Square park.
We had to run the cordon surrounding a great singer. We
talked shop first to the press agent and he passed us up to the
manager, who in turn had to be convinced, and it was nearly noon
when Madame Nordica's secretary ushered us into the presence.

Publicity Report for San Francisco
55
Madame Nordica would do anything for the Great Cause, she
explained, with the unmistakable ardor of a genuine suffragist, but
alas! her contract with the managers! Suppose the night should
be cold and she should contract a sore throat? Suppose the night
should be warm and she should take cold afterwards? Then, pouf!
What matter? She would do it! It was a glorious opportunity
to be in on the making of a free State, and the night, and the
temperature, and managers, and contracts, and colds, all went a
glimmering before an overwhelming desire to help in the suffrage
campaign.
We fled on the heels of a glorious, generous promise that
Madame Nordica would speak from an automobile in Union Square
park that night.
There was just half an hour in which to get the news into the
late edition of the three afternoon papers. We cranked up the
"Blue Liner" and we managed to get to all three offices before the
papers went to press!
Ernestine Black.

THE WINDOW DISPLAY.
In proportion to the amount of time and money involved, the
showing of suffrage colors in the shop windows of the city, from
August 21st to 28th, was probably the most striking demonstration
of the campaign.
When the day came, shopwindows, from one end of the city
to the other, blossomed in every known shade of yellow, and to
point the reason for the color, copies of the prize poster, in dull
olives and tan, lightened with yellow and flame, gave the campaign
cry, “Votes for Women."
The first chairman of the committee, for gaining the consent
of shop-managers to dress their windows in woman suffrage colors,
was a member of a family long known in the city. She started the
list with the signatures of some of the most important firms in
San Francisco, and each consent, of course, made the next easier to
win. Although permission was not universally granted, enough
stores fell into line to splash the town from end to end with the
significant color. It was said that a concerted anti-suffrage move-
ment was made to get the merchants to retract their promises and
that pressure of patrons was brought to bear from that quarter.
If this was the case, it is creditable to the good faith of the mer-
chants of San Francisco that so small a percentage of those who
had signed the agreement to dress their windows, failed to keep
their word. Many shops outran our brightest expectations. One
large furniture store gave two great front windows to a beautiful
autumn-color scheme in brown and yellows, and one book shop put
up several dozen copies of the prize poster and filled his window-
shelf with copies of such books as Olive Schreiner's “Woman and
Labor," and Miss Addams' "Newer Ideals of Peace."
The letter of thanks to the merchants, published in all the
newspapers, by the College Equal Suffrage League, spoke part of
the warm appreciation that the League members felt for the cour-
ageous, good faith of the merchants. Through them the city wore
the color, that was soon to be the color of success, through one
whole week of the summer.

PUBLIC LUNCHEONS.
Another and an effective form of public gatherings were our pub-
lic luncheons, which drew together the membership and many faintly
interested allies, and put them all into good-humored relation with
the whole scheme of headquarters' work.
Late in June, when our committees were just well under head-
way, and full of interest in their separate plans, we took the largest
room we could find in an attractive restaurant, one that would seat
about three hundred people at luncheon, and arranged a program
which was intended to attract a very general sort of audience. At
the speakers' table were Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, Miss Geraldine
Bonner, Dr. David Starr Jordan, President of Stanford University,
and the first speaker of the day, Miss Miriam Michelson. She talked
on "The Reproach of Unladylike Behavior," and by her fun and
irony warmed the audience into rippling good humor. This was fol-
lowed by a clever talk on “Outworn Traditions,” by the best of the
younger speakers that the campaign had developed.
The program and the “distinguished guests” had been well ad-
vertised by the obliging press, and drew a great many people who
were not League members, so that several hundred had to be turned
away; being refused, for the first time in their lives, the privilege of
being present at an equal suffrage feast and hearing equal suffrage
reports.
For the practical feature of the day was the presentation of the
active plans of four or five of the more important committees. These
were crisp, little three-minute talks by each chairman on the progress
and purpose of her work: what it was costing, and just how much
more money it would take to complete the project. In addition to
these short sketches, which were lively and interesting, the same
facts were given out, in condensed form, in multigraphed sheets, to
the audience, and later mailed to all members.
The luncheon created a distinct sense, with many people, of the
growing prestige of woman suffrage, and new members signed the
membership cards left at each plate.
A second luncheon of the same general character was carried out
in Berkeley and met the same cordial response from the public. As
a popular way to reach half-hearted suffragists, to raise money for
specific projects, and to give an air of gayety and humor to the cam-
paign, we found it one of our best devices.

COUNTRY CAMPAIGNING.
On the lapel of my coat a little badge, gold letters on a white
ground, saying to all the world that had eyes to see, “Votes for Women”;
in one of my bags a goodly assortment of suffrage literature; in my heart
a bit or trepidation as to the success of my venture, for I was going
campaigning. I was starting out on a trip to arouse the women of cer-
tain counties, marked on my itinerary, to the need for concerted action, if
we were to carry the constitutional amendment granting the right of
suffrage to women.
The plan of organization was suggested by political usage-a central
committee in San Francisco, with a subordinate committee in each
county. The country newspapers had been supplied for five years with
well-selected suffrage arguments and news, but the county suffrage or-
ganizations were lamentably weak. In reality there were but eight
counties sending delegates to the State convention, out of the fifty-eight
comprising the State.
My first stop on the initial trip impressed me greatly. It was a
county seat, a thriving, progressive city of about 30,000 people. I found
a mere handful of suffragists there, but they were enthusiasts. As a
result of their efforts, ten-minute talks before a number of clubs and
organizations were arranged. Later when a call was made to form an
organization, many of the women that had been reached in this way
responded. The club thus formed, led by the few who paved the way in
the beginning, did most effective work, during the following five months,
and carried the county for suffrage in the election.
This success at the start gave me courage to continue the work,
though in no other county were the results so satisfactory. Why?
Because in no other place was there a local group willing to take the
initiative in getting the organizer started.
At each stopping place I tried to see the representative women-
those in whom the civic consciousness was awakening. The Woman's
Improvement Club, found in almost every community in California,
was a source of strength because of the progressive character of its
members. The wonder is, of course, that all the women engaged in such
work were not alive to the need for the ballot, as a means of quickly
bringing about those conditions for which their organization stood.
Another group of women who could always be relied on
were the
members of the W. C. T. U. They, however, realized the opposition
of many people to the ideal for which they stand and their members,
as a whole, thought it wiser to work as individuals rather than under
the insignia of the White Ribbon. For their breadth of view and
generosity of spirit I wish to offer my appreciation.
In starting out as an organizer for suffrage work it is wise to
take along with you large chunks of philosophy and a developed sense
of humor, else the enterprise will sap energy and enthusiasm. The

Country Campaigning
59
work involves a constant round of detail; calling on women who might
become interested; seeking opportunity to present the suffrage question
in short talks to clubs and lodges, at their own gatherings; visiting
newspaper editors, discovering their attitude, and asking support for the
measure; and, finally, bringing interested women together and effecting
an organization—these are the activities of an organizer and the idea
that sustains her is the thought that has been the lode-star to us all:
"What matters physical discomfort, hard work, mental strain,-anything
-if we can win on the tenth of October ?”
Successfully to carry on a suffrage campaign, to form a working
group in each county, or smaller district, should be the foremost object.
To accomplish this organizers of tact and ability should go through the
State. The personality of the women sent on this mission is a large
factor in the results obtained. People in the smaller centers are much
like their city neighbors. The main difference lies in their closer asso-
ciation, because of limited numbers, and the correspondingly increased
chance of friction as a result of contrasting points of view. The or-
ganizer makes her appeal to all the women of the community, regardless
of social and other affiliations. To harmonize discordant elements, ap-
preciating and yet ignoring individual differences in the various groups,
is the task of one who would draw women together into one cohesive
body, working for the one common end. Toleration, tact, real sympathy
and friendliness-above all, enthusiasm that is wholesome and con-
tagious—are the qualities needed in the successful organizer. She must
be a veritable dynamo, generating her own power and giving freely to
all who will accept. I learned this after five weeks alone in the country,
trying to be a radiant center of suffrage sentiment—then I returned to
the city. Here I was again in the midst of active, constructive work,
surrounded by workers, filled with an almost holy zeal, giving time and
strength and ability, that they might show by act and word the faith
that was in them. And it was like a draught of pure water to parched
lips, a breath of life. I was rested, I was refreshed. The burden
of the campaign dropped from my mind. The joy of it filled my
heart. And all because I had come into an environment congenial and
invigorating. Then I understood, as I had not before, the plaintive cry
of the woman who said, “You must send workers from your central
headquarters to us. Give us of your enthusiasms, tell us of your plans,
stimulate us by the contagion of your example. You are in the midst
of things, in the sweep of the current; we are in the quiet eddies. Come
to us, that we may feel the stir of the force that is moving the women
of the State.”
Organization work is the strong foundation on which the super-
structure must be erected. The big public meetings, the automobile
speaking, all the spectacular methods of a whirlwind finish are much
more effective if a small group, in each locality, has worked up public
interest by gradually warming the people to a sentiment of cordiality to-
ward the idea of woman suffrage. Ida Finney Mackrille, Chairman.

RURAL CAMPAIGNING.
The Flying Squadron that was sent out from headquarters to the
country homes throughout the State, to organize the women and address
public meetings, felt itself, perhaps, more than any other group of suf-
frage workers, in the midst of an irresistible movement. They saw in
the work that unfolded under their hands the strength of an idea that
gradually amalgamated rich and poor, young and old, crude and cultured,
capable and foolish, but earnest—always earnest-women; and to see
this was to sense from afar the coming brotherhood of man, the brother-
hood and sisterhood.
Our little group of three campaigners "covered" some of the coun-
ties near San Francisco. On entering a town to begin operations we
were almost invariably greeted by the first suffragist on whom we
called with the discouraging prophecy, "Oh, it is too bad, but this town
is strongly ‘anti.' I don't believe you can do very much here.” At first
this was a dash of cold water, but it soon became a jest of a chronic
nature. One by one the women of the town would enter into genial dis-
cussion and finally yield it as their timorous opinion that women had
just as much to do with politics—not in its bastard meaning, but as the
science of self-government-as had men. With a tiny toss of the head,
they would further aver that they thought women could do the voting
with an approximation to the efficiency manifested by their male rela-
tives.
Then we would prepare for an organization meeting, followed by
a public meeting in the town hall or on the town plaza; and the faint
spark of suffragism was a-flame!
It as most heartening to the isolated women of the small towns
and country places to find that a group of their comrades from the city
had come to them, that these confident visitors did not regard “Votes
for Women” as a peg to hang time-worn, sex-depreciating jokes upon;
that the conception had a gripping ethical value; and that, for its suc-
cess, it depended upon the outspoken courage of each and every home-
loving, State-loving woman among them. These women of the small
places were not yet fatally touched by the decadent germ of our sinister
big cities, that germ of gay irresponsibility, these were the women, and
their men the voters, who opened the door to political freedom and
helped California to enter.
Londa Stebbins Fletcher.

AUTOMOBILE CAMPAIGNING.
What the suffragist wants, above all things, is a hearing. An
audience is her great need, and any legitimate means to attain that
end is good campaigning.
When the plan of speaking from automobiles was first suggested
in board meetings the conservatives cried out, “It will never do.
Such sensational methods will lose us votes.”
“But it has been successfully tried in other States," answered
the radicals.
A lady of the old regime, suffragist though she was, said with
an air of severity, “California men want their women to be dignified
and womanly.” The inference being, of course, that those desirable
qualities would be lost to the woman addressing a crowd on the
street corner. Thus, even among those sufficiently advanced to ad-
vocate suffrage for women, we found the age-long struggle between
the conservatives and the radicals, the followers of the old paths and
the heralds of the new.
But we tried automobile speaking, and found it one of the best
ways of reaching the voter. The man who was not interested in
suffrage, who could not be inveigled into a hall or to an indoor meet-
ing of any kind, would yet stop on the street corner for a while to
"hear what the women have to say.” The plan was economical of
energy, time and money. In the great farming valleys of California,
automobiles are ordinary possessions. Through suffrage sympa-
thizers it was easy to get the use of an automobile for almost any
evening. The speaking was usually advertised in the local news-
papers, by posters in the store windows, and by handbills on the
streets.
I shall never forget my first attempt at this kind of speaking.
In order to reach as many people as possible, we planned a fifteen-
minute talk just before the opening of the regular weekly band con-
cert. I was introduced by a prominent politician. Tremors of nerv-
ousness swept over me and I regretted that I had ever agreed to
undertake so difficult a task. Then it was time to begin—and all the
nervousness left me. Voters were in that crowd, and our political
freedom depended on the men of the State. We had a message to
deliver, and we had faith in our men, their sense of justice and of
fair play.
At the close of the speaking and after the band began playing,
four of us went through the crowd distributing the yellow suffrage
leaflets. A traveling man standing in front of the hotel said: “Madam,
as soon as you stood up in that automobile I said to my companion,
‘Woman Suffrage.'” That one comment gave me more courage than
anything I had heard, for I knew we were making our cause an

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
issue. However just a principle may be, however crying the need
for social reformation, that for which you stand must be made a
vital issue before the people, and that is accomplished only by pub-
licity. If in securing such publicity a few little personal qualms and
prejudices are sacrificed, add them to the large number already
offered at the altar of conviction and go your way.
The women who tremblingly undertook this form of campaign-
ing came to like it better than any other, because of its directness.
You met the voters in larger numbers and there was an informality
about it, a spirit of neighborliness and friendliness, that conduced
to a good understanding. It was our habit always to ask for ques-
tions, and usually we were bombarded with them. Naturally most
of the questioners were opposed to us. On a street corner one eve-
ning the crowd tried to put us on record concerning Socialism,
Trade-Unionism, Single Tax, Separation of Church and State, Di-
vorce and half a dozen other problems. In these conflicting currents
of belief the only safe plan is a strict adherence to the one subject,
“Votes for Women.”
That same evening a tall, earnest young man standing near the
machine, said: “If it is true that woman is biologically and psycho-
logically inferior to man, why- He got no further, for another
voice sang out, “Oh, break it up into smaller chunks, it's easier to
handle.” Every one laughed.
Street crowds are usually most responsive, provided you get their
attention at the start, their interest and patience are amazing, and
when you fail to get the interest of one in a group, you succeed with
another. A young man and his sweetheart were listening one
night. After a few minutes he said: “Come along, we've had enough
of that.” She held back, evidently interested. Again he tried to lead
her away, adding in a scoffing tone: “That woman had better go
home to her children, instead of talking on the street corners."
stantly she replied, with spirit: “She has to do that. She can't
make you men listen any other way.”
Her reply covers the whole reason for street speaking: we had to
get the attention of the men, and as they would not come to us, we
went to them. And it is evident, from the returns, that we reached
them.
Ida Finney Mackrille, Chairman.

REPORT OF THE BLUE LINER, CAMPAIGNING CAR.
The Blue Liner was a Susan B. Anthony among automobiles, al-
though only a 1910 model of a seven-seated touring car, for she had,
in a former incarnation, burned gas for woman suffrage in the suc-
cessful campaign in Washington.
In California her active work began about six months before
election, in taking a carload of mock debaters to speak on woman suf-
frage, to a bran-new social center, down the peninsula.
The Blue Liner and her consort-car met in San Francisco, on
Van Ness avenue, the line where the fire was stopped in the disaster
of 1906—a fitting place to pledge faith in what can be done by works
—and the two machine-guns, loaded with explosive amateur talent
and the grape-shot of yellow leaflets, set forth to conquer prejudice
with laughter.
A mock debate, parody songs and a suffrage monologue made
up the program. For the debate we put up a man of straw, as an
anti-suffrage advocate. He discoursed, in throaty tones, on the hor-
rors of the woman movement-a movement that would destroy so-
ciety so completely that all that would be left would be an effigy
in some National Museum of History of a Home, done in wax, repre-
senting “a father, a mother and rosy, healthy, happy children of some
perfectly definite sex.”
His talk was as absurd, as illogical, as any genuine anti-suffrage
talk of the whole campaign. Sentiment was laid on as thick as
treacle, but there was no alienating the sympathy of sentimental old
ladies and gentlemen, who wrung his reluctant hand and felicitated
him upon his "sane ideas.”
This gay expedition taught us that debate, as a means of con-
version, is too slow in a swift campaign, for even the most burlesque
repetition of a fallacy strengthens the faith of the confirmed be-
liever. From that hour the Blue Liner was dedicated to "straight
talk."
Although the car was spoken of in the daily papers, and con-
sidered by us as the “campaigning-car," she carried on a side line of
business. She was general messenger-boy and magic-carpet for the
College League. The troupe which acted in "How the Vote Was
Won” was carried to its destination by her. She met speakers from
the East at the Ferry, conveyed relays of speakers from hall to hall
for public meetings, brought materials to decorate theaters, gathered
up loads of flowers and balloons for fiestas and pageants, took speak-
ers to remote factories to speak to the men at the noon hour; carted
lumber and bunting for the Labor Day float, got workers out for
Election Day at the polls, took food to the watchers at the polls,
crossed back and forth from Berkeley to San Francisco several times

64
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
ور
a week-her mistress often eight hours at a stretch at the wheel-
and then off on one of the all-day, all-night campaigning trips into
the country. During the last week she lived in San Francisco and
took her gasoline from a strange tank, to lose no hour of service, in
errands by day, or as a platform for street-speaking by night. But,
after all, she was primarily the campaigning-car.
In July she asked for permission to take the county of Contra
Costa as her special field; a lovely county, lying back of Oakland
and Berkeley, in rolling grape-lands and wooded canyons, which had,
in 1896, given a large majority against the woman suffrage amend-
ment. In reply we were told that its chief town, Richmond, was
already possessed by a vigorous body of suffragists, but that we
might, by courtesy of those already in the field, go to all the other
places and do what we could to change the vote of 1896.
The Blue Liner thereupon tucked two yellow pennants into her
wind-shield and lashed on behind an apron of yellow oilcloth bearing
the words in sign painter's script:
"Votes for Women
Blue Liner Campaigning Committee
College Equal Suffrage League, of San Francisco.”
There is a loose-leaf filing-book beside me as I write, a foot
square and very fat. On the front page is pasted a road map of
Contra Costa, trailed over and over with pencil marks, showing
routes. Inside are filed some ten dozens of letters of diplomatic cor-
respondence, written, week by week, in the continuous effort to open
wide the gates of about twenty little towns of Contra Costa to the
entry of the Blue Liner.
First we would find the name of some local suffragist, one of the
local Press Chairmen, created by the League for local newspaper
work, by preference, and if there was no such woman, to any progres-
sive Town Improvement Club woman. To her we wrote of our willing-
ness to come and organize a suffrage club, to return later and give an
entertainment, with some short arguments interspersed, and still later
to send to them well-known speakers from San Francisco. It sounds
simple, and given the right local connection it is perfectly simple,
but a glance at my filing-book shows one town, of quite 400 voters,
that after six letters of diplomacy and one visit of plenipotentiaries,
invested with full power to act, still firmly closed its gates against
the Blue Liner. But she went there anyhow.
Ten days before election day, that sealed town was flooded with
yellow handbills, saying that at 9:15 the following evening the Blue
Liner would arrive and give a street meeting and suffrage songs and
talks on a prominent street corner. At the appointed hour several
hundred men and a few women were on the corner and gave a cor-
dial hearing. The gates of the sealed town creaked, on their rusty
hinges turning

Report of the Blue Liner, Campaigning Car
65
Generally the little town did not have to be assaulted while the
conservative slept. Some earnest woman, almost alone, perhaps, in
a twenty-year fight for an ideal that Miss Anthony or Dr. Shaw had
lighted in her heart, heard younger, gayer voices hailing her, and ran
to open the gates.
A first meeting was usually a little gathering in an inn parlor or
in some one's shop, of two or three believers and fifteen or twenty
women of uncertain faith. We talked to them quietly and intimately,
reminding them of the women-ranchers and fruit-growers in their
own neighborhood, doing the work of men and yet lacking a man's
power to express his will about the conditions under which she, too,
must work to earn the same hard living. We told them of what
Jane Addams had said of the city problems, and gave them mes-
sages from our own social workers in San Francisco. We asked
them if the sort of patriotism that Patrick Henry expressed was
really a matter of sex, and if they did not hear the great modern call
for citizens? Just the old arguments. It was a simple matter, this
first meeting. No eloquence was needed, except sincerity; no dream-
castles of future achievement, just human documents already signed
by great-hearted citizens everywhere. In a meeting of twenty
women we could almost count upon twenty signatures for a new
league, and the little group became at once the center of vital work,
ready to accept our plans for practical propaganda.
I see the look of kindling that came into some of the old faces
as we talked to them of the worth of women. Not only of the worth
of her body, in bearing the child; nor of her hands, for all they gave
of patient service; not of humility and subordination, but of her ex-
perience, her conscience, her wisdom to shape, with man, a better
world for us all to live in. “You, also, are real,” we cried. "What
you think counts, but it must count for more," and then would come
on her face that look of half-incredulous hope.
But some of the very old women, or life-consumed women, had
waited too long. It was impossible to rekindle the ash. One very
feeble creature, bent on a staff, whispered to me brokenly: "If Susan
B. Anthony could bear to die before this came, I suppose I can too."
But this was a rare attitude. Most of the country women were
ready to begin active work.
About a week from our first meeting we usually came back to a
little town hall or church building and gave to a few score people,
talks and suffrage songs, recitations and argument.
We were introduced by some man of local reputation, the mayor,
or editor, or some judge, or doctor, who believed in citizenship for
women. Between the lighter numbers of the program, we never failed
to have at least twenty minutes of grave argument, from the best
speaker we could bring to them from San Francisco. One woman of

66
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
ور
the group spoke on “Objections Answered," and in an informal way
got the audience to express its own objections.
A verse in the "Reuben and Rachel" dance-song always won a jet
of sharp, half-involuntary laughter from the village women, who felt
the bitter jest of it; it was where Reuben is explaining to Rachel her
place in the scheme of things:
“Rachel, Rachel, I believe, dear,
Woman's proper sphere's the home,
From the cook-stove and the wash-tub,
She should never wish to roam.”
One little club, which had had only four active members on our
first visit, got up a country dance to which more than three hundred
people came and listened, without open impatience, to our program
before their dance began. Of course, that was not Blue Liner work, it
was the local people who carried it through, but the Blue Liner was in
at the start; yes, and almost in at the finish, for we went back for their
grape carnival, on the 6th of October, four days before election, and
there at the pretty, local headquarters opened by the new suffrage
league on the main street of the village, we directed songs, eloquence
and persuasion-into the void. The happy folk were too busy carnivaling
to have heart for preachments, but when the time came to vote they
voted "all right," as they would have said, with eight votes to spare.
From the headquarters we faced out upon a street charmingly bul-
warked by great columns of baled alfalfa hay, wound with hopvines.
Here the queen of the carnival rode in ermine with a little yellow flag
in her hand, and the best girl rider of the county rode a-tilt at rings,
with a suffrage flag thrust in her blouse. That is the sort of eloquence
that counts, in carnival time.
On the road to our trysts we put up less perishable arguments
than words of breath. These were our "snipe” posters, simple argu-
ments in a single sentence, printed on narrow strips of tough manila
paper, strong enough to stand through months of our dry season, when
securely tacked upon the barns and fences. Each new club had its
tacking committee, usually formed by an attractive young school teacher,
of several boys and girls. We gave her a hammer with a knot of suf-
frage ribbon, by way of emblem of office. We expressed to her a big
wad of "snipes," and she selected her committee. They affixed the
posters to barns and fences about their towns bearing various persuasive
sentences.
From the emptiness of their long drives to town the farmers,
whether they would or no, had to read the posters. When, by moonlight,
the young farmer's horse shied, so that the lad had to remove an affec-
tionate arm to steady him, it was probably because:
“ABRAHAM LINCOLN SAID:
WOMEN SHOULD VOTE.
WHAT DO YOU SAY?”

Report of the Blue Liner, Campaigning Car
67
One day at our San Francisco headquarters I was dragging out
snipes—horrid things to handle, rubbed off on your gloves—when a
fellow-worker standing by exclaimed:
“What are those for?”
"For Contra Costa,” I said shortly, they were curling up.
"For Contra Costa !” she shrieked; "why that county is plastered
with them from one end to the other, like an old man with lumbago."
Unhappily it was not so. We did not get half enough of them on.
The Central Campaigning Committee, a glorious-sounding body but
when examined composed of human women and mothers, like our
humbler organizations, asked us now and again to withdraw our ener-
gies from our own affairs and to go and take larger and remoter towns.
Vallejo, we were told, had 11,000 inhabitants, and needed conversion.
Diplomatic treaties with local suffragists ended pleasantly in our going
to a good, sedate hall-meeting of several hundred souls and some voters.
It was a meeting well-arranged, patient and decorous, but as we filed
out behind the crowd it was only too plain to all of us that we hadn't
taken Vallejo, we hadn't even touched the fringe of the voters' gar-
ments. Our audience had been much too representative. What one
wants in campaigning, as in plain war, are men, not leading citizens.
Out on the bright main street, in front of the cigar stores and being
swallowed by the wide mouths of the nickelodeons, were men, young,
freshly shaven ones in uniform from the Navy Yard at Mare Island,
keen-eyed mechanics, all sorts of them, laughing, moving about, so
many of them, with scarcely a drop of allaying femininity among them.
They sauntered, half-smiling, ready to be amused, a real late Saturday
evening crowd. And each voter carried something that we needed, and
that we must have.
The Blue Liner breathed hard to steady her pace to the crowd's.
She edged to the curb and we looked at each other. The hour had come
for our first street-meeting.
“This is a good place,” some one said.
The driver set the brake and we stopped directly in front of a very
brightly lighted cigar-store. The idlers on the pavement drew back a
half-step from the curb, we could look into their eyes. Then, as we
made no move to alight they saw something was going to happen. The
men settled more easily on their hips, others drew in behind, packing
slightly, on the narrow sidewalk.
"Sing,” said a scarcely audible voice in the car; "now !"
(“Could anyone have courage for it?" I asked myself.)
Up from the front seat rose the girl of the Blue Liner and up rose
her fragile soprano.
"There is no lady in the land
Is half so sweet as Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
The delicate enunciation, the virginal, un-worn quality of the voice
that ran unfaltering through two verses held us all very still. A stranger
thing never happened on the streets of Vallejo. The men pressed in
closer. At the last clear drop of music a little sigh splashed from the
crowd.
“We come here to ask of you a piece of simple justice," boomed the
voice of the man of the Blue Liner; "the women have come to ask it
for themselves.” Then one of us rose up and spoke.
(“Will they stone us?” I asked myself; "will they hoot or will they
only laugh?")
I wish I could tell you what they did. It seems such a dream that
I half doubt it. They crowded in closer, they lifted their faces up to
us, listening, with the look on theirs that a child turns to its mother, of
confidence and the will to believe. On the lips of a street lad the
cigarette died out and hung, and on every face the smile faded. One
should speak as a God to speak on the street, or as one knowing good
and evil. It must have been so when words first came to interpret
between man and man. Street-speaking is unspeakably difficult, an
anguish of misunderstanding beforehand, and an anguish of under-
standing while it lasts and afterwards a strange, humbling revelation of
the simple sincerity of men.
When, at last, each one in turn had spoken, and the Blue Liner
drew out, leaving the crowd half-tottering, for it seemed to have built
itself up on all sides around the car, we said to each other in hushed
voices :
"Isn't it wonderful how they took it? They seemed to understand."
Much debate has raged about the wisdom of street meetings. When,
on the 11th of October, we seemed to have lost our cause, we were
assured that street meetings had done it. But the indictment was less
impressive because, by someone, each method that we had employed was
said to have brought about defeat. While we were at work, we were
told, in effect, "whatever you do, don't.” There was always someone
to warn, discomfort and condemn. So, when on the 13th we knew that
we had won, we realized that it must have been by what mathematicians
call "a compensation of errors."
Out of all this confusion of council about street meetings, one fact
emerges. Those who have never heard an unprofessional woman ask
for her right to full citizenship, of those who have the right to give it,
rarely believe that she should do so, and those who have seen the faces
of the men in the street lifted to listen to her appeal, rarely disbelieve
in it. The people chiefly concerned seem to understand each other.
The Vallejo street meeting was to be followed by one of a very
different sort. We were making a dusty run home and must pass
through a little manufacturing town. It was in garish daylight-a fatal
time for a street meeting. We had slept little the night before, we were
stale and fagged, but this little town was in Contra Costa. It called to

Report of the Blue Liner, Campaigning Car
69
us by every appeal, we had run away to take Vallejo while at home
was our own neglected little burg. We all saw it. We must give them
a daylight street meeting. An hour or two before reaching the place
we telephoned to a friendly town official that we would stop.
As we pulled in, the town seemed deserted. Warning had come in
time; the men had fled. Except for the official, there seemed no one
living on the long, bare street, except a black dado of seated men
against the walls of two contiguous saloons. Their will-power had ap-
parently been sapped before our message came. They sat and took the
shock of our impact. One after one we got up and talked to those
men. They did not move, they did not resist; possibly none of them
understood English. We lashed ourselves against their immovability.
Our soubrettes were playful, our soulful artist plead, one of us became
eloquent; it did no good. In all our campaigning we never had just
such an audience. It was ghastly the way they bore with us.
It was a fixed policy with us to go wherever we were not wanted,
so a few days later we returned to this town and gave an entertainment.
We were received, a second time, with much the same heroic stoicism
by the scattering audience that would not pretend to fill the hall. The
strange part of the tale remains to tell. The town gave a better major-
ity for woman suffrage than most of the county towns. There was a
gain over the 1896 vote of forty votes.
In campaigning, going where you are not wanted is sound psychol-
ogy. If the suffragists themselves do not want help during the last
weeks of a campaign such as ours, it can only be because they have not
reached out and formulated varied plans of work. We knew in San
Francisco that we needed every half-way competent worker that we
could lay hands upon, for six months before the end of the campaign.
We rejoiced passionately in the trained helpers that came to us from
the East. There was so much to do. Twenty departments of work ran
short of workers, so we knew that when a town had no need of help it
was because it had few plans afoot.
Into the pretty town of Santa Rosa we made one of these forced
entries. It was during the week of the Native Sons' celebration, and
both the Golden Sons and the Golden Daughters assured us, with leaden
emphasis, that suffrage was entirely out of place. But we felt that
where so many thousands of idle people were gathered was exactly the
place for us.
A store building on a lively corner, just across from a Ferris wheel,
and next door to the knife-throwing booth, became the headquarters of
the Blue Liner. The place was made as pretty as time allowed with
flowers and banners and posters, and the doors set very wide upon the
street. There was music and singing; and, as we had planned, hundreds
of people sauntered in and out, and stopped and chatted or listened.
One day we had a seven-hour continuous performance. In the evenings
we held big street meetings from the Blue Liner that we kept up until

70
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
our constellation waned in the brighter conjunction of the Native Son
and the native grape.
While we were afield in the country several days of each week,
San Francisco was gathering forces for the final struggle. It was
there, of course, that the real contest would center. The country
towns in 1896 had given small majorities against suffrage; in fact,
all the counties of the State and the inimical Bay cities had together
only about equaled San Francisco's adverse vote. We were always
reminding ourselves that we had that 23,771 majority in San Fran-
cisco staring us in the face. Three votes in every four there had
been against us. And now at the last the antis were coming out of
their shell. The whisky interest was contributing openly to defeat us.
A man had been found to tell the world thunderously that "Man
is man, and woman is woman,” the only man in Northern California
who was found to champion that novel idea in the open. Feeling ran
high, and one irreverent parodist wrote:
"Little bits of silver,
Little drops of rye,
Make the florid Antis
Spout their reasons why."
Yes, things were happening too fast in San Francisco for the
Blue Liner to be country districting.
A gorgeous pageant of "The Progress of Women" was forward
in Oakland, new headquarters of our League were springing up in
new places, the Central Campaigning Committee was dizzy hurling
speakers into distant counties and dragging them back to let fly in
another direction. Then came the homing of the more distant coun-
try organizers, to be in at the finish. Each day brought a worker
in from the field, from far Del Norte or wooded Humboldt, from log-
ging-camps and mining-ledges, where we had sent our best-wan,
brown, laughing women, worked down to the nerve, but the nerve
gay and steady, full of stories of camp and field, of joyous prophecy,
full of delight and confidence in the men of the open. All were in
for the final great rally at Dreamland Rink. And such a rally! Thou-
sands stood about the doors of the hall in a great overflow meeting
and waited for the speakers to pass out to them from the englam-
oured hall, and the Blue Liner was there.
You should have seen the grizzled Blue Liner in these last days
—the hunter home from the hill—she had run out of enough rubber
“inners” to have supplied overshoes to the city for the winter; her
chapped casings scaled about her rims, she couldn't pass a repair shop
without putting in for temporary relief, and then came her transfor-
mation, her transfiguration, such as a good, old, gasoline saint should
have.
The day before election, at the noon hour, we were told that
Nordica, Madame Nordica, who was here to sing at the Ground

Report of the Blue Liner, Campaigning Car
71
Breaking for the Panama Celebration, had met our arch-diplomatist
and fallen. Madame Nordica believed from her heart that women
should vote, yes, she would come out into the open square of the city
and let her faith be known of all men. Thus the Blue Liner became
the frame upon which triumphal garlands were hung. Great wreaths
of oak leaves, touched with autumn, yellow chrysanthemums so large
that a Californian seemed to have dreamed them, scores of saucy little
"Votes for Women" pennants, thrusting pointed tongues out from
among the flowers. Over her tired respirator was thrown a white
blanket, embroidered in yellow by the eyes of faith and the hands of
patience. Her dusty envelope was in turn enveloped in woven reeds
bordered with oak and correopsis, her tool-box-dented by irreverent
feet-a mat of small bright flowers, and following her long lines, with
a loving sense of their fine sweep, crisp garlands of fresh oak. O!
wasn't she a wagon to hitch unto a star!
In making her fit for Nordica, for no professional hands touched
her, none of us had wit to see that she should bear some legend
showing what she was for, that the world might come and hear
Madame Nordica speak. Happily, during the afternoon there had
been hatched, by the wand of our public meetings' chairman, two
extraordinary ephemera, weird advertising wagons with wide, square
sails announcing that Madame Nordica would speak on Suffrage in
Union Square that evening. These night moths were, I dare not say
how tall, but they soared and wavered and heeled about as each
trundled behind its single weary horse up and down the streets near
Union Square. An unwearied but quite invisible driver rang from
the hollow square his hollow bell.
As twilight gathered and the St. Francis Hotel outlined itself in
lights, the whole becoming diaphanous gray with Dewey's shaft
lifting slim and pale from the blackish shrubbery of the square, the
crowd began to thicken and pack itself together in a solid determina-
tion to both see and hear Madame Nordica. Closer and closer circled
in the two advertising wagons.
“Go way off! Please don't hang about here!” cried the arch-
diplomatist, waving her long, black glove at the invisible driver, and
he dragged himself quite half a block off, to lash his horse into a
hasty return.
"We want other people to know about this meeting. Go way
off! Go six blocks off !”
But the desire of the moth for the star was upon him, he could
not go. In grotesque faithfulness he and his companion-spirit fal-
tered back.
“Very well! Stop this automobile,” waved the glove, “I want to
speak to that man.” She escaped from wreaths and banners, and
caught the advertising waggoner. “You can fall right in here be-
tween these machines,” she cried, “then they will know why the
Blue Liner is so dolled up."

72
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
Into the procession fell the tired white horse, a resplendent ma-
chine in front and a resplendent machine nosing the rocking frame
behind, and so the absurd procession crawled back and forth, six
blocks away, the automobiles snuffing angrily at the pace of the white
horse.
Then, the hour having come, the Blue Liner went for Madame
Nordica. All bright-lipped smiles and pretty gestures she made her
charming entry among flowers and wreaths. I think it was really
delightful to her, too. The drollery, the grotesqueness of it all, and
the rolling heads of the packed crowds, so dearly familiar to the great
singer.
The crowd was, of course, five times too great for one outdoor
meeting, almost lapping about four sides of the square, so several
other machines with speakers were stationed at intervals. At one
corner you could hear a worn contralto of thrilling quality saying:
“I come to you with the message of the child”; it was Miss
Helen Todd, Factory Inspector from Illinois.
Further on words were being thrown out, round and perfect like
bombs, "And Wendell Phillips said, 'You women must wait for free-
dom. This is the negroes' hour'”, that was Miss Jeanette Rankin,
of New York.
But in the midst of everything, Nordica spoke. It was very
simply said, just the human need for the full chance for self-expres-
sion, and then, to the joy of all, she sang. She asked the crowd to
sing with her, but they were wise and, after a moment, fell silent.
"She's singing, she's singing," cried those on the outer circles of
the crowd, and the voice that had not reached them in speaking
drifted over their heads in music, and faded against the night.
And the Blue Liner that had carried noise and disputation, that
had been a day-laborer and a hod-carrier, a circus tent and an express
wagon, “a penny-postman by day and a dancing-dervish by night,"
came into her own.
But in California even a climax has its “anti," and so the Blue
Liner left the garage in the gray dawn of the following day-Election
Day—and with faded garlands started back to work.
Out in the Relief Home there were several hundred old men,
men on crutches, men who could not see very "good," but who had
listened to the speakers we had sent them, who told them of our
hope. Their old hearts had warmed to the thought of casting a lame
man's, or a blind man's, or a dying man's perfectly sound vote "for
the women.” “We fellows that are on the scrap-heap ain't afraid of
the women," one of them said. And so it was that all day long, with
more and more bedraggled plumage the Blue Liner plied back and
forth with her crippled loads, until the last old voter had lightened his
own cross by stamping one opposite the "Woman's Amendment."
Louise Herrick Wall.

GROUPS OF ALLIED ACTIVITIES.
Report on Presenting Equal Suffrage to School Teachers.
It seemed very important to reach the 1400 school teachers of
San Francisco in some direct manner, and to enlist them as workers
for the Woman Suffrage Amendment. With the permission of the
Board of Education, we carried on a series of noon meetings during
the two last months of the campaign. On invitation of the principal-
in nearly every case given most graciously upon telephonic request-
a speaker was sent by us to meet informally, but by appointment,
the group of teachers of each school during the lunch hour.
The speaker had time briefly to present simple arguments, and to
encourage discussion. She had an opportunity to impress the in-
different suffragists in the group with the need for their active par-
ticipation in the work, by distributing leaflets, by attending meetings
with friends who were indifferent or actually opposed to the idea of
woman suffrage, and by making every effort to present our case to
all the voters with whom she came in contact—not forgetting her
butcher and baker.
Among the teachers, as among all classes of women, we found
the inertia of the "lay" suffragist, who, because her affairs made it
impossible for her to be officially active in the campaign work, did
not realize that she could be, and that it was most urgently neces-
sary that she should be,-a center of influence and of activity in
propaganda.
In each school the speaker selected as leader some enthusiast
who promised to distribute leaflets and buttons and polling-cards, to
associate herself with the general campaign activities, and to keep
the issue alive among the teachers of her school. These leaders were
invited to several conferences with the committee on propaganda
work in the schools, on Saturday mornings at headquarters.
In a longer campaign it would be well to begin work among
teachers, as indeed all educational work, as early as possible—this
work being in its nature slow in results. A teacher, who at this late
stage of the suffrage agitation is still opposed to it, is apt to be
entrenched behind strong reasons, strong feeling and strong preju-
dices, and time is needed for her conversion.
The selection of the noon hour for these little meetings had the
advantage of informality and of not making a fresh demand on the
teachers' time, as an after-school meeting would do. The shortness
and necessary punctuality of the appointment also made it possible
to get doctors and other professional women to promise to speak at
a noon school meeting when they could not give time to make part
of the elastic program of a big public meeting. It might, too, be dif-

74
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
ficult to get the attendance of the antis at an after-school meeting, as,
of course, such attendance is purely voluntary. The disadvantages of
the noon hour are, however, its brevity, the liability of interruption
and the occasional imperative absence of some of the teachers or the
principal. In all cases where the interest warrants it, an after-school
meeting would be advisable.
Wherever the requisite coöperation of the Board of Education
could be obtained, the work among the teachers should be preceded
by a general meeting, called especially for them, at which the pro-
fessional advantages of equal suffrage should be touched upon, but
where the chief appeal should be to the teachers as men and women,
and as responsible and representative members of the community.
We found about three-fourths of the teachers in sympathy with
what we stood for, but only a small percentage strongly active. We
have reason to believe that numbers of the indifferent suffragists
were aroused and stimulated by the visits of our speakers to a
realization of their responsibilities, and our need of them. And al-
though the time was too brief to make any real conversions, the re-
sults, on the whole, justified the expenditure of time and energy.
Dora T. Israel, Chairman.
German Organizations.
Miss Lorraine Cerf, who was chairman of this work, writes of it:
“Two of us were detailed to arrange that a talk on woman suffrage
was heard by every German association, gathered for any purpose, in
the City of San Francisco. We had found that it was impossible to
get foreigners, in numbers, to come out to our public meetings. Those
who were not opposed to this extension of suffrage were, in the main,
quite indifferent to it. This made it necessary that we should bring
our speakers before them, in a way and at a time that would not make
too heavy a drain upon their tolerance.
“First, we made a list of German societies of all sorts; social,
fraternal, singing, benevolent, athletic, military. We found people
grouped about unexpected interests and we studied the groupings, for
we realized the economy of using the formations that already existed.
In making our first lists the City Directory and club rosters were useful,
and later the officials of one society supplied us with the names of
other groups.
“The next step was to talk with the officers of the various societies
whose names we had learned. We found that it was important to
reach the chief officers, those second in command frequently discouraged
our plans even after we had the sanction of their superiors. There
were some minor officials with less conservative ideas, however; some
who even suggested the names of the best men to see, as well as the
office hours, and personal characteristics of those who were in a position

Groups of Allied Activities
75
to put our plan on a practical footing. In several cases the members
of societies volunteered to make all the arrangements necessary to give
our speaker a place upon the platform.
"In the course of our work we often came to know the names of
a number of the men important in the work of their societies, and this
was of so much practical use that we saw that, had there been more
time, it might have been worth while to have known more of the
membership of the beleaguered club before we opened fire.
“Of the officer in charge of the matter we asked that one or more
of our speakers might be given ten or twenty minutes at one of their
full meetings (never a special meeting called for the purpose), to
present the question of equal suffrage to them. In every instance,
except one, we were received and treated with courtesy. Sometimes
the officials could not give permission, without an appeal to their
directors, but the permission that followed made us know that this was
no mere subterfuge. Every society, except the few from which all
political discussion was barred, made definite dates when our speakers
would be welcome to appear before their members; and we, in turn,
urged that our representatives take exactly the time agreed upon."
Equal Suffrage to Lodges.
Miss Clara Schlingheyde had charge of the work of bringing
speakers before lodges and fraternal organizations; of it she says:
“One of the ways by which we reached the ‘unawakened' voter
was directly through his own organization and indirectly through his
sisters' organizations; that is, through lodges, fraternal and benevolent
orders and kindred associations. The secret nature of some of the
men's societies was a bar to admission in a number of cases. Others
were inhospitable to the idea of having their orders used for suffrage
propaganda. But wherever hearings were granted, results showed the
value of the undertaking, as a means of taking the subject, in the
minds of the men, out of the freak class and promoting it to a higher
plane.
"Where organizations had a central body composed of locals, we
secured from a chief officer of the central body a letter to each local
asking the courtesy of a twenty-minute hearing during one of their
regular business sessions.
"When it was possible we had two speakers address each meet-
ing, perhaps as much to give the speakers the moral support that comes
from company, as to furnish a variety of suffrage gospel to our lodge
friends. Each speaker gave an informal ten-minute talk, crowding into
it as many points as possible, and illuminating the arguments with apt
illustrations. The subject was comparatively new to most of our

76
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
hearers and we found it expedient for the 'first treatment to keep
close to elementals, like the taxation without representation argument.
"San Francisco has a great many lodges and societies of that sort,
so we were obliged to visit two, and sometimes three or four, in an
evening to get round to them all.
“Finding so many patient and courteous listeners convinced us that
these associations afford a very important field for suffrage propaganda.
I would suggest, however, that where the time is limited preference
be given to men's organizations, since to reach the voter is the most
essential thing.”
To the Native Daughters.
"On the theory that every woman influences at least one man, we
sent speakers to the parlors of the Order of the Native Daughters, in
San Francisco.
"Permision was first obtained from the Grand President of the
Native Daughters to allow speakers to go before such parlors as ex-
pressed their willingness to listen to a discussion of the matter, and
from the central organization lists of the names of the secretaries were
procured. These officers were called up by telephone and only one
refused permission for a speaker to come before her parlor.
“Of these meetings one of the visiting speakers writes, “The parlors
that I visited were in outlying districts of the city. The members
were quite young working girls, such as factory girls and box-makers,
with an older woman, usually, as president. They listened courteously
but I hardly think we converted many of these girls to suffrage, if they
were not already predisposed toward it. However, we aroused interest
in the question and made it easier for a later speaker.'
>
To Commercial Bodies.
Dr. Rachel L. Ash says of presenting suffrage before commercial
bodies :
“The committee formed for this work consisted of eight active
members, and was organized two and one-half months before the
close of the campaign. Its original purpose was to place the Woman
Suffrage Amendment, by means of short, informal talks, before the
employes of the retail district of San Francisco.
“The managers of twelve large stores were interviewed. Two
gave us permission to address their employes at the luncheon hour
only. As all male clerks go out at this time, this plan at once showed
itself to be impractical in not reaching voters. In these stores the
women take their rest in relays, and so only a limited number listened
to our talks.

Groups of Allied Activities
77
"Of the two managers who allowed us access to their clerks,
one was lukewarm in favor of the amendment, and the other opposed
it. The audience was correspondingly indifferent in the one shop, and
distinctly antagonistic in the other. In both places the speaker was
obliged to introduce herself to her hearers.
“The committee records this work in the retail district as a failure.
"As in San Francisco the greatest opposition to the proposed
amendment came from commercial bodies, the work of our committee
was extended from retail stores to the more important commercial
organizations of the city. We addressed, or circularized, telephone and
gas companies, street railroads, employes' associations, advertising clubs,
builders' exchanges, factory employes, bank clerks—in short we at-
tempted to reach every considerable aggregation of workers related to
the community in a business way. Here the committee was more than
moderately successful. The best results were obtained where the
managers of heads of departments were favorable to the movement
and where they showed enough interest to publish their opinions and
to introduce our speakers."

TEMPORARY HEADQUARTERS.
Palace Hotel.
This was an experiment in establishing headquarters to receive
visitors from the National Education Association, in a conspicuous
place, at a time when a great national convention met in San Fran-
cisco.
A room was rented in the Palace Hotel for the week of the
convention. It was decorated with yellow flowers and made as at-
tractive and homelike as possible, and kept open from ten in the
morning until eight in the evening. Various members of the League
divided the work of staying to receive and there were always two
and sometimes as many as four or five women present to welcome and
talk to the visitors.
Two books were kept—a Visitors' Book and a Workers' Book.
The Visitors' Book was a mere record of the names of those who
came into headquarters; the Workers' Book recorded the names and
addresses of people who were willing to work for equal suffrage in
their home centers, and wished to keep up a relation with the
League.
One of the best features of the week's work was the afternoon
meeting in the Ladies' Parlor of the hotel, at which some of the
most distinguished educators of the country,women known all over
the country—who were attending the convention, spoke on the value
of the ballot.
The cost of the experiment was covered by the gift of a former
president of the League, herself a teacher for many years. All the
flowers used in the decorations were given by members of the League,
and a professional decorator gave her services in arranging them.
I think the work was, on the whole, worth doing. It brought
us, for one thing, directly in touch with the entire school system
of the State. Every county superintendent visited—voluntarily or in-
voluntarily—our headquarters, and every county superintendent went
away with the knowledge that, whatever the status of woman suffrage
in his or her county, it was a large and living issue in San Francisco.
Many teachers from country districts who said that they did not
know whether they really believed in suffrage or not-didn't know
much about it-had a chance to talk over the question and to get our
leaflets. We distributed a great amount of this material during the
week, but valuable as that was I think it was the contact, the coming
into relation with people who were doing things, that gained us the
most converts.
Our room was very favorably situated to catch driftage-people

Temporary Headquarters
79
who just floated in on the sight-seeing tide—and many of these
people went away with a slightly changed attitude toward the subject
of so much jest and so much earnest argument.
The establishment of the Palace Headquarters gave the newspapers
a chance to run several feature stories, and all this advertisement in-
creased the mounting sense of the determined and persistent force be-
hind the movement.
Stella Wynne Herron, Chairman.
State Fair.
Mrs. James B. Hume and Miss Blanche Morse were in charge
of headquarters at the State Fair.
“The State Fair, held annually at Sacramento, by the Agricultural
Association of California, is attended by many visitors and exhibitors,
from all parts of the State, a large proportion of whom, naturally, come
from the country.
"Believing it possible to reach many people at this annual gather-
ing, with whom it would be difficult, at another time, to come in
contact, the College Equal Suffrage League established suffrage head-
quarters at Agricultural Park, where the fair was held.
“A large tent was set up, with the permission of the Association
directors, on the road leading from the main entrance of the fair.
Over the front of the tent five stars were set, each bearing the name
of one of the five 'free States,' and upon the sixth were emblazoned
the words, ‘California Next! Besides decorations of flags, banners
and shields, the booth was supplied with leaflets, posters, buttons and
banners, for sale and for free distribution, and here a handful of faithful
adherents contested for popular attention with the usual attractions of a
fair. The suffrage tent justified its existence by having many visitors.
“In addition to our activities within our own borders, we dis-
tributed hundreds of cards in other booths and stalls, placed them upon
exhibits and posted them on walls, stands and fences; everywhere, in
fact, for which permission could be secured from the city and fair
authorities.
“As the crowds shifted in the evening from the fair grounds to
the city streets we closed our booth in the evening and instituted
street speaking from automobiles. Two or three large crowds, as-
sembled at different points, could be reached in one evening, and as
the listeners were almost entirely men it was an effective way to
reach the voter.
“Preliminary work should be done in arranging for some such
headquarters as has been described, and a program made for the
street speaking in the evening. Organized effort, the coöperation of
local women and carefully prepared programs are essential to the
success of such enterprises."

80
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
Market Street.
66
Miss Dora T. Israel writes of temporary headquarters on Market
Street:
“A store was procured on Market Street in a situation that,
though it warranted a considerable rental, was considered worth all
reasonable expense because of the crowds that passed its door.
"Immediately material was gathered to make an attractive window
display that would catch the eye, make the passer-by stop to read the
placards and perhaps come in. He was encouraged to do this by large
signs that announced :
'Suffrage Headquarters and Information Bureau:
Suffrage Literature Free. Welcome-Come In.
“Yellow was the background for all placards and posters. Yellow
chrysanthemums and 'Votes for Women' banners gave a bit of ad-
ditional color and effectiveness. About the window, from time to
time, crowds gathered to read such legends as Mrs. Gilman's familiar
one in relation to pure milk reform:
“ 'Politics is not Outside the Home, but Inside the Baby.'
“Within the store were tables on which was placed leaflets se-
lected to meet the demands of all kinds of minds, and these were
freely distributed to all who were interested. No one who would wear
a 'Votes for Women' button went away undecorated. Many people
were told about the amendment and the reasons for urging its
adoption, by women who talked informally to all who entered. Suf-
frage placards that could be placed in public or private windows, or on
fences, were given away, and each person was urged to present the
matter to every man and woman that she could possibly reach.
“Here we had the opportunity to assist the central Election Day
Committee by gathering in volunteers for picket duty or as watchers
at the polls for October 10th.
“Tables, at which the work was carried on of folding and
preparing leaflets for circularizing, attracted considerable attention, lent
a busy aspect to the place, and gave the transient volunteer a chance
to do something to associate herself, or himself, with the work.
“Another means of reaching hundreds who did not come in was
by the constant distribution of leaflets on the sidewalk in front of the
store, day and evening, until 9 p. m. We found it better to fold
the leaflets to avoid their looking like an ordinary advertising dodger.
So few of these papers were dropped upon the pavement near the
store that we were encouraged to believe that a large per cent. of the
many thousands of leaflets distributed were carried away and read.
“The women standing thus on the outside with leaflets found
that they could quietly enter into brief talks with the interested
passers, and encourage them to go into the headquarters to supply
themselves more fully with literature. Workingmen and women of all

Temporary Headquarters
81
degrees came to us in numbers, especially at noon and on the way
home to dinner in the evening, sometimes for information, and some-
times with offers of help. Many of these had not known before how to
reach us in our central headquarters. Then, too, the personal element
of direct contact with the workers served to intensify and make
expressive what had been in many cases only a general interest.
“We would advise the establishment, very much earlier in the
campaign, of several such accessible distribution and information
bureaus in stores on main streets. These bureaus should have a wide
frontage and be very free of access. If sufficiently large, they could
be used as auditoriums in which to address the crowds which could
be gathered in from the streets, from time to time during the day.
“The cost of maintaining the Market Street headquarters for one
week was about $155.00, which was slightly lowered by the sale of
prize posters, postals, and stickers, and by a few contributions. The
money was well spent, because more people were reached than by
some of our more expensive means of advertising and through this
recruiting station workers were added to the active list.”
Oakland Headquarters.
Of the temporary headquarters in Oakland Miss Ethel Moore
writes:
“The College Equal Suffrage League opened headquarters in Oak-
land the 27th day of September in a vacant store in the gore build-
ing at the intersection of two principal streets of the city-Broadway
and Telegraph Avenue. The store was secured rent free, a secretary
employed, chairs, tables, desks, borrowed or rented, electric lights
installed for evening illumination, canvas signs painted for the three
sides of our triangular store. The three windows were filled with
placards, ‘snipes,' bulletins and posters for the benefit of the many
passers-by, while bunches of literature were hung on the outside marked
Take One'--for pedestrians.
“With visitors offering help, and seeking buttons, pennants,
literature and other information, there was a steady stream of people,
demonstrating forcibly the advertising possibilities of headquarters of
the street rather than upstairs in an office building.
“During the two weeks that the Oakland Headquarters were
open daily meetings were held at noon in different parts of the city
for the manufacturing plants and for the telephone girls.
“For every evening except Sunday, automobiles and speakers were
furnished for street meetings. In Oakland within fire limits it is not
possible to secure permits for street speaking except for the less
crowded corners somewhat off the the beaten track of travel. Appear-
ing regularly at the same corners, we seemed to address the same

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
individuals night after night, idlers carelessly listening to socialists,
fakers or whomsoever would entertain them. Perhaps occasional
meetings would have done as much good. We provided speakers also
in the evenings for other Suffrage Organizations, Improvement Clubs,
Churches, Parlors of Native Daughters, not only for Oakland, but also
for Alameda, Berkeley, Fruitvale, San Leandro, Centerville, Haywards,
Pleasanton and even Tuolumne, ten hours distant by train.
"For six nights we had suffrage slides over the front of our
headquarters, visible some distance down the street. We sent operator,
stereopticon and slides to San Leandro, also slides to Tuolumne.
Unfortunately we had but one set. We could have used two or three
more sets to much better advantage and without additional cost.
“The general meetings conducted under the College League were
as follows, from the Oakland Headquarters:
"Mowbray Hall, Piedmont, the play 'Lady Geraldine's Speech,'
with addresses by Miss Fannie W. McLean of Berkeley, and Mrs. R.
C. Young of Denver.
"Unity Hall, Oakland, chairman, Dr. Edward Von Adelung;
speakers, Mrs. Catherine Waugh McCulloch of Chicago and Miss
Helen Todd of Chicago.
“Headquarters, Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Helen Hoy Greeley of
New York.
"Piedmont Park, Sunday afternoon, chairman, Mr. P. M. Fisher;
speakers, Miss Helen Todd, Mrs. John Rodgers, Jr., of New York
and Miss Gail Laughlin, of Denver.
"From our headquarters we distributed thousands of dodgers ad-
vertising the above meetings. For two days we sent wagons with
transparencies through the streets, distributed blotters and leaflets in
physicians' and other offices, mailed hundreds of pieces of literature and
also furnished ten thousand paper bags, with suffrage inscriptions, to
creameries, groceries and stalls in the Free Market.

PROPAGANDA THROUGH ADVERTISING MEDIUMS.
Billboards.
In using the methods of commercial advertising, to put before
the people the ideas of an educational campaign, the College Equal
Suffrage League was not aiming at commercial results, nor backed
by a manufacturer's purse. The money that was used to ask for
"Justice for California Women” was raised, in large measure, by
working members who cared enough for the reform to give them-
selves—and their earnings, in many cases—to carry on the work.
Perhaps a touch of this personal passion appeared in the over-
crowded posters, measuring seven by ten feet, that, in September,
sprang up in two hundred and fifty places in San Francisco. From a
commercial point of view, the professional advertisers warned us that
the posters were bad, too many words and too many ideas on one
sheet. It wasn't good job printing to crowd the space. The answer
was that there was too much to say, and too little money to waste,
to stickle for appearances.
The compressed phrasing of these four posters, in their four
slightly varied forms, seemed to express the tension of the women
who put them up. Many members of the League admitted that these
great, stern, black-and-white billboards—undecorative and uncom-
promising-stirred them more than other propaganda of the cam-
paign. As a woman looks at the crude portrait of her son, spread on
the hoardings of a city in his first political campaign, and realizes
that those things that she has pondered in her heart are at last
posted for the world's appraisal, so the suffragist, in fear and elation,
rejoiced in her posters with a double sense of creator and spectator.
The second set of fifty, still larger bills, fourteen by twenty feet,
more correctly set by the printer, and conspicuously placed, somehow
seemed to lack the "first, fine, careless rapture” of the pioneer posters,
that nailed their faith to the boards of the city as Luther his to the
door of his parish church.
We were all surprised to learn that so momentous a coming-out,
as the putting of our ideas into four feet letters, could be done so
quickly. The contract can be made with the advertising agent and
bills printed and posted in three or four days. The contractor does
not do the printing, but he places the posters, according to his agree-
ment, as soon as that work has been done by the printer whose bid
was accepted.
A typewritten list of all the locations where posters were to be
placed was supplied to the Chairman on Bill Boards, and she drove

84.
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
about the city and checked up her whole flock, to be sure that none
were missing
For a month the “Justice for California Women” posters stood
on the boards, and the big Lincoln poster remained in possession for
a week, but the life of the posters was indefinitely extended by the
sets of photographs taken from them, that were sent to the States
where the same issue was pending. They found their way into
advertising journals and scrap-books, all over the land.
Just three days before the day of election the anti-suffragists
posted up counter bills saying, “Vote No to Amendment 8.”
Signs on Baseball Grounds.
In Oakland space was given for a stretcher that measured three
by eleven feet, to be placed in full view of the throngs who go to the
games. On this was printed, in letters two feet high, "Votes for
Women, Oct. 10."
In San Francisco a like space was bought for a sign thirty-five
by eighteen feet. The outlay on these two pieces of advertising was
slight compared with the attention they created, week after week, as
the expense for both signs amounted to only fifty-five dollars.
Electric Street Signs.
We tried putting up what is called a "talking" electric sign, on
Market street near Fourth, the largest business center of the city,
but once more the rather complex, educational type of the ideas we
wished to place before people were not adapted to the commercial
method. A man might stand breathless before a talking sign waiting
for the oracle to flash out the words that told him where he could
get a two dollar hat, but he would not wait to be told, “Give your
Girl an Equal Chance with Your Boy.” On this account the talking
sign was exchanged for a large, permanent electric sign that, in its
bold clearness, exacted a different sort of patience of the reader of
signs.
Genevieve Allen, Chairman.
Report on Putting Up Bay Signs.
In winning favorable consideration for equal suffrage many lovers
may be won to the cause by tender persuasion, but some there are
who will have to be beset on every hand, until in helplessness before
the inevitable, they shrug their shoulders and groan, “Oh, let them
have it. I am tired of hearing it, reading it, eating it, going to
church with it, seeing it blazoned everywhere, the whole enduring
time-let them have their ballot, and give me peace."
With this psychology in mind, I decided to besiege the eye of
the Oakland and Berkeley commuter. I had printed on white cloth
in black letters a foot high, six signs, two each with the following

Propaganda Through Advertising Mediums
85
wording, brevity being necessary, as they were to be read at a dis-
tance, "on the run":
“Votes for Women.
California Next.”
"Justice for California Women
Oct. 10."
"Give Women the Vote.
Justice. Oct. 10."
These signs, three feet by six, were framed by the printer and
taken in an express wagon to the wharf, where I chartered a launch,
packed in hammer, nails and rope, and picked up a stray helper on
the dock.
All this had been preceded by an unofficial visit to an Oakland
official, selected for his pro-suffrage views. I announced my wish to
use the Oakland "waterfront" and asked what would happen.
"Why-y," said he, smiling, "I suppose if you took liberties with
Oakland property and some one should object, and put in a complaint,
it would be the duty of the Chief of Police to send out there and
have the offending signs taken down."
We made our way, in a heavy wind, to the crazy structures in
the bay called “duck-blinds," from whose brushy cover sportmen
shoot flying game. Here we managed to make four of our quaking
signs fast. As we secured them we noticed, in the shelter of the
wharf, two boys at anchor in a small boat. In our haste we failed to
propitiate the male non-voter. The following day from the Southern
Pacific train we saw that the better half had been cut from women
and the sign read “Votes for —men.” The other signs remained un-
touched, and made their appeal for months to the thousands that
passed that way.
The two other signs intended for San Francisco were stored in
a hospitable launch-house, while I laid siege to the Harbor Com-
missioners.
After interviewing various secretaries and clerks, each of whom
said that the Commissioners were all off electioneering, and sympa-
thetically explained to me the waste of time it was to try to see
them, as under no circumstances would they allow signs on that
property, I learned that the Commissioners had come together. I
went before them and presented my plan.
I showed them that my signs were not political, were not for
financial gain, were, in fact, announcements of public concern, were
of neat and chaste design calculated to adorn the blank, unpainted
board fences I had selected as a background.
The Commissioners exacted my promise to remove them after
election, and I went off to put them on at once.
I found a sailor sitting on a pile of rusty chains. We together

86
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
carried the six-foot signs to their places, while hundreds of people,
bound to and from the ferries, looked on delighted or amused, ac-
cording to their bias.
And the promise to the Commissioners? Two days after election
the signs were lying in our headquarters, never to be needed again in
California.
Londa Stebbins Fletcher.
Report on Foreign Advertising.
We decided to pay for the publication of an advertisement in the
foreign newspapers of San Francisco during the last week of the
campaign. The reason for this decision was that we felt that the
mere distribution of the circulars that we had had translated into
Italian, French, Spanish, German and Portuguese was reaching only
a small percentage of the large foreign vote of the city, and not
having the least effect on the thousands throughout the State.
In Oakland and San Francisco there were two papers published
in each language: French, Italian, German, Swiss and Portuguese,
and their subscribers numbered many thousands; the oldest Italian
paper, "Voce del Popolo," claiming a subscription list of 12,000.
The editor of the “Voce del Popolo” was not friendly to equal
suffrage at our first interview, but, after some discussion, admitted
the justice of the arguments for it. He did not change the policy of
his paper, but he was willing to publish signed articles on the sub-
ject, without payment, and, during the last week, published in a
conspicuous place, at greatly reduced advertising rates, our leaflet to
voters.
The other Italian paper, "Italia," was in favor of the adoption of
the amendment and gave editorial support to our paid announcement.
One of the French papers which was opposed to women having the
ballot, nevertheless printed our leaflet on the first page, for a nominal
sum, while the other French paper, though calling itself favorable,
was “making no propaganda," until we provided the material.
There was nothing equivocal in the attitude of either of the Ger-
man papers.
Both were frankly against giving votes to women.
The editor of the “Zeitung" had been in America only five years and
was unprogressive. As a matter of business, however, he was willing
to place our advertisement on his first page with the reading matter,
two small letters at the bottom of the column indicating, to the
initiated, that the article was paid for. In his last issue before elec-
tion he instructed his readers to "Vote Against" the 8th Amendment,
4th place on the ballot. Many, however, must have read and con-
sidered the arguments presented in our article, in spite of the edi-
torial advice.
Both Swiss papers were sympathetic with the movement for
making actual citizens of women. “Our women want it," one of
ور

Propaganda Through Advertising Mediums
87
their editors said, and that seemed a sufficient reason. These two
Swiss papers were the only ones that printed our matter without
wishing to be paid. They received the copy as though we were doing
them a kindness.
The Portuguese papers gave us editorial support as soon as we
advertised with them. We had no means of reaching the Spanish
voters, in this way, as they had no newspaper.
The editor of one of the Chinese papers of San Francisco was
an outspoken friend to woman suffrage and, from time to time, dur-
ing the campaign published items of interest on the subject.
Some of the papers in which we published the advertisement
were dailies, and others appeared only twice or three times a week.
During the week before the election our arguments for woman suf-
frage appeared, several times over, in ten different papers, subscribed
for by many thousands of people of foreign birth, who would have
heard of the matter in no other way.
The total expense was $174.00.
Belle Judith Miller, Chairman.
Report on Street-Car Advertising.
While we were all wearing the badge of youth, which is called
expectancy, the street-car plan was written on the minutes. It was
the idea of no one in particular, but seems to have been generated by
everyone. In order that it should not suffer from the blight of a com-
mon interest a chairman and committee of three were appointed
when the campaign was about one month old. We discovered that
we had to part not only with the small change of our illusions, as to
the cost of street-car advertising, but also with the large sum of
about $800, in order to make a thorough propaganda campaign in the
street-cars.
The committee was informed by the advertising company that
its policy demanded at least a three months' contract, and in a very
short time $325 was subscribed to this special fund. No particular
effort was made to interest people whose pocket nerves have always
been diagnosed as sensitive to the suffrage appeal. The four mem-
bers of the committee wrote or made personal appeals to friends or
acquaintances.
The psychology of these subscriptions is interesting. One woman
wrote that she was only a potential suffragist and therefore would
give only $5, the implication being that her financial possibilities
might increase with conversion; another woman sent $20 with a note
saying that she was not in the least interested in the cause but was
interested in the committee member who made the request; two men
who sent $5 each, frankly avowed they were “on the fence.” Per-

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
sonal relationship figured in such instances and at such a time.
Later in the campaign when organized opposition had had its effect
I doubt whether personal relationship could have crystallized sub-
scriptions out of anyone who had not subscribed to the tenets of the
suffragists. The Indifferents accented their indifference toward the
end of the campaign.
Concentration of energy could undoubtedly have raised the $325
to the $800 declared by the advertising experts to be the smallest
possible amount for street-car advertising. But during the weeks that
followed the formation of the committee, a doubt arose as to the
wisdom of spending such a sum in this particular way. Repeated in-
terviews with the representatives of the company disclosed a special
clause in their policy which permitted them to write special contracts
for less than three months for political propaganda. It might be
suggested here that it would be well to look for "special clauses” in
the beginning of a campaign. After the discovery of this “special
clause" the board of directors voted to advertise for one month at a
cost of $200, exclusive of printing the placards. However, with true
feminine genius the committee managed to get a bargain. Instead
of five hundred placards allotted by such a contract, six hundred were
placed in the cars and an extra week was thrown into the bargain
for good weight.
The placards were 11x14 inches in size: nine different texts were
used and on the advice of experts the placards were not crowded with
printed matter, and “the copy" was as crisp as possible. “Give your
girl the same chance as your boy,” “Women pay taxes, give those
who pay some say,” were two of the texts freely used. Abraham
Lincoln's endorsement of woman suffrage was printed on a great
many of the placards, followed by the interrogation “Do you agree
with Abraham Lincoln ?" The value of this interrogation is evident
for it puts the reader in the position of disagreeing with the great
martyred President unless he decides to vote for woman suffrage.
Governor Johnson's indorsement of woman suffrage was not followed
by an interrogation. Oh, we learned many things from those adver-
tising experts besides the suggestion that it was taking a chance to
ask the public whether it dared to take issue with a living Governor.
Each and every text had “Vote for Amendment 8, October 10th."
After the placards had been up two weeks it was decided that the use
of Amendment 8 was a menace and the original texts were reprinted
with "Vote for Woman Suffrage, Fourth Place on the Ballot," in
place of “Amendment 8.”
In the beginning of the campaign both the College League and
the majority of the delegates to the Interleague Conference had op-
posed calling the Suffrage Amendment by number, as we knew it
would not be, in all probability, in the 8th place on the ballot and
we feared a natural confusion arising from the 8th Amendment oc-

Propaganda Through Advertising Mediums
89
our
cupying some other place on the ballot. The number of the Amend-
ment did, however, creep into common use as a sort of slogan—"Vote
for the 8th Amendment,” and at the end of the campaign we re-
gretted that our protest had not been more emphatic, for we lost
votes through a confusion of the prominent, marginal 4 of place with
the less noticeable number of the amendment. All the trouble and
expense or reprinting part of our car texts might have been obviated,
had we persisted in ignoring the number of the Amendment.
The cars that run into Market Street were chosen as
messengers, and in some cars four placards were placed and in others
only two. Market street is the main artery of San Francisco, and the
committee reasoned that more people who might be influenced by
street-car advertising rode on these lines than on any other. It is
impossible to give any verified data about the results of this advertis-
ing. It was done at the end of a vivid campaign when every method
of attracting public attention by great public meetings, street-speak-
ing from automobiles, and bill-board advertisements was being
carried to the last point.
My personal opinion is that this form of advertising would be
more effective at the beginning of a campaign, and unless the
treasury permitted the use of larger spaces than we engaged I ques-
tion whether it is desirable to use it toward the end. In the begin-
ning it is difficult to bring to the attention of every elector the mere
fact that equal suffrage is an issue. In a city where the rate of
street-car advertising is not prohibitive, propaganda that was cleverly
written and frequently changed would be valuable. We found that
it was easy to get publicity in the newspapers, toward the end of the
campaign, when our wonderful public meetings, automobile street
speaking and other methods of spreading our gospel had forced even
the unfriendly papers to recognize us as “News!" I doubt if we
needed street-car publicity at that time. We spent $237.30 on this
venture.
Ernestine Black, Chairman.

CO-OPERATIVE ENTERPRISES.
Central Campaign Committee.
The Central Campaign Committee was formed in July while I
was doing some organizing work in Santa Barbara and Ventura
Counties. It consisted of five women, each a delegate from one of
the five suffrage societies in San Francisco which was doing State
work. The delegates were Mrs. Grant Taylor from the State Asso-
ciation, Mrs. Aylett Cotton from the Clubwomen's Franchise
League, Mrs. Robert A. Dean, from the Woman Suffrage Party, Miss
Maude Younger of the Wage Earners' League, and myself
delegate of the College League. When I returned from Southern
California I found myself chairman of this new and very important
committee which had been formed at the request of Mrs. James
Lees Laidlaw of New York. It was the desire of the Woman Suf-
frage Party of New York to help the women of California by sending
money and workers but it was felt that this help should be sent not
to any one organization but to all who were engaged in State cam-
paign work. The committee held frequent meetings, the most per-
fect harmony prevailed and our only sorrow was that we had not
had the funds and the workers sooner so that the State might have
been more carefully canvassed.
The State Association had had a number of organizers in the
field, as had the Clubwomen's Franchise League, and the College
League had done Contra Costa County carefully with its Blue Liner
in an automobile campaign. We tried not to conflict with work al-
ready done but, really, there is little danger of doing any region too
thoroughly. The great danger is not of overlapping but of leaving
whole regions untouched. Even when one organizer has been
through a district another can follow her and attract an entirely dif-
ferent set of people, so potent a thing is personality.
The first money we received was $350.00 contributed by the
College Equal Suffrage League. This was the only money con-
tributed by any of the associations whose delegates made up the
committee. Mrs. Annie K. Bidwell of Chico gave us $200; General
Horace Carpentier, the first Mayor of Oakland, California, now a
resident of New York, sent us $500 through Mr. Laidlaw; the Men's
League for Equal Suffrage of New York sent us $200; the Woman's
Suffrage Party sent us $180; the Rochester Political Equality Club
$280, and the remainder was of small sums of ten dollars and over
sent to me for suffrage work and turned in to this committee. The
whole fund was $1761.00. The money from New York was a tre-
mendous help, as it came at a time when the battle was raging most
fiercely, when we needed money tremendously but had no time to

Co-Operative Enterprises
91
stop to raise it. Besides this money, the New York suffragists from
their Self-Sacrifice Week raised the money to pay the railroad ex-
penses of three organizers and speakers to and from California and
the Chicago suffragists paid the railway expenses of Mrs. Catherine
Waugh McCullough. The expenses of these speakers while in the
State and some others were paid by the Central Campaign Com-
mittee.
The first piece of work done was the sending of Miss Margaret
Haley, the well-known Chicago teacher, and Mrs. Robert Dean, sec-
retary-treasurer of the Committee, on a tour which commenced in
Truckee and which took in most of the mountain towns along the
line of the Southern Pacific Railway as far down at Sacramento.
Miss Haley had come to California with the National Education As-
sociation and was available for her expenses. Mrs. Dean made a
splendid manager and also a good speech and added the California
touch. Most of their meetings were held in halls, as at that time we did
not realize the possibilities of the open-air meeting as we did afterwards.
Miss Jeanette Rankin, the organizer and speaker who had worked
in the Washington campaign, was the first arrival. She was sent at
once to Yolo County, which was well organized, but where a
speaker had been asked for. She had a number of successful meet-
ings there and then returned to speak with Dr. Aked in a big meet-
ing in Alameda, which opened the end of the campaign there. The
next day she went to Siskiyou County where a whirl of twelve meet-
ings had been arranged for. Siskiyou County was also well organ-
ized and all the arrangements had been perfectly made. It was a
hard trip with quantities of automobiling over mountain roads and
plenty of staging but the county went four to one for suffrage. We
knew it would go for suffrage and we were much criticized for
sparing a speaker for a county which was already well organized and
which was sure to vote for us, but the theory of the committee was
that large majorities should be worked up in places where the senti-
ment was favorable, and the result justified the theory. From Siski-
you Miss Rankin made a fifty-mile stage trip to Weaverville, the
county seat of Trinity County, where no work had been done. There
was only one paper in the county and not a single suffrage club.
Miss Rankin spoke in two Trinity towns and the county carried for
suffrage. From Trinity Miss Rankin returned into Shasta and Te-
hama Counties, where some work was done under conditions not
entirely favorable. From there she went to Butte County, which be-
fore her arrival was well organized and where she worked during the
county fair, took the suffrage moving pictures on a tour of the mines
and helped the local workers. Just a week before election Miss
Rankin was recalled to San Francisco, where she spoke three or
four times a day from then until October tenth, before street railway

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
employes, in factories, from automobiles in the street-wherever the
call came.
Miss Rankin's work was always effective.
Mrs. James B. Hume and Miss Blanche Morse did an excellent
piece of work for the Committee. They were sent to Humboldt and
Del Norte Counties in the most northwestern corner of California,
with four long automobile stage rides over the mountains. Humboldt
County had carried for suffrage in 1896 but nothing had been done
there in this campaign and there was not a suffrage club in the
county. The Socialist women were doing something but the suf-
fragists who were not Socialists feared that the county would be
lost and yet seemed unable to take the initiative. Mrs. Hume is a
former president of the California Federation of Women's Clubs and
Miss Morse was the Federation secretary. Naturally they appealed
strongly to club women. They spoke between heats at the races;
occupied pulpits on Sunday evenings, had receptions given them by
exclusive clubs and made suffrage so popular that the amendment car-
ried by large majorities in both counties.
Mrs. Helen Hoy Greeley and Mrs. A. C. Fisk came out from
New York together, as the gift of the Woman Suffrage Party. Mrs.
Greeley was taken from the train at Reno and sent on a trip to far-off
Modoc and Lassen Counties in the extreme northeast of California.
There was very little organization in Lassen County, none in Modoc,
but in both places Mrs. Greeley rallied the suffragists, made many
converts and landed the counties on the victorious side on October
tenth. The Lassen County women had not, previous to Mrs. Gree-
ley's coming, expected to carry their county.
As soon as Mrs. Greeley reached San Francisco after her arduous
journey, for she, too, had great distances to travel by stage, she was
sent to Sonoma County, a wine-growing county, where the situation
was difficult. There were a good
many suffragists in Sonoma County
and the press work had been admirably done, but there was fear
that the wine interests would prevent us from carrying the county.
Mrs. Greeley made mostly open-air speeches, had large crowds to
hear her and undoubtedly helped to work up our large majority in
the county.
On her return to San Francisco, Mrs. Greeley made a trip to
Sacramento, where she spoke. The rest of her time was given to
Oakland and San Francisco, where she spoke constantly several times
a day in halls and from automobiles during the last ten days of the
campaign. She was the chief speaker at the overflow meetings which
took place in front of Dreamland Rink, on the night of the last won-
derful rally of the campaign, when six thousand people crowded the
building and four thousand stood outside. She also spoke at the
overflow meeting which took place outside the Valencia Theater on
the occasion of the suffrage debate between Colonel Irish and Dr.
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Mrs. Fisk was sent at once to eastern Alameda County, where
there was grievous need for work. There she organized and spoke
most successfully. With Mrs. Greeley, Mrs. Fisk spoke at the Colo-
rado Experience meeting given by the College League at Scottish
Rite Hall and then went to Lake County. From there she took a
long stage ride to Solano County, where almost nothing had been
done and where she was successful in rousing an interest which car-
ried the county. Mrs. Fisk, Mrs. Greeley and Miss Rankin all worked
at the polls on election day, as did Miss Helen Todd. These women,
though among the best known suffrage organizers and speakers in
the country, did not think it beneath their dignity to stand at the
polls all day with the President and all the Directors of the College
Equal Suffrage League. This last pathetic effort of "indirect influ-
ence” in California was one which the workers will never forget.
Meanwhile Mrs. Catherine Waugh McCullough had come to
Southern California on the invitation of Mr. J. H. Braly and he had
offered her services to the Central Campaign Committee. We were
feeling that we had neglected the populous San Joaquin Valley,
though much work had been done there earlier in the campaign, and
Miss Gail Laughlin, Dr. Aked, Mrs. Mackrille, Mrs. Childs, Mr. Grant
Taylor and others had made many speeches in the important towns
and cities. We were very glad to have Mrs. McCullough make a
somewhat more comprehensive tour of the San Joaquin Valley and con-
sequently Mr. Grant Taylor was sent down from San Francisco to
survey the ground, to meet Mrs. McCullough and to divide the time
at his disposal as advantageously as possible. We found by experi-
ence that two people working together do three times as much work
as one alone and whenever it was possible we worked our speakers
in pairs. Mrs. McCullough's talks were made almost entirely in the
open air and were very effective. She was in San Francisco for the
big Dreamland Rink rally, spoke in San Jose and Oakland and left
for Chicago just before election day.
Except for a few local workers who were engaged for very short
periods or for talks in single towns this was the most important
work done by the committee. When all the bills were paid there
was a very small balance which was put in the savings bank and used
for suffrage work in some other campaign State. Two hundred dol-
lars was contributed by this committee toward the work of Miss
Gail Laughlin's Election Day Committee which had charge of the
work at the polls, the watching of the count and the watching of the
ballots during the exciting days which followed. Much of Miss
Laughlin's work was State work, as a watcher was placed at every
county seat in California when it was found that the vote was so
close and the majority so small that it must be watched.
There will always be, I suppose, a feeling of pride which makes
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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
States to help in its campaign. This feeling is very strong in Cali-
fornia and many resolutions had been passed against asking the
National Association to take any part in the campaign. In spite of
this somewhat churlish attitude the National assisted California most
generously financially. This same feeling cropped up in some places
in California against the Eastern speakers so generously sent to us.
It is true, undoubtedly, that a mediocre local woman can often do
more effective work than a brilliant woman who knows nothing of
local conditions, but when all is said and done there is always a
dearth of workers at the end of a campaign. It is a question of out-
side workers or none. There are comparatively few women who can
leave their homes or their professions or their businesses to tour the
State. We had a great many workers who could give almost all day
in their home cities, if they were homekeepers, or a part of the day
if they were business or professional women but who could not go
away for weeks at a time. I shall always feel that California would
not have been carried had it not been for the time and money
which our Eastern brothers and sisters gave to us so generously
during the last two months. We had not the workers, our funds were
rapidly being exhausted; we had all of us given of time and strength
and money to the limit, when this timely aid came. Let us give
credit where credit is due.
Mabel Craft Deering, Chairman.
Lantern Slides.
The idea of using lantern slides in suffrage propaganda came to
us through Mrs. E. L. Watson, president of the California Equal
Suffrage Association, for early in the day she had outlined the plan
in a circular letter on campaign methods. Mrs. B. Grant Taylor, of
the same association, was made the chairman of a committee to get
a collection of slides together and she describes her work in the fol-
lowing paragraphs:
“We first investigated the possibility of moving pictures, but dis-
covered this would be beyond our means, and was also impracticable
with the short time we had in which to have films made and to get
them placed in the Circuit, or Trust. I then turned my attention to
the stereopticon slide plan, believing that these could be used in three
ways:
"First, inserted between the moving pictures, by friendly theater
men.
“Second, used with ordinary lanterns, supplemented with a talk
in connection with church, lodge and school entertainments.
“Third, on outside screen upon the streets, with advertisements
or political returns.
"All of these methods were actually employed during the cam-

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paign. While we were investigating these possibilities, we were
called into consultation with Miss Belle Miller of the College League,
who lent us helpful suggestions. We found, however, that many of
our ideas could not be carried out. To make special slides would be
too expensive, and again the short time was a decided limitation.
- "I went to Mr. George Kanzee, a large dealer in slides, who
proved a courteous and earnest suffragist. Out of his collection of
pictures we selected those which illustrated certain suffrage argu-
ments, and he also made a few special slides for us. Of these there
were Lincoln's head with his famous suffrage sentiment; several car-
toons from the Woman's Journal; one of the English posters, and a
postal card or two. We found, ready for use, family pictures, which
we contrasted with the picture of the widow wage-earner; there were
pictures of children playing in the streets, their only playground,
juvenile court children; dependent children in an institution; there
was a picture of a baby with his mother, then with his bottle, then
a picture of the milk depot; after this group came a slide with the
words: 'Between the cow and the baby are the milk-man and milk
inspector.' There were several patriotic pictures, and a set showing
women in various industries.
"Altogether there were forty slides—thirty pictures and ten let-
tered slides—which could be used continuously with a talk, or broken
into short sets, each illustrating a suffrage argument.
“The College League approved of our committee's work, and or-
dered three of our sets, one for use in Contra Costa County, and two
sets for the Bay Counties.
“Our committee sent out two hundred and fifty letters telling of
the plan to the local unions of the Women's Christian Temperance
organizations. We charged thirteen dollars for a set of forty slides,
or two dollars for one of the small groups. The State Association
furnished seven sets of slides as a gift to that number of counties.
Five sets were ordered by other counties. Two sets were taken by
organizers into distant counties and used with effect. We have rea-
son to believe that the method proved itself good in nickelodeons
in the outlying districts of big cities and in country towns.
“Mrs. Ida Finney Mackrille, who was on my committee, gave a
number of talks in connection with the pictures, several times in
nickelodeons, once in one of the big theaters in San Francisco, and
once at an Industrial Fair. In several counties the pictures were
thrown on outside screens, before large audiences. Always they were
received in a friendly spirit, and with amusement at the women's per-
sistence in getting their demand before the people at unexpected
times and places.
“For a little less than two hundred dollars we know that thou-
sands of people, many of whom would never have gone to hear a
suffrage speech, listened to our arguments."

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
Of her use of the slides Mrs. Mackrille says:
“We would go to the proprietor of a nickelodeon and make a
business proposition, something like this: 'If you will show our suf-
frage slides, in addition to your regular run, allowing an accompany-
ing explanation by one of our speakers—in all to occupy fifteen min-
utes—we will advertise your show for that night through the news-
papers, posters and handbills.'
“We were not once refused the privilege. As a matter of fact it
was a favorable arrangement for the showman, for we always secured
a good audience.”
Labor Day Float.
On Labor Day, 1911, the usual parade was to be enlivened by
decorated floats, representing the amendments that had been endorsed
by the Labor Unions.
Miss Maude Younger, of the Wage-Earners' League, and also a
member of the College Equal Suffrage League, secured permission
from the authorities to enter a float, to symbolize the 8th Amend-
ment, in the Labor Day procession. This was possible because Union
Labor had given its endorsement to woman suffrage.
After gaining the concession—to allow this amendment to be rep-
resented among the others approved by labor—Miss Younger re-
ported that The Wage Earners' Suffrage League, being made largely
of girls of limited leisure, could not arrange for a satisfactory float
in the short time before Labor Day, and she urged the College
League to take over the enterprise. This opportunity to visualize be-
fore tens of thousands of people the need of the working-woman for
the vote, was one not to be let slip.
The College League detached several workers, already over-
whelmed with chairmanships, to call a meeting of delegates from
the other organizations, to make immediate plans for the float. A
small committee, representing several other leagues, who also con-
tributed toward the expense, met and worked out a design. Miss
Younger supplied the names of a number of working-girls who
would represent their own trades in the groups on the float, and her-
self agreed to sit with the driver and hold the reins.
A heavy platform was built over a truck drawn by six black
horses—a team that had been a prize-winner-each horse wore a
yellow blanket lettered in black with the words, “Votes for Women."
A smaller platform surmounted the large one and upon this were
posed two classical figures representing California asking Justice for
the ballot. Below, and all about the sides of this raised group, were
realistic groups of women-working-women-busy with the materials
of their actual trades. One was a group of cannery girls pasting
labels on fruit cans with deft, accustomed strokes; another was of

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real shop-girls working at a ribbon counter; and another a type-
writer at her machine. A trained nurse, in uniform, and a college
woman, in cap and gown, had come to stand for their professions.
The most graceful group was a mother surrounded by young
children, and the most significant, a woman driving her sewing-
machine as she “finished” coarse overalls for the jobber.
At the four corners of the float, four great shield-shaped banners, in
white and yellow, and raised high on tall flagstaffs, carried to the
crowd the explanation of the float, with the familiar phrases of this
war of peace.
As, in the midst of the parade, the suffrage float swung down
Van Ness avenue, the thousands, roped back by the police, saw from
far off the high-swinging, boldly lettered banners, wreathed in fresh
oak garlands, and as they saw they clapped and cried out, or hissed,
the tossing emblems. Laughter and greetings came down from the
crowded windows, all along the miles of the parade's course. Down
toward the ferry several sober members of the College League ran
for blocks abreast of the float, to try to seize the spirit of the crowd,
as our yellow challenge ran through the people's coolness like a
hot iron through water, and raised a passing mist of passion from the
crowd.
The beautiful horses, the chrysanthemums and garlands about
the low rail of the car, the high banners and repeated stress of phrase
and color made the demonstration pleasant to the senses, but its real
significance lay in the fact that working-women, in plain working-
clothes, gave up their holiday to endure the severe fatigue of being
jolted through the streets for hours, placarded with great signs say-
ing, "These are the women who need the vote.” The sincerity of
the appeal, the plain, tired faces of some of the women reached men
who know what it is to work for wages, and what it is to ask for a
withheld right.
When at the foot of Market street, in the square in front of the
ferry, the float at last lurched to a heavy standstill, and the hot, be-
decked horses were led away, the women who had dressed the float
came to strip it. Then the crowd closed in about the platform cheer-
ing and clamoring for flowers and bits of ribbon, calling, "Speech!
Speech !" until the workers, who had been up since dawn, mounted
to the half-stripped boards and once more, to hundreds of quieted
men, spoke of what political equality means to working-women. And
once more came the quick understanding response of the man on the
street to the woman in earnest. A workingman who was hurrying
by turned his head and secretly spun a silver dollar to the platform
and dived away in the crowd. These were the men who, a few weeks
later, lowered the adverse vote in San Francisco, from what it had
been in 1896, by more than thirteen thousand counts.
Out of our experience with the Labor Day Float few practical

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
of
ideas cleared themselves: Have a chairman who knows the city and
how to lay hands quickly on all sorts of materials; don't make your
float pretty at the expense of conveying a real idea in a genuine way
-had our working women been beauties from a chorus the effect of
our float would have been lost; avoid a trite and classical design,
people are classical when they have nothing to say; have big banners
and bold lettering that your demonstration may express, from a long
way off, the vigor and the courage of your faith.
Report on Suffrage Campaign in Sacramento.
It was reported to the College Equal Suffrage League, about the
first of September, that the women of the State Capital, at Sacramento,
felt the need of help in their suffrage campaign. I was sent there,
about two weeks later, to see what the League could do. I found that
the chief work that had been attempted had been begun early in the
summer, by the representatives of the State League, and had not been
followed up because of want of money and of speakers.
The first difficulty to be met was the lack of money. The College
League had agreed to pay my expenses, and later gave me $25.00 to
buy suffrage literature. The local State Branch had already spent all
that they could raise.
The second difficulty was lack of time to stimulate real interest
among the people.
The third, was lack of trained speakers and workers to organize
meetings, canvass and raise money.
There was, moreover, a diffusion of interest in this campaign,
because of the fact that there were twenty-three amendments to be
voted upon at this election, of which the woman suffrage amendment
was reckoned about fourth in point of general importance.
The attention of the women was still further distracted by a very
serious local liquor issue—whether saloons should be permitted in a
newly annexed suburban residence district. The members of the
W. C. T. U. felt that the liquor issue was perhaps the more
important.
I knew when I went there, that the most influential body of women
in the city was The Woman's Council, a very small representative body
composed of voluntary delegates from every woman's society in the
city—sewing societies, temperance, charity, mission and Church organiza-
tions—whose object was civic and social betterment of the com-
munity. This Club had shortly before shown itself very active in a
matter of local improvement and were about to plunge into the
saloon fight; although suffrage would be only one of several interests
I thought the Council would be a promising field to begin with, and I
found it so. The second day after I arrived, I got a hearing and pre-

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390
Salts
3D Pus
sented a plan for coöperative campaigning among all the women's
societies where there was a majority in favor of suffrage. There
were only twenty-five women present but each one was a leader in
her own organization and an immediate response came from those who
were themselves suffragists. Some months before the Council had
voted to endorse woman suffrage but it had never voted any money
or organized any campaign work. At this meeting it endorsed my
rough plans, voted $25.00 and promised some coöperation.
Meanwhile the State Suffrage League had responded to the call
of the Sacramento branch for help and sent Mrs. E. V. Spencer, a
lawyer well known throughout the city and State, who at once agreed
to coöperate with me. The plans adopted by them and accepted
by the Woman's Council and the State Suffrage League were as
follows:
Press and Publicity-Two young college-bred women of some
experience.
Interviewing merchants to arrange for addressing their employes on
the premises and to ask them to dress their windows in yellow with
suffrage mottoes and banners. Committee of local women who knew
the merchants.
Street Speaking-Representative of the State League.
Mass Meeting-To be arranged jointly by League and Council.
Committee to arrange for short speeches before Church societies
and clubs.
House to House Canvass—Chairman from W. C. T. U.
Election Day Committee—To be appointed by League and Council
jointly.
Committee to reach the S. P. Carshop men, Labor Unions, Y. W.
C. A.
Salvation Army.
All committees were to report to their respective organizations ;
matters not included in the typewritten plan were to be referred to a
joint conference of the officers of the two organizations and the two
leaders. All were cautioned to avoid overlapping in work and matters
of discretion were referred informally to Mrs. Spencer and myself, who
stayed at the same hotel and worked hand in hand.
At the beginning it was generally believed that it would be quite
impossible to carry the city for suffrage because of the opposition of the
liquor interests, the apathy of the more intelligent classes and the
lack of money and of adequate time for a well ordered attack. As
will be seen by the plan outlined above, we merely jumped in and
got a hearing wherever it was possible.
There were only two or three women in the town who could or
would speak at meetings; therefore Mrs. Spencer and I spoke several
times a day at department stores, for ten minutes at noon or at six
o'clock; at church societies and clubs in the afternoons and evenings.

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
The Southern Pacific authorities declined to allow us to speak to the
men in the yards, where about six thousand men are employed, because
of their rule against allowing labor agitators to speak there, but they
were not unfriendly and suggested that we meet the men at the gates
when they came out at night and give them literature. We did this
with some timidity and were most cordially treated. The men volun-
teered remarks as they took the yellow circulars: "All right, lady.
I'll vote for you!” “Sure, I will!” “You bet !” and other rough but
cordial phrases. We did not say anything to them unless they spoke
to us, as a rule, but after the first hundred went by we began to
enjoy it. Only the conspicuously foreign men refused the papers or
looked unfriendly.
The Secretary of the local Labor Council got permission for us
to distribute our literature at the large hall where Mr. Gompers spoke
to a crowd of several thousand people. We stood at doorways and on
the gallery stairs asking the men to vote for us.
At the principal department stores the proprietors invited their
employes to remain for ten minutes to hear us, and themselves
undertook to have circulars distributed at all the counters. They had
never done this for any cause before, they said, and we felt that it
meant a good deal when several hundred employes were willing to
listen, after a long day of work, Some of the smaller stores were
reluctant to dress their windows but when they found that all the larger
stores were going to do so, they also fell in line.
The school authorities were not unfavorable and permitted us to
distribute circulars to the children when they went home. In this way
we reached a very large number of families that could not have been
reached otherwise; for it was very soon discovered that it would be
quite impossible to complete the house to house canvass which the
ladies of the W. C. T. U. had undertaken.
During the last week of the campaign a mass meeting was held
in the High School Auditorium. The young college women of the
Publicity Committee, some women librarians and a few school teachers
worked up this meeting. There was a large audience of really repre-
sentative people, good music, and much enthusiasm. To our surprise at
least half the audience was composed of substantial men.
Estimating roughly the value of the different lines of work laid
down on the original plan, I should conclude: that the press and
publicity work was very successful and had much to do with the final
vote. But one leading paper was already in favor before we went
into the campaign and the other was not actively against suffrage-
in other words, we were lucky. The department store work was
apparently successful as to friendly relations; but we have no means
of knowing how many votes it brought us for more than half of the
employes were women. The street speaking was given up because we
were told that it had been tried early in the spring with unsatisfactory

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results; and also because we could not fill all the demands for speakers
at organized meetings, and these seemed to promise more. I do not
feel sure, however, that this was not a mistake, if we had been able
to get a good outdoor speaker.
The work with the labor men was the most remunerative of all for
the amount of effort given to it; and next to it, the talks to a succession
of small church and social societies seemed to bring the most response.
I did not attempt to raise money and I suppose that the entire amount
spent by the College League, the State League, and local individuals
would not reach $150. But I do not think the lack of money was
anything like the handicap that the lack of trained speakers proved
to be; and above all, the late entrance into the field that made con-
certed effort out of the question.
We had very little hope that the city could be carried for suffrage-
we were madly working to reduce what we believed to be an inevitably
adverse vote. As it turned out, the city went for suffrage by a very
small majority of a few hundred votes, chiefly owing to the favorable
Union Labor vote and the vote of the newly annexed suburban district,
composed of people of very moderate means who were probably tem-
perance and Church workers.
The experience there suggests—what I think was true of many
other country places in the State—that there was a very large body
of neutral men voters who hardly thought of suffrage seriously and
had not decided how they would vote until they saw a small body
of women struggling against great odds. The suffrage movement
produces opposite effects on men of three general classes: On men
of wealth it offends their sense of propriety because their own
womenkind are economically dependent and in their judgment do not
need “rights” for self-protection. Moreover people of this class have
a stricter code of social behavior and measure women, especially, by it.
Men who are tradesmen, clerks, subordinates of various kinds, are used
to making women partners in their affairs and to seeing them work
hard for the family welfare. They understand, therefore, women's
problems better and have a good deal of sympathy with any struggle for
liberty. These men are almost wholly American born and retain to a
greater extent than any other single group the American sense of
fair play and the more generous attitude toward women.
Among the working men, one finds two distinct types: Those very
much Americanized and unionized, whose general sympathies are
always with their own wives and daughters who have exactly the same
sort of struggles for better wages, hours and conditions, as them-
selves; and, those, less American, usually foreign born, who still re-
tain the foreign ideas of the necessary subordination of women.
To
this latter class suffrage is not only offensive but preposterous. This
contrast among working people was perfectly clear in Sacramento
where the car-shop employes are not very well unionized. If my

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
analysis is correct, the best hope of the suffragists is in the comfortable,
hard-working American middleclass and in the upper organized labor-
ing group.
One other conviction which was produced by the Sacramento
situation was confirmed by a later experience of Oakland conditions:
The liquor, that is to say the saloon, interests and all their adherents are
uniformly and everywhere against equal suffrage. Street speaking,
therefore, and mass meetings in the lower streets of Oakland and
Sacramento would, in my judgment, be wasted, for the crowd is
largely composed of men of the transient, loafing, hard-living class,
unmarried and without any sympathies for women. The same effort
in the decent working residence districts, I believe, was much more
effective.
As to the amount of money necessary to carry on a good campaign
it seems to me that the Sacramento experience shows that very little
money is necessary if you have time to appeal to the mass of the
people, rather than to the wealthy minority, and if you get enough
energetic, competent people to give their time to the work. That is,
workers and time are far more important to success than large funds.
Funds are necessary for supplying plenty of printed matter and for
saving the workers' energy.
Mary Roberts Coolidge, Chairman.
Post-Card Day.
Post-Card Day, which we had spoken of from time to time during
the summer, actually arrived but five days before California's great day,
October 10, 1911. There had seemed to be no time for this piece of
work during the full months of the campaign, but when there were but
seven days left, on the morning of the 3rd of October, the City Election
Day Committee said: “Leave nothing undone that will carry the
message to another voter. Arrange for a Post-Card Day.”
So a chairman was appointed. She found the stock of post-cards
in the College League headquarters low, and the other organizations to
whom she sent to ask for coöperation short, both of cards and workers.
Delegates were, however, called from the other leagues and stock was
taken of all available cards. Fresh supplies were struck off from the
plates that we had; ten thousand yellow cards bearing a facsimile of
the ballot, so far as it related to equal suffrage, were ordered from the
printer; a rubber stamp for smearing the message, of the place on the
ballot of our amendment, was bought to add that reminder to our
picture cards—five hundred of these had been freshly reproduced by
photograph from our “Vote for Women” prize poster, and a thousand
of lithographed reproduction, which we could sell, at a slight profit, for
one cent each. This was a beginning.

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p!
Committeemen were detailed to have broad bands of ribbon printed
for the sellers to wear, to buy dozens of bolts of narrow ribbon for
tying the cards into five and ten-cent packages, to rubber-stamp
thousands of cards, to arrange for having thirty or more girls and
young women stationed for card-selling, on the morning of the fifth,
from the Ferry Building to Van Ness Avenue, and to escort the
shyer venders to the photographer's to have attractive pictures made of
them for the papers.
After these preliminaries, permission had to be gained from the
Chief of Police which would allow us to place our venders on the
streets. This was a mere form, as our tactics had been, in all our
work, the opposite of militant and the city authorities had grown
steadily more friendly to our wishes. The Chief's only condition in this
case was that we furnish him with a list of the localities where we
proposed to sell cards, that he might instruct his officers not to molest
us.
We had during the campaign received so much courtesy from the
various department stores that we did not hesitate to ask that our
venders might be stationed at their doors, or have permission to go
inside and rest during the day. Several firms suggested that our sales-
women come inside their shops, and offered seats and tables to make the
work easier for them.
TCCS
On October 5th the morning papers showed pictures of several of
our workers with “Post-Card Day” printed on a broad yellow ribbon
worn like the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, each with a yellow
chrysanthemum in her buttonhole, a basketful of cards on one arm and a
package held ingratiatingly forth. Our headquarters were gay with
a long table piled high with little packages of beribboned postcards, a
bookkeeper was recording the number of cards given out to each
worker, assigning her stand to each, appointing her relief corp and
keeping a record of the money brought in.
Several women went about from one vender to another, carrying
new supplies of cards, encouraging the sellers and hearing their ac-
counts of the temper of the crowds towards suffrage. One of the
volunteer venders said of the day: "I stood on a street where
there is only an ordinary amount of traffic and sold postcards to the
amount of five dollars in about three hours. I approached all the
people I could reach and assured them we were not working for
money but merely desired to get the cards into circulation. I urged
those who bought the cards to send them to people in California. Those
who bought the cards were, I believe, favorable to the movement, but
they probably influenced many friends with the messages they sent.
"It seems to me that the sale of postcards was advantageous.
It brought the suffrage question before some people who did not
attend meetings. This was accomplished by the opening it gave for a
discussion of the question with the purchasers of cards and the re-

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quest that we made, particularly of those who said they were opposed
to the movement, that they attend a public meeting.”
More than fifteen thousand postcards were sold during the day.
While they were sold for very little, the money taken in covered the
cost of printing, the badges, the ribbon and the flowers. They were
the last bits of printing that carried the California women's request for
political freedom through the State. It was but one of the many
pieces of work that we can look back upon and say that it was worth
doing, although we do not know what per cent. of the vote it in any
way affected.
In planning a Post-Card Day have plenty of cards; get a good
write-up in the papers, with attractive pictures of the venders, as the
voter likes a picture in his morning paper of the thing he is certain
to see during the day. (In connection with this I want to say that
every suffrage organization in a campaign should have an official
photographer, an enthusiastic amateur with a camera that works; a
hundred times a good picture gets a story in the papers that would
otherwise fail of publication, and pictures help the voter to visualize
the progress of the campaign.)
Although it was by chance that we had the day so late, we came
to see that the last days of the campaign are the best for this sort of
public demonstration. Just before the voter goes to the polls it once
more brings the reminder of where upon the ballot appears the
amendment that gives to the women the vote for which they are
asking
Frank B. Patterson, Chairman.
Oakland Election Day Work.
Eight days before election it was arranged that I should take over
the entire arrangements for election day suffrage work in Oakland,
at a time when almost every available worker of our league was
already preempted. Fortunately for me the Suffrage Amendment
League ladies who had headquarters across the street came over and
offered not merely to coöperate but to put themselves under my direction
if I would make a plan for them as well as for the College Equal
Suffrage League workers. I accepted the offer and, as it turned out,
they gave me far more help than the College League could do in
supplying workers. It came about that the College League provided
money and printed matter and the Amendment League, which was-
most fortunately-composed of old residents of Oakland who had been
engaged in temperance and other social and Church work, provided
the staff.
We advertised widely in the local papers for women to volunteer
to do precinct work on election day; as the women came in we put .

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them down on the card-file for whatever they were willing to do. It
was very difficult to get them to agree to stand on the street and at
the end we had only half as many women—about 240—as we had
hoped to secure for this duty. Because of the lack of time to go out
and drum up more, we simply planted those we had, on the day before
election, wherever they preferred, either in their own precincts or else-
where. As a consequence, our precinct map was full in some places
and without poll workers, or perhaps only one or two, in others.
We provided those who stood at the polls with an abundance of
yellow circulars of various kinds to hand out to voters as they ap-
proached; and cautioned them not to get within the 100-yard line
and not to ask for votes. I particularly warned all of them not to
speak to any man or even to urge him to take the leaflets, but simply
to offer them as they passed toward the booths. If any man stopped
and asked questions, they could talk as much as they chose. This
restraint on their part brought praise from a good many men and
many men stopped to talk.
Seventh street and the adjoining blocks in Oakland is a railway
street with several saloons to the block and a very large body of
voters. There were fourteen voting booths quite close together, either
on or very near Seventh street and many women preferred not to go to
such a district. I succeeded, however, in getting two for each booth
throughout the day and was careful to pick out women over thirty
years of age who had earned their own living or were accustomed
to meeting working men, such as teachers, and settlement and charity
workers.
It is amusing now to look back upon these elaborate arrange-
ments, for during the whole day all these women were most courteously
treated. Grocery men brought out chairs for them to sit upon; bakers
brought out cakes and pies for them to eat; election booth officials—
who were all saloon appointees and uniformly opposed to suffrage-
invited them into booths to see how it was done and to discuss
suffrage.
One particular example of the general courtesy may be quoted.
Earlier in the week a young colored woman came to offer the services
of the Colored Women's Suffrage League on election day. I told her
to pick out the places where there were the largest groups of colored
people there is no exclusively colored ward in Oakland), and I
would take special pains to have my husband protect themn. She said
quite calmly that they could take care of themselves and she did not
think they would have any trouble. They undertook the responsibility
for two precincts, furnished relays of women all day, and had no
trouble whatever. Men stopped and asked questions and treated them
respectfully.
Through the difficulties caused by the shortness of time the Oak-
land experience was very unsatisfactory but even so I do not think that

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
it was work thrown away for it accomplished several definite things;
the men of Oakland were thoroughly convinced that a large number of
respectable, home-keeping women wanted to vote and wanted it enough
to make personal sacrifices for it: they realized that women do not
stand on the street twelve hours a day for fun and that suffrage was
no longer a laughing matter. If we had been comeplled to make
another campaign, the men would have helped us more and taken us
more seriously.
But the best result of all was the effect upon women themselves :
they acquired courage for things of which they had always been
afraid before and a certain self-respect from having risked something
for a cause they believed in. The effect has been evident since in the
energy and sense with which they have taken up civic reforms in their
own localities and the seriousness with which they have tried to
prepare themselves to use the ballot intelligently.
Moreover, women had been told and had generally believed that
they could not work together-do team work—and have proved for
themselves quite the contrary. Nothing was more conspicuous in the
places where I worked than the astonishing unanimity of the women
workers of all classes; the way in which they submerged instantly and
almost without discussion their church and social lines and their
natural differences of opinion, in the larger issue. The common interest
of a great cause overcame all petty social differences and in the months
since suffrage was won, women of all ranks have shown themselves
everywhere capable of coöperating in public matters.in
Out of my whole experience of six weeks in three different places
and under varied circumstances, I find a sort of residuum of clearly
defined opinions: it seems to me a waste of time to try to make
suffrage fashionable, i. e., to get exclusive society people to take it up
in the hope that plain people will be impressed and adopt it. The
suffrage cause was won in California in the country districts by plain,
mostly middle-aged domestic women and country school teachers, with
the help of a few highly trained, eloquent, and self-devoted public
speakers sent in from outside. Country men, in the West, respect a
woman who works and stands by her husband's side in the midst of
some hardship; and the women speakers who came to us and who
were developed on the ground were, for the most part, women
who had earned their living and knew how to appeal to men's sense
of justice. It is highly significant that the same districts voted for
suffrage that had two years earlier vote the progressive ticket. In any
similar campaign I should strongly urge that the greater part of the
effort be spent in the smaller towns and country districts among the
intelligent working people. After all, each man has only one vote
and it is far easier to convert such men to suffrage than it is to bring
in the indifferent business men, the saloon men and their hangers on,
the transients in a city or the wealthier and notoriously conservative.
Mary Roberts Coolidge, Chairman.

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Report on Woman Suffrage Election Day Work.
..
The contaminating effect of polling-places upon women, as de-
scribed by anti-suffrage orators, must have touched the imaginations
even of some stanch suffragists. To stand a hundred feet from one
of these unholy, and peculiarly masculine places; to hand leaflets to
voters indicating the position upon the ballot of a certain amendment,
to enter, as official watchers, the polling places themselves and in
tallying the count to sit there until midnight with creatures of the
same dire sex as our husbands and fathers—this surely was a feat for
a few brave spirits! But no sooner had we grasped the idea that
there were women who could do this thing than we were told by
political experts, who had done practical work upon reform legisla-
tion, that in no other way can the proponents of legislation, which
is being fought by strong interests, guard against the chance of being
"counted out” by fraud. The moral effect of standing quietly in
our places and showing what types of women were really deeply con-
cerned in this movement was another important phase of the election
day demonstration; but the chief and urgent matter was to guard
the fruits of our long struggle, and to do this not a few but at least
a thousand San Francisco women must stand near the polls, and
watch the count.
The group to whom this project was first unfolded was the
board of directors of the College Equal Suffrage League, women
who had, happily, learned to apply, without words or theory, as a
mere rule of thumb, the idea which Lord Nelson said had shaped his
spirit for its destiny, that, “the measure of a man's greatness is his
ability to take responsibility.”
Now that we have had one year of practical experience, in a
State where women vote, a year that has made us familiar with the
neat little tents and wooden booths where women go-many of them
with their husbands—and put a piece of folded paper in a harmless
ash-can, lying on a bench, it is almost impossible to realize how this
Election Day program once sounded.
We do know that it is a big, tedious job to get a thousand trust-
worthy women to volunteer to stand on the street, on a certain day,
from six in the morning until six at night, and then go into the booth
at night and tally the count on an amendment. We know that it re-
quires good management to get the women to want to make the
promise-especially this first time—and that it is dull, card-cata-
loguing work, requiring disciplined patience, to get the names, ad-
dresses and locations of the volunteers straightened out, by untrained
and unpaid workers. The record shows that, in the end, it was not
possible to distribute the volunteers evenly in the various parts of
the city, but to get them together and apportion their work was
something to accomplish in less than a full month.
All the suffrage associations saw that this task was one that re-

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quired a full coöperation Time would be consumed in working out a
feasible coöperative plan, but by that time we all knew that this is
the inevitable price of coöperation About four weeks before election
day two representatives from each of the nine suffrage associations
of the city met and appointed Miss Gail Laughlin, of Colorado, chair-
man of the Woman Suffrage Election Day Committee.
This Committee of nineteen acted until the end of the campaign
as an executive board, to formulate and carry out plans for Election
Day, without referring back to their mother organizations for au-
thority to act.
Miss Laughlin had, as a permanent office force to work out plans
with her, Miss Miriam Michelson and Dr. Mary Sperry. Miss
Schlingheyde, Mrs. Chapin and Miss Sullivan carried much of the
work, with a varying group of volunteers.
A big mass meeting was immediately called to enlist volunteers,
at the Golden Gate Commandery Hall. Short appeals for workers
were made by each representative of the nine suffrage societies.
Cards were distributed, to be filled in with name, address and pre-
cinct number of the worker. On the cards several questions were
asked. Would the volunteer work all or part of the day? Would
she act as watcher of the count at night? Would she supply a place
of rest with food for workers on Election Day? Would she give
the use of an automobile on October 10th?
To this appeal, and to those made later through the news-
papers, which printed coupons making the same call for volunteers
and asking the same questions, there finally came this response:
*Total number of workers...
.1066
Number of men volunteers..
118
Number of men and women as watchers.
329
Number working all day.
492
Number working part of day.
396
Number offering food and a resting-place.
78
Number offering use of automobiles...
4
As those volunteering for the whole day were often watchers also,
the total number of workers is less than the sum of those offering to
do especial things.
* The figures for this table were compiled from the card indexes, by the kind -
ness of Miss Cerf and Miss Gassaway.
It was impossible to make the figures absolutely correct, as the sets of record
cards for two of the eighteen city districts are missing. Figures for the missing
districts, the 37th and the 40th, are therefore computed, by the editor, from the
adjacent 39th district. Owing to the absence of the Chairman of the Woman Suf-
frage City Election Committee from this State, the facts for this report have had
to be recovered from a dozen different sources. The report would have been impos-
sible to reconstruct, from the scattered records, but for the work of Miss Schling-
heyde and Mrs. Orlow Black.

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The money contributed by the coöperating Associations for the
Woman Suffrage City Election Committee was:
California Equal Suffrage Association.
. $300.00
Susan B. Anthony Club.....
300.00
The College Equal Suffrage League.
300.00
Woman Suffrage Party.
239.75
The Clubwomen's Franchise League.
150.00
Equal Suffrage League.
85.00
Wage Earners' League..
30.00
Glen Park Club.....
5.00
• • •
Total
. . $1409.75
About $75.00 was contributed in small sums by individuals.
A rather interesting item in this list is the $30.00, entered as
from the Wage Earners' League. This sum was the result of an
impromptu auction of three little hand-made articles sent by a young
country girl, as all that she could give.
A generous contribution of their headquarters in the Lick Build-
ing was made by the Woman Suffrage Party, and all the work of the
committee was transacted from these rooms. Maps of each city dis-
trict hung on the walls of the headquarters and a shifting corps of
people worked, day after day, locating volunteers who had sent in
an address, giving no clue to their precinct or district.
Two complete sets of card indexes were made from the cards and
from the coupons, the first a name, and the second a district index.
By the district index it was possible to find how many volunteers
there were in a certain district. Separate files were made of those
who would open their homes as places of rest and refreshment to the
street workers.
There was, also, an index of "Free Lances.” These were volun-
teers who—in the cause of domestic peace-preferred to work outside
of their home precincts, and others who wished to be so classified
that they might be sent, at the last moment, where they were most
needed.
There were not enough automobiles offered to make an index of
them necessary.
The automobiles that were lent were to be used to take food to
those who could not leave their posts and to carry lame and sick
suffragists to the polls to vote. An automobile bill for over two hun-
dred and eighty dollars shows the additional cost of machines hired
for district captains, to supply leaflets and cards to workers all over
the city, and to keep the plan of the day's work co-ordinated.
For each district Miss Laughlin appointed a captain who had a
list of all the volunteers in her district, from these the district cap-
tain appointed her own precinct captains. Difficulties of any sort

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
were to be reported by the worker to her precinct captain and, if too
complicated for her solution, the precinct captain was to report to
her ranking officer, and so on to the Chairman, Miss Laughlin, at
headquarters. As each district captain was supplied with an auto-
mobile, “trouble” could reach headquarters promptly. This was ar-
ranged to give workers backing, in case of disagreeable complications
near the polls, in registering a “challenge” of the count, or if there
was any gross personal rudeness. The actual use made of them was
in supplying materials used in such different quantities in different
thoroughfares, and in conveying that sense of watchful purpose which
is never, perhaps, entirely wasted.
The day before election Miss Laughlin called together all her dis-
trict captains and instructed them what in various emergencies
would be their duties, and their legal rights.
On Election Day, workers reported for duty at six o'clock in the
morning, at the stations assigned them. Each was given her silk
badge and her scarlet ticket of "official watcher of the count,” gotten
from the San Francisco Election Day Commissioners. The free
lances reported to Miss Laughlin at five forty-five and were dis-
tributed at that time, and redistributed, when need arose, during the
day, as messages, by telephone or messenger, came from district cap-
tains.
Where it was possible two women were put near each booth. In
some cases they spoke to the voter, asking a favorable consideration
of the suffrage amendment; but the more common, and perhaps the
better plan, was silently to hand the voter one of the leaflets printed
in bold type with a few short, crisp suffrage arguments; then if the
voter lingered to discuss the issue of his own accord to enter frankly
with him into the matter. There were precincts, all through the
city, where a continuous all-day discussion on woman suffrage went
forward without the worker once starting the talk. Her readiness
to answer questions or meet a challenge made it easy for men who
were interested to find “what the women want.” One worker was
told, by an Italian bootblack, beside whose stall she had stood all
day:
"Nicee talka, getta votee."
He was the same man who in the morning had said, in firm
remonstrance, “Ladee no-no vota! Ladee mind kidda"! when he
hastily retreated, as one who had hazarded much. Half an hour
later he returned, the light of conquering logic in his eye, "Ladee
maka cakee,” with a bold sweep, sketching the other great half-circle
of woman's sphere.
After twelve hours of standing and talking in the dust of the
street, many of the workers went into the booths and kept tally of
the count until midnight. Grave courtesy to the election officials and
reserve of manner brought from them, even the less kindly clerks, a

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SO
ISODES
tolerant response. Here, and throughout the day, great care was
taken to remain well within our legal privilege.
All the world knows how that night our defeat in San Fran-
cisco was first interpreted as the defeat of the Eighth Amendment in
California. To many who had never faced the thought of loss, who
had believed that the powers of good were with them, the news came
as a fearful, grinding shock. Strange faces at midnight, pallid, flushed
and blotched faces, gazed across the Election Day headquarters at each
other.
"We must go right back to work,” one woman said hoarsely,
staring down at the floor, as though the eight months of passionate
effort lay wasted before her.
It was agreed that we should begin again tomorrow.
With dawn the Election Committee went sharply to work sending
telegrams to suffragists in all the doubtful towns and counties, warning
them imperatively to "watch the count.” From our Country Press
Chairman names and addresses of entirely trustworthy people, in each
of the counties, was of the greatest service, in establishing quick con-
nections. A record of ninety-four dollars spent for telegrams and
telephones, during this day and the next, represents a part of that
expense.
Wherever we had rumors of dishonesty in election officials we dis-
patched our workers from San Francisco, even on a chance, if we
could not get local watchers at once.
The memorandum for money paid to hired watchers of the
canvass, throughout Northern California, shows about $250 spent in this
way, and yet a great part of the work was done by volunteers without
payment. For instance, in San Francisco the vaults in which the ballots
were deposited were watched continuously for forty-eight hours by a
young man who had volunteered for the service and who afterwards
very reluctantly took a small sum of money for his time. In Oakland
we hired Pinkerton men to watch.
These were some of the methods that the exigencies of the case
developed in San Francisco. In New York or any city where such a
group as the Woman's Suffrage Party has perfected an elaborate
organization by districts these methods might seem clumsy and un-
necessary.
Some sort of watching is, however, necessary and is
recommended by all politicians, when they have anything at stake.
When one has seen how easy
is to switch "Yes" or a “No” on the
tally sheet, it is not strange that such things happen in hostile camps.
In looking back over the whole piece of Election Day work and
considering the fourteen hundred dollars expended upon it it is hard
to say exactly how much was absolutely accomplished; what influence
was exerted upon public opinion by the appearance of thousands of
homekeeping women near the polls to say by their presence how much

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
the amendment meant to them; what was accomplished by organized
watchfulness throughout the counties and towns of the State-because
what was worked out in San Francisco was paralleled in Oakland,
Berkeley, Alameda and many of the smaller towns. But in a State
which won, as ours did, by 3587 votes, no intelligent effort, no pre-
cautions, nothing that touched the consciences and sympathies of the
voters could have been spared. Our margin was too small. Every
piece of honest work seemed, itself, to hold the tottering scale barely
steady to the side of justice.
Louise Herrick Wall.

REPORT OF AUTOMOBILE CAMPAIGN FOR SAN
FRANCISCO.
The automobile street-speaking campaign in San Francisco began
about six weeks before the election. In a short, sharp campaign, like
ours, in which the work had not been standardized before hand,
board resolutions and action were simultaneous. The directors endorsed
the idea of street speaking one morning—that every night the first
crew went forth in a motor flaunting “Votes for Women" banners.
We had no perforated pattern of how the thing should be done.
We knew that the New York suffragists were carrying off street
speaking with success, and we felt that the time had come for us to
reach the man on the street who had not been caught up in the
steady stream of people flowing into our great public meetings.
So we went forth. That first night we caught the wind of success
and thereafter it sang in our banners. There were six of us and we
had had just one preliminary experience in street speaking in a country
town. That one experience helped us not to feel so keenly the tug
of squaring up right with the city crowds; and the crowds, likewise,
were over the first shock of a feminist campaign. They had read about
us, day after day, in the newspapers; they could not miss the head-
lines even if they skipped the stories and they knew the faces of our
leaders, however unconcernedly they glanced at them in the newspapers.
I believe that we began street speaking at the right moment. The
psychology of a city must determine that. Instinctively those of us
who had the “feel” of San Francisco in our blood recognized the
moment. The strength and importance of the campaign was established;
the city was warmed up to the idea, and fully appreciated that all
types were represented in the movement, and it gave the man on the
street a sense of his own importance that such women as these should
leave their accustomed places to come right out on the street to talk to
him.
After that first night we had two machines and sometimes three out
every night. We did not depend on volunteer motors but with the
fearlessness that such an enterprise as a six months' campaign demands
hired cars whenever necessary. Noon meetings in the factory districts
were held every day, but to my mind the two or three day-time meet-
ings held in the other more conservative business parts of town demon-
strated their extreme hazard. There was an unmistakable sense of
protest at women blocking the streets at the busy hours of the day,
and these protestants were the types that could be convinced only by
sustained arguments, which the transient mood of the streets and
the disturbance of the day-time traffic made impossible. They were the
men that could be converted at indoor meetings by the brilliant orators
that it was our good fortune to secure during the campaign.

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
These same orators were not always most effective on the streets.
"I appeal to you as a mother, a grandmother, as a garment worker, a
school teacher, a trained nurse, a woman who used to vote in another
State, a physician or a settlement worker, as the case might be,'
these were the appeals that kindled most interest in the crowds. The
women who lived right here, who could lay on the argument in bright,
strong washes of personal color, these were the most effective street
speakers. Always we found that the street crowds enjoyed the novelty
of women speakers more than the best known men orators. Because
street speaking is more or less pictorial rather than oratorical we
endeavored to present effective and constrasting pictures-youth and
age, the wage earner and the home woman, but never the eccentric
woman against this unconventional background! The first feeling that
should come to the crowd is that in spite of the fact that she is
standing up there in that automobile she is just the sort of woman
any man might be proud to call mother or wife or sister.
The method of collecting the crowd was the simple one of having a
boy bugler give a call or two. Occasionally we followed this with a
song. Since the recent campaigns, the technique and the value of
these meetings is almost as fixed as mathematics. We made our
rules as we went along. It is an axiom that successful street meet-
ings are best insured by having a chairman just as one would in a
hall, someone who presents the speakers, limits their time, and ties all
the speeches together. We rarely stayed more than an hour at any
stand always leaving the crowd instead of allowing it to leave us!
The climax of our street speaking came the night before election
and was planned that morning on the spur of the illuminating moment
when we learned that Mme. Nordica had just arrived in the city. With
the true spirit of the suffragist she responded to the idea of lending
the thrill of her voice to the last appeal for votes, and in a few crowded
hours the details were arranged for a demonstration at a down-town
public square. On the four sides of the park automobiles were stationed
and by seven o'clock the streets were jammed, while the band and the
speakers in these machines kept the crowd interested until Madame Nor-
dica appeared at about nine. Dr. Charles F. Aked presented her and
the crowd which surged around her machine caught its breath at her
beautiful, gracious presence, and listened with strained attention to her
little suffrage speech. Then they clamored for a song, and when she
lifted her voice in the "Star Spangled Banner" everyone joined in the
chorus.
The editor of an unfriendly paper came along at about one in the
morning. The crowd was still rotating between the automobiles, lis-
tening to the star speakers of the campaign. The editor cast his
appraising eye over the scene. "You win,” he said, and I have always
felt that that demonstration pied the “Vote No” which we had feared
would appear in that paper in black-face type at the last moment.
Ernestine Black, Chairman.

INFORMAL REPORT ON FINANCES. HOW MONEY WAS
RAISED WITHOUT A FINANCE COMMITTEE.
The College Equal Suffrage League, during its short, active and
varied campaign in California, collected and disbursed over $10,000.
About one-fifth of this amount came from generous Eastern friends, and
the other four-fifths was raised in California, without the help of a Com-
mittee on Finance, for although the president made unremitting efforts
to find a suitable chairman for such a committee, it was without success.
This work devolved, in an informal way, upon the president, the direc-
tors, committee chairmen and other working members of the League.
While it might not be safe to try to finance a big campaign without
a Finance Committee in most communities, here we had, in spite of the
defect, a success that was gratifying both in the amount and in the
spirit of the contributions. Yet the task of collecting funds was never
made of primary importance, but was always subordinated to the in-
tensely absorbing work of propaganda, and was engaged in only at
intervals when the need of funds pressed too closely to be ignored.
The most money, probably, was raised by chairmen and members of
committees through the presentation of their specific needs, such appeals
being made at public meetings, at members' meetings, to private ac-
quaintances, and to persons who might, presumably, be interested in the
cause. The chairman of the committee would draw up a careful, busi-
ness-like plan of the work she had been appointed to undertake; an
estimate of the money needed; a statement of the funds already at hand,
if such there were; and she would have her co-workers selected and
within call to begin action. Standing thus ready before the field to be
plowed, almost invariably she was supplied with the plow.
919 Through the chairman and her helpers, contributors had a vital con-
nection with the particular piece of work they were backing financially-
billboard advertising, circularization of teachers, distribution of "Votes
for Women" buttons, street automobile campaigning, whatever it might
be. If, as the work proceeded, it grew beyond the chairman's first expec-
tations, a business report of the work already accomplished, and an
honest, enthusiastic forecast of its usefulness, elicited further funds.
24 This experience convinced us that the woman who gave her time,
her abilities, her money, her self, to a good, definite piece of work, was
best able, through the first-hand expression of her need, to ask for con-
tributions. We also learned that no enterprise need seem too big or too
expensive to undertake, for, if its merits were logically set forth, and
if it were entered into with courage and devotion, it was sure to win
financial support.
With the exception of a few large gifts from generous benefactors
of equal suffrage, a considerable proportion of the funds came directly,
in moderate sums, from the self-imposed taxation of the working mem-
the work

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Winning Equal Suffrage in California
bers of the League, who, as the need of money became apparent and
as their devotion heightened, pledged weekly or monthly sums, often far
exceeding what they could really afford. To become a life member of
the League became a jest, one became a life member so many times over.
As a witness of these contributions, a big yellow placard was hung
on the wall of our headquarters, containing the names and monthly
pledges of the members. This served as a delicate and effective sugges-
tion to others to request that their names also be placarded as monthly
contributors.
In August the activities of the League had outgrown all our
ordinary sources of income, and a mass meeting was held at the
Scottish Rite Hall, where, after some stirring speeches on the work
still needing to be done and on the significance, not only to our-
selves but to other States, of winning equal suffrage in California,
an impassioned appeal for more funds was made and $2000 were
raised from the floor, $1000 of which came from a woman who for
years had been expending herself and her money in this cause. It
was money given in this spirit, in large and in small amounts, that
paved our path to ultimate victory.
At most of our public meetings, which were intended, primarily,
to be educational, and to win converts to suffrage and new workers,
no special request for money was made, but baskets were passed
round for voluntary contributions. At a few of the largest and most
interesting meetings, however, especially during the last three
months of the campaign, when big sums of money had to be raised
in brief time, short, breezy appeals for help from the general public
were made. These were always preceded by a frank statement and
a careful outline of the work already in progress.
No financial statement of the campaign would be complete
without mentioning the nameless, off-hand gifts to the work made by
the members of the League in practical ways. Postage, telegrams,
carfare, materials, expressage, automobile service—these were some
of the forms this generosity took, which made a saving of thousands
of dollars to the League. Personal funds, never entered in any ac-
count, were freely spent for the more successful carrying out of
plans. One friend gave the use of her touring car, including its
repairs and upkeep, for the country work during the last few months
of the campaign. Other friends put their cars at the service of the
League for doing hundreds of errands in San Francisco. On Elec-
tion Day automobiles and chauffeurs were lent in such generous
numbers as would more than have exhausted our treasury had we
been obliged to pay for them. All these gifts were gladly laid, with-
out thought of thanks, upon the altar of our common cause.
That this common cause of women was won in California was
partly due, we like to believe, to the efforts of the College Equal
Suffrage League and its friends; and their work was made possible

Informal Report on Finance
117
only through these recorded and unrecorded gifts of money. That
is why our treasurer's report is to us a glorified human document,
recounting, in columns of gold and silver, the self-sacrifices, the
devotion, and the generosity of the women of California. Its mes-
sage to other campaign States is this: Honest, efficient work, en-
thusiastic effort, and unfaltering courage make the richest source of
Fannie Williams McLean.
revenue.

TREASURER'S REPORT.
May, 1911, to January, 1912.
Received. Paid Out.
On hand May 5th..
$ 491.01
Life membership (25).
250.00
New membership (333)
333.00
Annual dues (43)...
43.00
Monthly assessments (four months)
479.00
Contributions (local)
4,039.46
Contributions (Eastern)
2,075.00
Collections at public meetings
1,231.83
Rental of Halls (San Francisco and bay cities)
$ 1,111.75
Literature
210.31 1,057.61
Country campaign work.
343.12 567.14
Postage for circularizing (four city districts,
teachers of the State, Contra Costa county,
clubs, etc.)
102.00 704.78
Automobiles for speakers (one month)...
387.80
Advertising public meetings (dodgers, wagons,
etc.)
1,403.00
Advertising in street cars (contributions)
324.11 237.30
Advertising on bill boards..
589.50
Advertising by electric signs.
72.50
Advertising by signs on bay
31.00
Advertising by signs in baseball grounds
55.00
Advertising in foreign newspapers....
174.00
Decorative advertising (posters, buttons, pos-
tals, pennants, flags, etc.) contributions.
529.95 975.85
Central Campaign Committee.
350.00
Election Day Committee...
300.00
Eastern organizer and speaker..
65.00 200.00
Delegate to National Convention.
147.00
Telegrams, expressage and unclassifiable items.
645.76
San Francisco Headquarters.
Subscribed (eleven contributors)
446.31
Stenographers (four months).
488.85
Typewriter rental
22.25
Telephone
6.00 168.21
Rent
350.00
Office expenses
199.84
Market-street headquarters (one week prior to
election)
157.45
Oakland headquarters (ten days prior to elec-
tion) contributed
42.52 453.51
Balance on hand January 1st.
178.51
$11,029.62 $11,029.62
Anna E. Rude, Treasurer.

APPENDIX.
SUGGESTED PLAN OF ORGANIZATION.
ан,
31
President, Vice-President and Board of Directors.
State Press Work,
Dramatics.—Plays—Tableaux-Pageants-Moving Pictures.
Headquarters.—Clerks-Office Supplies—Placing Workers—Visitors.
Finance.-Collection Meetings.
Membership
Literature and Printing.-Selecting Material-Printer's Rates—Local
Leaflets.
Circularizing.–Country and City.
Publicity.-City Press Work-Street-Car Adv.—Billboard Adv.-
Post Card Day.
Organization.-Forming Clubs—New Club Nurture.
Central Campaign.-Scheduling Speakers.
Supplying Speakers.—Speakers for Occasions.
Design.-Decorated Stationery and Post Cards-Prize Poster-Car-
toons-Window Display.
Public Meetings.—Hall Meetings—Street Meetings-Fraternal
Groups-Noon Hour Meetings.
The forms appended here cost us time to make, because in the
pressure of work, inseparable from a campaign, the mood for con-
densed, effective and crisp phrasing does not readily visit tired com-
mittees. The wording of some of the advertisements was done with
the help of an advertising expert, but most of them were struck out
at the moment to express instant needs, and in modified forms they
may be serviceable again.
Bits of argument from California speakers have been included,
in short extracts, as they are a part of the record of the individual
contribution made by California to this subject, and they reflect
something of the spirit of the campaign. A small part of this ma-
terial has been published by the Woman's Journal, but as it belongs
here it has been gathered into this volume.

I 20
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
.
The following form was used on a folded post card (572x91/2
inches) very early in the active campaign. The real purpose of the
"Symposium By League Members” was primarily to try out speak-
ers for future use in campaign work.
To economize space names are omitted on committee lists:
College Equal Suffrage League.
318 Union Square Building
350 Post Street-Phone
The Committee on Headquarters announce the following meet-
ings which have been arranged for Friday afternoons at 3:30, at
Headquarters, for the members of the League and their friends:
April 21—"The Special Election and the Constitutional Amend-
ments.”
April 28—Symposium by League Members, “Why I Believe in
Equal Suffrage.”
May 5—“The Legal Status of Women in California.”
May 19—“The Relation of the Ballot to Municipal Reform."
All meetings at Headquarters will be followed by reports of
Committees and discussions of work and plans for future activities.
The Headquarters are open daily from 10 a. m. to 5 p. m., and
all members are urged to come in often, to bring in their friends,
and to join some one of the Committees already formed, or in
process of forming, and to take some part in the activities of the
League.
This is a big cause and we need your help.
Committee on Headquarters.
Entertainment Committee
Newspapers
Committee on Dramatics
Committee on Moving Picture Ex-
hibits.
Membership Committee
Committee on Window Exhibits
Press Committee
Committee on Public Meetings
Committee on Interviews.
Suffrage rally meetings will be held every Tuesday afternoon at
2:30 p. m., at the Savoy Theater, by courtesy of the management, to
which the public are invited.
The College Equal Suffrage League has charge of the meetings
at the Savoy Theater on
May 2nd, at which the play "How the Vote Was Won” will be
given by the Dramatic Committee.
June 20th, of which the program will be announced later.
All members of the League are urged to make these meetings
generally known in order that the audiences may be large.

Appendix
I21
Folded Post Cards :
There remain but five months before the Suffrage Amendment
is submitted to the voters of California.
This means that we are face to face with a "whirlwind cam-
paign.” We must reach all the voters within our boundaries to make
California the sixth suffrage State.
A demand for concentrated work and immediate funds is there-
fore vital.
Do you realize that for each one of you, loyal members of the
College League, who remains inactive in this short campaign, some
other member is forced to take up the extra burden, make the extra
sacrifice? A little sacrifice from each member is no burden on any
one. Are you doing your share?
Here is your chance. Choose now, to-day, what work you will
do. These are our needs. On which of these will you concentrate
for the next five months ?
We Need You.
1. Will you address envelopes? There are 10,000 at headquarters
to be addressed at once.
2. Will you speak publicly?
3. Will you furnish an automobile for special occasions?
4. Will you do precinct organizing?
5. Will you get members and contributors ?
6. Will you organize your church for suffrage?
7. Will you write to your class members?
8. Will you write for newspapers?
9. Will you serve on one of our sixteen committees?
10. Will you make yourself regularly responsible for the attendance
of ten people at the Tuesday afternoon meetings at the
Central Theater? The next one is May 23d.
11. Will you contribute your utmost in money at once for all of
these activities?
Funds must be raised immediately for literature, for speakers,
for renting public halls, for traveling expenses. The burden must be
divided among us all. What will you do?
Name...
Address..
Precinct..
Assembly District...

I 22
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
50
Place an X opposite number indicating what work you will do.
1. Address envelopes.
2. Public speaking.
3. Automobile.
4. Precinct organizing.
5. Members and contributors.
6. Organize churches.
7. Class letters.
8. Newspapers.svo
9. Committee work.
10. Meetings at Central Theater.
11. I will contribute $...
The wording used on colored, foreign post cards, showing scenes
in California in which Chinese voters were engaged. The inscription
was printed in Chinese and in English, as below:
“Of the native-born Chinaman, who has the right to vote, we
ask favorable consideration of the amendment framed to give women
the same right. The amendment is to be voted upon Oct. 10th, 1911.
College Equal Suffrage League.”
Italian and Spanish cards bore much the same form of words.
As we had the printing done on cards already made the cost was
less than $2.00 a hundred.
A fourth sort of colored card showed a harvesting scene in Cali-
fornia in which women appeared in the fields, and read:
“Of the women farmers, who have developed the soil of Cali-
fornia, we ask co-operation in gaining the Vote for Women in Cali-
fornia.
“The amendment is to be voted upon October 10th, 1911,
“College Equal Suffrage League, 350 Post Street, San Francisco.”
Form used on post cards:
The College Equal Suffrage League announces two meetings:
soce (Names of speakers, dates and places follow.)
30 Help spread the good news. Let every member pledge herself
to get ten new people to these meetings. The cause deserves and de-
mands it, for we find this is the best way to arouse enthusiasm and
to create an intelligent interest in winning "Votes for Women."
Do you know about the prize poster contest?
Do you know about our literature?
Do you know about the proposed window display?
Do you know about the precinct work in your district ?
Come to headquarters and find out about these and other enter-
prises, and bring your friends with you.

Appendix
123
220V
THE COLLEGE EQUAL SUFFRAGE LEAGUE
announces a luncheon for members and guests at Hotel Shattuck,
Shattuck and Allston Sts., Berkeley, Saturday, July 22nd, at 12:30 p.
m. $1.00 per plate.
“How the School Teacher of Chicago was Won to Suffrage.”
31 Miss Margaret Haley S09
and addresses by other prominent educators of the N. E. A.
The luncheon number is limited to 225. Reservations will be
made in the order in which they are received by Miss Blanche Morse,
2033 Bancroft Way, and should be accompanied by money or check.
Visit our Headquarters. Enlist in the Work, Bring in Mem-
bers and Contributors. Help in Winning a Victory October 10th
Worthy of the Cause.
Members of the College Equal Suffrage League-Attention!
YOUR CAUSE NEEDS YOU
Come to the Members' Meeting, Saturday, August 19th, at 2:30
p. m., at Scottish Rite Assembly Hall, 1270 Sutter Street, between
Polk Street and Van Ness Ave.
We can win on October 10th only through the efforts of every-
one who believes in our principle.
There is work for YOU! Come, choose your part.
Remember, the progress of suffrage in the U. S. depends on
California's success.
The women of New York are having a self-denial week, August
15-23, to help the cause in California. Are we meeting them half
way?
Bring along new members, and let's get together for our final
plans.
Miss Gail Laughlin will speak on "What's to be Done?" and
there will be reports on new work.
The $1.00 a month assessment requested by the Directors is
now payable to Treasurer.
LEARN THE TRUTH ABOUT
EQUAL SUFFRAGE STATES
From Gail Laughlin and Nat Friend
And Men from New Zealand and Australia
Friday Evening, Sept. 29—Scottish Rite Hall
Van Ness Avenue and Sutter St.
Auspices College Equal Suffrage League
Public Invited. Admission Free. Come and Bring Your Friends

I 24
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
Return post card sent out by Election Day Committee:
IMPORTANT OCTOBER 10th.
San Francisco, Sept. 25th, 1911.
To carry woman suffrage on October 10th there must be women
workers at every polling place. Every voter must be asked verbally
or by printed slip to vote for our amendment.
There must be men and women to watch the count of votes in
each precinct.
What will YOU do to help win?
October 10th is the crucial moment. Stand by now as never
before.
Please answer by return mail on attached card.
GAIL LAUGHLIN, Chairman Election Day Commitee.
Form of post card used by Oakland Election Day Committee:
You have been appointed Captain of 3rd precinct, first ward, for
election day. Please let nothing prevent you from serving. Work-
ers will be assigned to you and rest rooms provided on that day.
Poll at 7th and Willow Sts.
Success Depends on Every Woman Doing Her Duty.
Call without fail at headquarters College Equal Suffrage League,
2 Telegraph Ave., to receive directions and circulars, Monday, Octo-
ber 9th, from nine to twelve.
Mary Roberts Coolidge,
College Equal Suffrage League.
Agnes Ray,
Suffrage Amendment League.
Card used for Final Mass Meeting :
EQUAL SUFFRAGE
at a
PEOPLE'S MASS MEETING!
Thursday Night, October 5th, 8 o'clock
DREAMLAND RINK—Steiner Street, Near Sutter
Catherine Waugh
McCullough,
Vice-President American
Women's Suffrage Association; Helen Todd, Illinois Factory In-
spector; Stitt Wilson, Rabbi Martin Meyer, Gail Laughlin, Chas. F.
Aked, John I. Nolan and other Distinguished Speakers.
Auspices Suffrage Organizations of S. F.
Public Invited. Admission Free.
"Look Into It" Before October 10th.

Appendix
125
The leaflet distributed by League members for Pankhurst lec-
ture:
Would You Go to Jail for Principle?
Americans Don't Have To!
MISS SYLVIA PANKHURST did it in England
Hear Her on
“VOTES FOR WOMEN”
AT IDORA PARK THEATER
Saturday Evening, March 11th, at 8 o'Clock
Good Citizenship a True Democracy.
A leaflet written for California Campaign:
To the Voter of California :
Have you ever thought why your Mother, Wife, Sister and
Daughter are not allowed to vote?
One Hundred and Twenty-five Years Ago, when our Constitu-
tion was made, women paid no taxes, married women could hold no
property, girls could not go to public grammar schools, high schools,
or colleges. Women could enter no trades or professions except
cooking and sewing.
NOW, women pay taxes, accumulate and manage their own
property. Girls graduate from grammar schools and high schools,
while all State Universities and many endowed colleges are open to
them.
Six million women are daily workers in the industrial pursuits,
and no profession is closed to women.
The Status of Women Has Completely Changed.
The time has come to secure for these women, your fellow work-
ers in the home, the city, and the State, Political Freedom.
Do Your Share by Voting for the Amendment for Equal Suf-
frage October 10th.
Registration closes August 26th.
REGISTER NOW.
(Other side of same leaflet.)
WOMEN HAVE FULL SUFFRAGE
in Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Finland, Isle of Man, Tasmania.
WOMEN HAVE MUNICIPAL SUFFRAGE
In England, Scotland, Wales, Iceland, Canada, Natal (South Africa),
Denmark, Sweden.
In the United States
WOMEN VOTE IN TWENTY-EIGHT STATES
On Municipal and School Affairs
Women Vote on Equal Terms With Men in
Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Washington
WHY NOT IN CALIFORNIA?

126
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
Leaflet used near polls on Election Day:
JUSTICE TO CALIFORNIA WOMEN
WOMEN VOTE on some questions in Massachusetts, New
York, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky and in 26 other States.
WOMEN VOTE equally with men in Wyoming, Colorado,
Utah, Idaho and Washington.
WHY NOT IN CALIFORNIA?
Woman Suffrage Amendment has 4th place on the ballot.
MARK YOUR BALLOT THIS WAY:
4Senate Constitutional Amendment, No. 8, relating YESX
to the rights of suffrage
NO |
GIVE YOUR GIRL THE SAME CHANCE AS YOUR BOY
This leaflet, modified from ours, was used with effect in the
Oregon campaign:
2011 0191
WOMEN PAY TAXES!!
WOMEN OBEY THE LAWS!
Women and Children suffer from dirty streets, impure milk,
adulterated food, bad sanitary conditions, smoke-laden air, underpaid
labor.
Women clean the homes: Let them help clean the city.
Vote 300 X "Yes" Amendment No. 1, Nov. 5, 1912.
It will give the women a Square Deal.
It will give your girl the same chance as your boy.
Votes for Women.
College Equal Suffrage League, 406 Selling Bldg.
Why the Teacher Should Be a Suffragist.
Condensed from leaflet written for California Campaign:
Out of one's own life-work comes always the warmest and most
vital argument. As a teacher, I could always win attention during
the suffrage campaign by the following presentation of facts.
California there were some 12,000 teachers, 85% of whom were women.
We were instructed to train citizens, and yet we had not that
live experience of citizenship that comes from having the ballot. We
were held responsible for 85% of the product of the schools, and
yet we had no control, for lack of a vote, over the conditions under
which we worked. We were training girls, as well as boys, to be
citizens, and yet the State would afterwards falsify their whole
education by refusing them the most significant sign of citizenship,
the right to vote. We were teaching our pupils the great truths
of democracy—that the State includes all its social forces, that a
true system of representation, therefore, must express the will of
21

Appendix
I 27
all these; that the aim of the State, and the very reason of its
existence, was the development, activity and happiness of all its
social forces—and yet the State was belying these truths by neglect-
ing to give its women representation. We were teaching our pupils
that the flag of America belonged to their foremothers as well as
to their forefathers, for the blood of their mothers was in its red
stripes, the purity of their patriotism in its white stripes, and the
hopes and aspirations of their pioneer spirit in its stars; and yet
we could not satisfactorily explain to them why the States over
which that common flag waved were not as free to their mothers
as to their fathers.-Fannie W. McLean.
Condensed from leaflet to "Farmers and Fruit Growers," written
for California Campaign:
In the War of American Independence, it was the "embattled
farmers” at Concord Bridge that made the first stand and fired the
first shot against Taxation without Representation. That Battle Is
Not Yet Fully Won. There is still one class of American citizens
that is taxed without any voice of their own, and governed by of-
ficials they have had no part in choosing and laws they have had no
part in making. Your own mother, your wife and sister are of that
class.
Is it not time to end this inequality before the law, and to be
true at last to American principles?
No One knows better than the farmer how a wife stands side
by side with her husband and helps him to earn and to carry on
his farm. If he dies, he leaves it without fear in her hands. But he
leaves it thenceforth Unprotected by a Freeman's Vote. No assessor,
no supervisor, no legislator need fear that the owner of this farm
can call him to account at the polls for any injustice or neglect of
this woman's interests. Her name on any petition will count little
as against the names of voters, or the pull of some one with votes
behind him.
Are you willing to deny your widowed neighbor the protection
you think so important to yourself?
Can any woman, for that matter, married or single, have her
just say in matters that concern her, without a vote? Suppose your
schoolmistress thinks Brown should go to the legislature because he
is zealous about safe sanitary schoolhouses, and her brother thinks
Jones should go, because he is pledged to Robinson for the United
States Senate. Have not both equal right to their opinions, and
equal right to have them taken into account in deciding whether
Brown or Jones should go? The present way is to take it for
granted beforehand that the sister will always be wrong, and the
brother always right, so that we count his judgment only, and refuse
to listen to hers.

128
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
Can you see any just way except to let every sane grown person
speak for himself or herself at the polls, and then count the votes?
Then we shall be more sure that the majority really rules; now a
minority may often carry an election, defeating the wish of the
majority. You are not in such bitter need of this womanly element as
the cities are. You can at least get pure milk and pure air and decent
playplaces for your children, without asking your supervisors. But
remember that evil in the cities comes home to you. The cities
draw young people to them; the cities send delegations to Sacra-
mento that outvote yours; the cities breed fashions and diseases
that spread out into the country. If women can make the cities
cleaner places to live in and can make the city politicians more care-
ful to send clean men to the legislature you will feel the good of it
in your own home.
One thing more :-Fifteen years ago California voted on an equal
suffrage amendment. It was carried, outside the great cities, by a
fair majority. The cities reversed the vote of the country, and kept
the ballot from women. There is no doubt that the country will
vote again for equal suffrage. Are the cities to outvote the country
again? The cities have grown bigger in fifteen years. The organized
vices in large cities, which fear the vote of women, are better
systematized, better financed, than they were in 1896. If the vicious
elements are to be outvoted, the country must not only carry the
amendment; it must carry it with a liberal margin.
Will you not do more than cast your own vote for this righteous
measure? Will you not work for it?-Milicent Shinn.
Part of wording used in newspaper advertisement that showed
large cut of sample ballot and was headed :
"Mark Ballot Like This and Enfranchise Women.
“A vote for the fourth amendment on the ballot is a vote to
enfranchise the women of California, to extend the responsibilities
of government to those to whom men now sanguinely give almost
full responsibility for the control of their homes; full responsibility
for that task of fundamental importance, the rearing of their chil-
dren.”
Extract from form used with newspaper coupons a few days
before Election Day :
“Women! Here's a Chance to Aid the Cause.
Every woman who is interested in the success of Woman Suf-
frage and who wants to help the cause by serving at the polls or
opening her home to the poll workers on election day, fill out this
slip and mail at once to Miss Gail Laughlin, Chairman Woman

Appendix
129
Suffrage Committee, Room 125, Lick Building, Montgomery Street,
near Sutter.
Do it now, don't wait until to-morrow, Tuesday is Election
Day. Cut this out and mail to-day.
Name
... Address
Telephone
.District
Precinct
Will serve at polls.
Will keep open house...
.Can Accommodate.
Form printed in all daily papers:
A PRIZE OF FIFTY DOLLARS IS OFFERED
for the best design for a poster to be used in the present Equal
Suffrage campaign for Votes for Women.
Contest open for all. Designs proportioned to poster 22x14
inches, finished. Yellow must predominate, but two other colors may
be used in design.
Contest closes June 15th, noon. All designs must be received
before that time, addressed to Prize Poster Contest, headquarters
of the College Equal Suffrage League, 350 Post street, San Francisco,
California.
All designs must be submitted without a signature and be ac-
companied by a sealed envelope, enclosing the real name and address
of the artist, to be opened by the judges after their decision. For
identification the assumed name should be written on the back of
the design and on the envelope. Designs returned at owner's risk
if adequate postage is enclosed.
No further information can be given the contestants. The re-
sult of the competition will be published Sunday, June 25th, in the
San Francisco papers.
Four billboard posters, 7 by 10 feet, posted for one month, read:
VOTE YES.
Senate Amendment No. 8. Oct. 10, 1911.
JUSTICE FOR CALIFORNIA WOMEN.
Give your girl an equal chance with your boy.
These States have Equal Suffrage:
Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Washington.
CALIFORNIA NEXT.
An attack on Woman Suffrage is an attack on democracy.
COLLEGE EQUAL SUFFRAGE LEAGUE.
4th PLACE ON BALLOT.

130
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
The only difference in the three others was in the central phrase,
which read:
“Women are the world's housekeepers. Let them help in City
housekeeping. The ballot is the broom," and
"Women pay taxes, give some say to those who pay,” and
“7,000,000 women are wage earners in the United States. The
ballot is workingman's protection.'
A fifth bill poster, much larger, 14 ft. by 20 ft., read:
“ 'I go for all sharing the privileges of government who assist
in bearing its burdens—by no means excluding women.'-Abraham
Lincoln.
VOTES FOR WOMEN.
4 Senate Amendment No. 8
YES X
NO
4th Place on the Ballot."
Wording used on grocers' paper bags :
FOR HOME AND FAMILY VOTE FOR WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE
Fourth Place on Ballot at Next Tuesday's Election.
It means Clean Streets, Clean Milk, Pure Food, Playgrounds,
Better Schools.
This was used on a 2x3-inch card printed by the thousands, and
distributed before and on election day:
GIVE THE WOMEN A SQUARE DEAL
VOTE YES on the 8th Amendment
No. 4 on the Ballot
Election, October 10th, 1911.
Form of membership card distributed at all public meetings:
COLLEGE EQUAL SUFFRAGE LEAGUE
318 Union Square Bldg.-350 Post Street.
Aim: To work for the Equal Suffrage Amendment (No. 4).
Membership Fee, $1. Life Membership, $10.
I WILL BECOME A MEMBER.
Name
Street
City
Phone..

Appendix
131
Form used on blotters for free distribution:
"For the long work day,
For the taxes we pay,
For the laws we obey,
We want something to say.”
MISCELLANEOUS
At the County Fair at Chico during the campaign there had been
several prizes offered by the management for “the prettiest baby,”
but when the twenty-odd mothers with charming infants began to
arrive, the Fair managers did not know where to put them—they
had forgotten to furnish a booth for them. Thereupon the suffragists
made room for all the mothers and children in their suffrage booth,
and political equality was “advertised by its loving friends."
Program of Blue Liner Campaigning Committee.
I. Introduction by Local Speaker (8 minutes).
II. Song, “John Anderson, My Jo-John."
III. "Justice and Expediency" (20 minutes).
IV. Suffrage Song, “These are Days of Lively Ways."
V. Objections Answered (8 minutes).
VI. Monologue (10 minutes).
VII. "How We Got the Vote in Washington” (5 minutes).
VIII. Local Speaker (8 minutes).
IX. "Reuben and Rachel." Dance-song.
A suffragist version of the old song, "Reuben and Rachel," is
usually given in costume, with an airy dance step between the verses,
and is very easy to present.
The stanzas follow:
Reuben and Rachel up to Date.
Reuben, I have long been thinking
What a nice world this would be
If they'd give us votes for women
All along the western sea.
Chorus
Tura, lura, lura, lura, lura-
Tura, lura, lura, lura lu-
If they'd give us votes for women
All along the western sea.
Rachel, stop that kind of talking
There is one thing don't forget

132
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
What I want is a perfect lady,
Not a headstrong suffragette.
Chorus.
But Reuben, Reuben, a perfect lady
Must like men her taxes pay;
In the spending of this money-
Won't you let her have some say?
Chorus.
Rachel, Rachel, you surprise me;
Cast your eye upon the man
Who has been Lord of Creation
Ever since the world began.
Chorus.
Reuben, Reuben, I'm admitting
Men thus far have held full sway;
Still the world is not quite perfect,
Let us help in our small way.
Chorus.
Rachel, Rachel, I believe, dear,
Woman's proper sphere's the home,
From the cook stove and the wash tub
She should never wish to roam.
Chorus.
Reuben, Reuben, home's no longer
Bounded by the flat's four walls,
Prison, factory, pure food, playgrounds
Woman hears a thousand calls.
Chorus.
Rachel, Rachel, I admit, dear,
There's something in what you say;
I promise you to think it over;
Perhaps you'll get the vote some day.
Chorus
Reuben, Reuben, procrastination
Is just where the trouble lies;
We'll get the vote through evolution;
Revolution we despise.
Chorus.
Rachel, Rachel, you've convinced me,
And I'll take you for my mate,
Woman's proper sphere's the home, dear,
But our home's the whole great State.

Appendix
133
The College League supplied the affirmative speakers for debate
at this non-partisan club.
UNITARIAN CLUB.
PROGRAM.
Suffrage for Women.
A Debate—“Shall Amendment No. 8 be Adopted?"
For the affirmative:
Mrs. W. W. Douglas.
Rev. Chas. F. Aked.
For the negative:
Mrs. William Force Scott.
Col. John P. Irish.
COLLEGE EQUAL SUFFRAGE LEAGUE READING
By MRS. MARION CRAIG-WENTWORTH
Maeterlinck's “Ariadne and Barbe Bleue"
Selection from Elizabeth Robins' “Votes for Women”
St. Francis Hotel Ballroom
Tuesday Afternoon, September 12, 1911, at 2:30 o'Clock.
Tickets $1.00
Boxes $10.00
Toward the close of our campaign a professional anti-suffrage
woman left her home in New York to come, as some one said, “more
than three thousand miles, over mountains and plains, to tell Cali-
fornia women that it would be unwomanly of them to cross the
block to put their opinions about the affairs of their home city into
a ballot box." This same lady gave rise to one of the bon mots
of the campaign; she spoke of the horrible increase in divorce,
which, somehow, she linked with the idea of political equality. She
told how, in Kansas City, one marriage in every four was dissolved,
"and in Kansas," she said, “women have municipal suffrage.” She
told how she had stopped in Colorado, on her way to California, and
found all the people allied in sentiment against woman suffrage. A
few evenings later, Miss Gail Laughlin, in replying to this challenge,
for her home State of Colorado, remarked, “That as the Kansas
City, where divorce is so common, is in the State of Missouri-
where there is no form of suffrage—and not in the State of Kansas,
as the lady imagined, it might be pertinent to enquire where the lady
was wandering when she thought she was in Colorado?"
“The right to cast a free vote and to have it honestly counted is
the supreme privilege of American citizenship. Its cost has been

134
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
high and long to pay. Thousands of years of effort and millions of
lives it took to open the way to the ballot box for every adult male
American, born or naturalized into citizenship. It is a proud privi-
lege, worth all it cost of sweat and sacrifice, of blood and toil and
tears.”
During the months of active work at headquarters, the restless
little seven-year-old son of one of the most indefatigable workers
used to come and fold leaflets by the half hour. Election night his
mother found, on coming to her room after midnight, an offering of
a little bag of sticky candy and a note saying, “Mother, please
awaken me. He hated to sleep without knowing the returns.
The next day when the little chap came to headquarters and
heard that his cause was lost—as we believed he was silent for a
moment, then, his lips trembling, he said:
“Do we have to do it over again, mother? And do we have to
fold lit'chur?"
"I'm afraid we do, little son.”
He turned away. A few minutes afterwards his mother found
him seated alone, his head not much above the level of the littered
table, doggedly at work on a great pile of yellow leaflets, "folding
lit'chur."
“A friend was condoling with a mother because one of her four
sons was not a daughter.
“'Well,' said Johnnie, the eldest, 'I don't know who'd a' been
her. Joe wouldn't a' been her, and Bill wouldn't a' been her, and
dad wouldn't a' been her, and, you betcher life, I wouldn't a' been
her.'
“What man would be the unenfranchised woman?”
Autograph inscription on books shown at Handcraft Exhibit:
"I don't want to vote because it is unjust that I shouldn't, but
because it is best-for the world and for me—that I should.”
Miriam Michelson.
"Success to this phase of higher education !" Charles K. Field.
“Women were originally the property of men, but in the course
of social evolution they are gradually becoming individuals in their
own right. Men can no longer hold them in subjection by the exer-
cise of arbitrary power, and the time has come when women must
be reckoned with as partners in the state as they are in the family."
Charles Keeler.

Appendix
135
"It is only the man who has no message who is too fastidious
to beat the drum at the door of his booth.”
G. B. Shaw.
October 10th.
Out of the dust of the street
Came the denial;
Out of the fumes of the clubs,
Scorn of our trial.
But from the strength of the hills
Men's voices hailed us;
God bless our farmer-folk,
Scarce a man failed us !
“We cannot have a sensitive government in any way except by
response between governed and governors.”
Weyl.
“To my mind this enfranchisement of women is but a means
to an end; the averting of class war, of blood revolution, the like
of which the world has never seen.”
Gertrude Atherton.
The opponents of woman suffrage "Can know nothing of the
history of woman, or they would have been forced to note that her
progress, almost from the dawn of civilized history, has been as in-
evitable as democracy."
Gertrude Atherton.
“Good wishes to you in your pioneering for the cause. I am
sure that it is going to be done so well that some of us will be able
in October to 'go on and occupy.'
Jessica Peixotto.
"It is just as important to men as to women that women should
be placed in a position favorable to honest self-expression. The
Civil War not only freed the slaves, but of the masters it made free
men.”
“Citizenship in a democracy ought to mean the ability and right
to participate in the affairs of that democracy, and the point of ob-
jection that we make against our woman citizens, simply because
they are women, is neither rational nor just.” Albert Elliot.
The Human Appeal.
"The widest and deepest appeal that can be made to all men is
the broad human argument. We must tell men that women want
to vote just because they are human beings; they do not wish to be
considered as angels, nor yet as domestic pets or beasts of burden,
but just as plain, simple people, possessed of the same desire as men

136
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
are to express their will, their opinion, their individuality in the col-
lective life, and to be a vital part of society. If men could only
imagine how they would feel were they disfranchised, how humili-
ated, how isolated from their fellow beings, how indignant and full
of protest, and would then consider that this is just how women
feel, they would understand why the voice of woman is heard
throughout the land and will not be hushed until man has given her
the political freedom that God ordained should go to the daughters
of Manasseh as well as to his sons. Men and women are gathered
together upon the same earth, equally interested in making it a safe
and happy dwelling place. They live in the same houses; they eat
the same food; they wear clothes made under the same conditions ; they
walk the same streets; they use the same conveyances; they enter
the same shops, offices, and places of amusement; they attend the
same schools, colleges, and churches; they pass, in the end, through
the same little green door that swings open at the far end of the
road of life. Why, then, should not women have an equally authori-
tative word to say on this common environment-not by indirect
influence, but by their vote, the only sure, definite and dignified way
of registering one's opinions that society has yet found.”
Fannie W. McLean.
On the morning of August 6th, 1911, The Call, of San Fran-
cisco, came out with great headlines on the front page:
“Hereby The Call Pledges Its Aggressive Support to the Political
Emancipation of California's Women.”
One paragraph of the editorial which followed said:
"It is a simple enough alteration of the State's organic law that
is to bring about this great change. Amendment No. 8 merely takes
out of the Constitution à sex adjective and puts into it the alterna-
tive sex pronoun and so abolishes the anomalous and indefensible
distinction between the human rights of the being born male and
the being born female."
After Father Gleason's impassioned talk for real citizenship for
women, a sturdy old man came up to an usher and laid a dollar in
the basket. "Here's my dollar," he said. “You've got me and my
wife to-day. We've go seven sons and two sons-in-law and I'm
goin' home to put them in line."
The reward of efficiency should not be effacement.
The suffragist thinks log-rolling is never so despicable as when
one is the log.

Appendix
137
After our generous opponents had lost their bets they still had
political advice to give away.
Justice is a fine enough thing to be applied even to one's self.
San Francisco is the most populous city in the world where
women vote.
After hearing "How the Vote Was Won," many listeners who
had laughed at the good-humored irony of the play went away with
a new attitude toward what they had before thought of as only a
grim and militant subject for debate.
Bear your part so that when the gift of full citizenship comes
you need not accept it, entirely at the hands of others, as paupers,
but as honest partners, both in the labor and in the reward, and so
enter into the larger heritage.
Dr. Aked gave one evening a week to the College League during
a number of weeks, and besides his many city meetings he spoke in
country towns as widely separated as Oakland, Napa, Alameda,
Marysville, Berkeley, Petaluma, Santa Cruz and Fresno.
"For what does chivalry exist but for the protection of the weak,
the overthrowing of wrong? It does not imply that the weak are
forever to be kept in a position of dependence. In the light of cen-
turies of Christian teaching, chivalry to-day means the sharing of
advantages, the lifting of burdens, the gracious conferring of privi-
leges."
"To my mind there is no question but that on October 10th we
shall win the amendment, if we put into this campaign all the spirit
and fire and consecration that characterized the campaign of 1896.
“We need workers for everything. Now the question is, Are
the many of us willing to thrust upon the few the stupendous burden
of a campaign like ours? Are we willing to ride to victory on the
backs of others ?
“Don't, we implore you, remain calm and impassive. Give rein
to whatever of noble rage must possess you, if you feel the degrada-
tion of disfranchisement. What you may leave undone may prove
to have been the very thing that meant victory. If you can do any-
thing, no matter what, do it. If you can give anything, no matter
what, give it.
"Never has such a golden opportunity come to us. Never has so
much depended upon our victory. Shall it be said that we lost our
campaign because our own women did not care enough?
Shall we
have no message for the anxiously hoping East?"

138
Winning Equal Suffrage in California
Expense of repairing and running a seven-seated touring-car for
campaign use amounts to about $300 a month, if the salary of a
chauffeur is not included.
Baron d'Estournelles de Constant said at a meeting in San
Francisco:
“I find myself frequently obliged to ask the advice of my wife,
my daughter, the wife of my friend, that I may know how to legis-
late wisely. In all things, I am deeply impressed with the capacity
of woman to forget herself; in love for her family she forgets her-
self; in devotion to a cause she forgets herself; in service to others
she forgets herself; but in all this I see no reason why we, also,
should forget her.”
“Better mothers will bring forth better sons, and the impetus
gained by the one sex will be transmitted, in the next generation,
to the other.”
Thomas H. Huxley.
"We fear that so long as this potential motherhood is her lot,
woman will be fearfully weighted in the race of life. The duty of
man is to see that not a grain is piled upon that load beyond what
Nature imposes; that injustice is not added to inequality.
Thomas H. Huxley.
Two documents were very widely distributed by the anti-suf-
fragists during the summer. One was an anonymous circular headed
“Don't Vote To Ruin California,” and was signed "Veritas Vincit.”
There was not even a printer's mark to show where it came from.
This is a characteristic statement from it, "The suffragist, after
heaping this abuse on men,—who have accomplished all the wonders
of the world,... demand that they surrender their just and
inalienable rights to the sex which has accomplished absolutely
nothing, except being the passive and often unwilling and hostile
medium by which humanity is created.”
To this we made no reply. Later there appeared a leaflet
headed, “Northern California Association Opposed to Woman Suf-
frage." By way of endorsement there were the names of fifty
well-known women of California. Then followed a series of reasons,
the first being, “Man is man and woman is woman.” In replying
we did not deny this.
We issued a circular called, "Vote for the 4th Amendment,"
with the suffrage endorsement of the California Federation of
Woman's Clubs, Woman's Organized Labor, Mother's Congress,
Collegiate Alumnae, Woman's Parliament, State Nurses' Associa-
tion, and several other organizations of the same sort. The names

Appendix
139
of about fifty prominent California women who stand for equal
suffrage, followed, and in sixteen short paragraphs the anti-suffrage
reasons were met by reasons for believing in woman suffrage.
"The ballot is the silent expression of opinion on stated ques-
tions on a certain day.”—J. Stitt Wilson.
Let me urge each one of you not to hesitate because the way is
unfamiliar and your strength untried. If you see the light ahead, if
you are sure, as the ultimate outcome of this movement, thou-
sands of lives are to be enriched, that, in itself, goes far to equip
you for your work. None of us in the College Equal Suffrage
League were experienced women of affairs. We are wives, and
mothers, and home-makers, most of us, but we have reached, with
quiet argument, many thousand people since we began our active
work. In this connection, I like to think of what Lincoln said, in
1861: "The mightiest of tasks has fallen to the humblest of
Presidents." We know how in the singleness of his purpose he ful-
filled his task, that, in his own words, "This Nation, under God,
should have a new birth of freedom.”

FRACES (UNION COUNCIL
PORN
PRESS OF THE JAMES H. BARRY CO






bro
ca
1913
Co
College Equal Suffrage League of Northern
California,
34591-A
[Book]