1889 Washington gubernatorial election

Transcription

This program is made possible by The Friends of KSPS-TV The Joel E Ferris Foundation The Friends of KSPS Endowment at the Inland Northwest Community Foundation. Providing a stable source of income to keep KSPS financially strong and independent. We have to free half the human race, the women, so they can help free the other half. Emmeline Parkhurst MUSIC: Suffrage Song Happy Hallelujah On November 2, 1920, millions of American women went to the polls to exercise their newly won right to vote. 144 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, women finally had full citizenship. But what's often overlooked, is that women of the American West had already been voting for years. in some states like Wyoming, for decades. Long before eastern women could vote, Montana elected the first woman to the US House of Representatives. By 1915, almost every western state and territory had enfranchised women. Mead: It brought new ideas, new tactics, new leadership, It was a very very crucial development. But winning in the west had been difficult. The struggle for women's suffrage was an uphill battle full of setbacks, numerous twist and turns. ARMITAGE Women really fought and organized and strategized for the vote. One crucial state in the thick of it was Washington. Washington State women had been agitating for women's rights for over half a century. Conflicts over temperance, religion, race, class, and gender required tremendous tenacity and political savvy from organized women. Many times suffragists had to reach across dividing lines to win both men and women to their cause. Mead: These women organized against tremendous odds. Against people telling them this wasn't the right thing for women to do. That they were not competent, not capable, that they shouldn't be in politics. In 1910, ten years before their eastern sisters, Washington women won the right to vote. Washington was the fifth state to enact women's suffrage. Armitage: it's such an overwhelming victory. Suffrage passed 2:1 in in Washington and every county in the state, it was sort of just the boost that was needed to get things going again. ANDREWS After Washington, other western states followed like dominos. 200 years ago, women lived in a world ruled entirely by men. Women had no rights. Higher education was for men only. Women were barred from attending college, working in the professions and speaking in public. Proper ladies were confined to the home. they're biggest contribution to society is their ability to train and educate their children, correctly. And they can do that outside of the public sphere, so they become this private, cocoon, so to speak. it was unseemly if they went out to a public event without a male escort. If a husband or a son or a brother wasn't available to take them on a trip to town, they simply weren't able to go. Women were considered unfit to serve on juries, sign contracts, sue, or testify in their own behalf. Men just couldn't fathom that women could sit on a jury with men, in a smoky back room and talk about things like rape and other crimes against women which were often brought to court. It was just not the sort of thing that delicate female ears should hear. A married woman, by law, could not own or inherit property. In fact, wives were considered the property of their husbands. Women didn't have any economic rights. The minute a woman married, all of her property, including her wages if she worked, belonged to her husband, and she had no control over that at all. in the case of divorce, the man automatically got the children, because they were his dependents. To improve her situation, women needed the power of the ballot. But that too was denied her. Nowhere in America, Nowhere in the world were women allowed to vote. ARMITAGE Traditionally the only people who voted were men of property, and they represented their entire household. the idea of women voting is just completely, off the page, it's just not even considered. MUSIC: OH DEAR, WHAT CAN THE MATTER BE? In 1848, at Seneca Falls, New York, a young reformer named Elizabeth Cady Stanton and four Quaker women planted the seeds of rebellion. They organize the first Women's Rights Convention in history. The objective, Stanton said, was to inaugurate nothing less than a rebellion, to overthrow the customs and laws that had kept women powerless for centuries. STEVENSON I call it the opening volley of the women's rights movement. Over 300 women and men packed the Wesleyn Methodist Chapel in Seneca Falls. Elizabeth Cady Stanton read aloud from a document she'd written called the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments. It was a list of grievances deliberately modeled after the Declaration of Independence. They said that all men and women are created equal, and they had set forward a series of complaints about how women were being treated as well as resolutions about how that should change. And primary among those was women's right to vote. the people who were there, all unanimously agreed on this whole list of grievances, except for women's suffrage, which was regarded as so radical that it was really out of the question. They talked about insurrection among the women is one of the headlines, and another one was the rain of petticoats , The assumption, was that if women stepped into men's political sphere, they were at least metaphorically wearing the trousers. And this comes up over and over again. So that's how radical the notion was. By late afternoon, 68 women and 32 men signed the Declaration of Sentiments. The document resonated across the country. No more so, than in the new territorial governments of the west. In 1853, Washington Territory was formed. Census taker US Marshall J. Anderson claimed 3,965 non-native people lived north of the Columbia River that year. Men outnumbered women by more than 20 to one. Even so, only six years after Seneca Falls, the idea of granting women the right to vote was forming in Washington Territory. At the first legislative session in Olympia, House member Arthur A. Denny of Seattle proposed, to allow all white females over the age of 18 years to vote. It failed by only one vote. ANDREWS Some people speculate that it was because Denny's bill stipulated that white women should have the right to vote, and some legislators were married to Native American women. So had Denny not had the exclusive white in his bill, it's very possible that Washington would have had suffrage from the beginning. MUSIC: WHEN JOHNNIE COMES MARCHING HOME Until the Civil War, voting was considered a privilege, not a right. Each state and territory defined their own voting qualifications. Who voted was often limited by ones age, race, sex, property ownership, criminality, literacy, religion, and the ability to pay poll tax. But after the Civil War, the qualifications for voting changed. New amendments to the constitution enfranchised the recently freed black slaves, but they did not include women. Suffragists were furious. Across the country women challenged the amendments by attempting to vote, claiming they were citizens. It was called the New Departure Movement by suffragists nationally, in that they believed that these amendments really empowered women to vote. In Washington Territory, Mary Olney Brown organized a small group of women to cast their ballots at a few polling locations in Thurston County. STEVENSON 15 of these women have their votes counted. Mary Olney-Brown and her party were turned away here in Olympia, unfortunately. I was looked upon as a fanaticthe idea of woman voting was regarded as an absurdity. Mary Olney Brown, Olympia, Washington 1886 Abigail Scott Duniway was one of the Pacific Northwest's strongest voices for women's suffrage. In 1871, she founded "The New Northwest", a weekly women's rights newspaper. A Journal for the People , she called it. MEAD It was not that difficult for a woman to arrange for publication of her own newspaper. It was a way for her to convey her own ideas and often a business for her, to support herself or her family. ANDREWS anybody that she met, would get on her mailing list, and her newspaper went out to these far flung communities Giving women and men a sense of community, a sense of being linked to something bigger than themselves. Just think of yourself if you were in an isolated log cabin up in the woods someplace, and this came to you. My goodness, it would mean so much. Abigail Scott Duniway was a strong minded, self educated pioneer woman. Mother of six. A prolific writer who authored 22 novels that she serialized in her weekly newspaper. Duniway knew what it was like to feel hardship and isolation. At 17, she traveled west over the Oregon trail and for years lived the hard life of a farmer's wife. After an accident injured her husband, Duniway became the family's sole supporter. She understood how having no rights affected women. Andrews: She was listening to other women and getting outraged at what women were putting up with, what they were going through. And she heard about the deplorable, horrible circumstances that a lot women were living in when they had to do enormous amounts of work, they had almost no interaction with other women. Throughout Duniway's life, she talked to women, wrote down their stories and published them in the New Northwest. DUNIWAY: "I was not an easy convert to equal suffrage. I had been led from childhood to believe that women that believed in suffrage were man haters, of whom, I certainly was not one. But a long train of pioneer experiences led me at last to the light which when it burst upon me, found me willing to take up the burden." Abigail Scott Duniway, 1871 National suffragist Susan B. Anthony traveled to the Pacific Northwest for the first time in 1871. She'd accepted an invitation from Abigail Scott Duniway to join her on a 2,400 mile lecture tour to argue for women's suffrage. ANDREWS Can you imagine what that was like? They went by horseback, they went by stagecoach over very rutted dirt roads, they went by boat, anything they could do to get from one community to another. Susan B. Anthony would give her speeches, and Abigail was her apprentice, she began giving speeches too. They would go anyplace they could where there would be a public gathering place and where they could get an audience. Usually it was a church, sometimes it was in the back of a saloon. Sometimes it was on a riverboat, wherever they could find somebody to talk to, they would. And they were very articulate women, persuasive. For women to travel the countryside. To speak in public. It was unheard of. They were looked at as radicals, revolutionaries, by both men and women. ARMITAGE she was pretty much universally ridiculed and denigrated I think is a good word. The first thing they commented on was her appearance. In appearance, she is tall, boney and ungraceful, and she was of course unmarried. So anything that she said was considered to be incorrect, because she was an old maid. STEVENSON what she was wearing, even back then was integral to how women were perceived, Anthony lectured on the power of the vote. ARMITAGE Anthony was very forthright. she made very straightforward arguments. Almost universally she was regarded as being too challenging, strident, was one those words that kept being used. ANDREWS there was this fear of a outspoken woman, and most men had not encountered women that would speak up. And present radical ideas, radical thoughts. Susan B. Anthony did that. Anthony's lectures drew large crowds. Some people were curious. They had never heard a woman speak in public before. Others were openly hostile. One editor stated the idea of women voting was worse than the small pox and chills and fever combined. Others said, Women don't want the vote. A women's sphere is her home. The political pool is too filthy for women to dabble in. Women are too frivolous and unreliable to vote. But some listened,& and minds were changed. MEAD They didn't really expect to convince everybody all at once, but they wanted to plant the seeds so they helped form women's organizations all over the area and Washington territorial women's suffrage association was established at this time. In Olympia, Anthony was more welcomed. Daniel Bigalow, a local legislator arranged for Anthony to speak before the Territorial Legislature. It would be the first time in history a women would address lawmakers in session. "Miss Anthony is a woman of more than ordinary ability, and the able manner in which she handled her subject before the Legislature, was ample warning to the members of that body who oppose women's suffrage to be silent." The Olympia Transcript. 1871 "These women, utterly devoid of judgment and tact, have made themselves a nuisance to members of almost every legislative meeting in Olympia since 1869." Clarence Bagley, Puget Sound Weekly Courier In 1883, the constant lobbying of legislators by suffragist paid off. Women in Washington Territory briefly won the right to vote. And not only white women. Washington Territory enacted the most liberal voting laws in the nation giving African American women the vote for the first time in history. As we write, church bells are ringing proclaiming that the Governor has signed the Women's suffrage bill. All the people of Olympia are rallying around the stand-bearers of liberty and justice. Abigail Scott Duniway - 1883 Women's Suffrage was now on trial. At the next election, women turned out in force at the polls. Nine out of ten women voted in 1884. 12,000 out of the 48,000 ballots cast were by women. ANDREWS Women turned out in droves. They got their way at the polls. Much to the surprise of most men, because there weren't that many women in the Territory. Women now had the power of the vote. And their vote had teeth, snapping at alcohol and vice. ANDREWS And when they realized that they had the vote, that they could clean up their communities, that they could make their communities upright, decent places to live just by going to the polls, they did. And men were not prepared for that. It was just inconceivable to them that women could close down saloons, and brothels, and so on. But the women's vote did that. Alcohol was a serious issue for women. BLAIR Alcohol begins to be targeted by many women as a social problem that really deserves serious attention. Women blame men's drinking on domestic violence, on squandering of family resources. Many many women, often meeting in churches, become very interested in forming clubs that will agitate to close down saloons. One such club, was the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Temperance was a widespread reform movement at the time. BLAIR One of the reasons that many women decide that they need to agitate for the vote is so they can use the vote to enact prohibition laws. they want the sale and manufacturing of alcohol to be outlawed. This worried Abigail Scott Duniway. She opposed combining women's suffrage with the temperance movement. She believed their flat out support of prohibition alienated a lot of male voters. She believed that the liquor interests were funding most of the anti- suffrage efforts. ANDREWS: In rural Yakima, women were determined to put the town's saloons, brothels, and gambling dens out of business. And the same thing was true in Seattle. Unfortunately, the city coffers were dependent on Sin -S-I-N- taxes. And that's how they kept afloat. So, for each prostitute, for each den of inequity, for each saloon, there were taxes rolling in to support the city government. Well, as those establishments closed, the city found that they were broke. They had no money. The liquor industry and anti-suffragists fought back in the courts. In 1888, the Washington Territorial Supreme court, bowing to pressure from the saloon lobby, invalidated women's right to vote. Women across the Territory were devastated. They had voted for only four years. STEVENSON There were some quotations from women meeting in Seattle who were in protest meetings basically that we had been robbed of this right. 36 Seattle women angrily signed a petition to Congress stating their indignation. We are disenfranchised, stripped of our rights and our liberties and reduced to equality with the squalid savage and the heathen Chinese. We are the beacon lights of this movement, and were progressing satisfactorily when this severe blow came upon us. All the more severe because we had tasted the sweets of liberty. The timing couldn't be worse. The next year Washington was slated to become a state. Women were, once again, moved off to the sidelines. STEVENSON Women could not vote for any of the delegates who are going to frame the new constitution. And so they had to really fall back on, again, their role as advocates for women's right to vote. Women and men signed petitions showing real people wanted women's suffrage to be part of the constitution. It just did not happen. Women's suffrage was moved to a separate ballot and lost by a large margin. It was a big blow to the movement. Suffragist knew that enacting women's suffrage after statehood would be infinitely more difficult. A 2/3rds majority in the legislature and a statewide election to amend the constitution were now required. To add salt to the wound, Seattle suffragist Adella Parker found considerable evidence of voting irregularities in the election. STEVENSON I call it the Hanging Chad Story of 1889. This was before the secret ballot as we know it, at that time ballots were handed out by political parties at the polling places. And so this had been pre-printed with For Women Suffrage already crossed out. And, this as you can imagine, really enraged women suffragists. MUSIC: WHAT A FRIEND I HAVE IN JESUS Women's clubs played an important role in the women's rights movement. BLAIR Women in the late 1800s began to call themselves, "birds in a gilded caged." Women were pretty much confined to their homes, so when they decided to form discussion groups it was considered pretty outrageous. After the civil war, middle class women all across America, began to step out of their domestic sphere and participate in women's clubs. ANDREWS They were blossoming like wildflowers. In every community, where there's a few women, there was a club. BLAIR They yearned for companionship often meeting in a more formal way with minutes and Roberts Rules of Order. Women used their clubs to educate themselves. BLAIR These women, many of them had not had an opportunity for higher education. Academies for girls had been few and far between in the mid-19th century. So, women who missed the chance to read and study really looked forward to conferring together and teaching each other what they could learn. ENGLES Many clubs focused on topics for the year and they would present papers to each other. BLAIR It was not an easy job to prepare a presentation, There were no public libraries at this time. And they talked about how their knuckles turned white as the stood at the podium and shared with their, six neighbors, in their own parlor, the information that they had collected and they just hope they knew enough to answer questions that might be asked at the end of the meeting. They took it very seriously. Men took it seriously as well. Some men found club activities dangerous to the status quo. BLAIR We under estimate how brave they were to engage in this activity. Harper's Magazine had a cartoon of these bold women meeting in clubs, they're wearing puffy slacks,...bloomers, they're smoking cigars, their husbands are sitting in the corner trying to keep their screaming babies quiet. They're really very much afraid of role reversal. Other papers at the time say, women have put down the broom and picked up the club. You know, the women's club is a threat, it's a weapon. So there's great alarm, and editorials say, the number of cherry pies being baked in America is diminishing as rapidly as club membership is rising. How dare they leave the home for an hour a week. Women's clubs started to focus on improving their communities. ENGLES they would start doing things to benefit society as a whole. They find out that, Wow, we can, together, do things and get people to listen to us that we couldn't do alone. They're doing things under the umbrella of women's organizations that keeps it respectable. BLAIR They called it municipal housekeeping. Very diabolical phrase. It was a way of saying We're only following orders, we're only housekeepers, but, in order to keep our homes safe and clean and morale, to raise our children to be upstanding citizens, we need to get out in to the public too. Most women's clubs were exclusively white, middle class and Protestant. But, African American, Jewish, and Catholic women also formed clubs and helped build their communities. ANDREWS Women were often the ones that worked in the schools, that started public meeting rooms, public libraries, or tried to bring some of the culture, singing or art into the new society. They did what they could to civilize these ruffian communities and to build communities. At the time, the west was booming. Seemingly overnight, communities were doubling and tripling in size. Immigrants were flooding in. One fourth of the population in Washington was foreign born. Women's clubs went to work. BLAIR They very much see themselves as protectors of the underdog. They care about the children, they care about the immigrants, they care about working conditions, As soon as the door was opened a crack they became activist. The issues mattered so much to them. BLAIR They convince their city fathers that political change needs to occur. They can't vote. They don't have political clout, they can't threaten the mayor that they will vote him out of office if he doesn't support their issues. They have to lobby through their husbands. They have to write letters to the editor, they petition, they visit their legislators, but they make change happen because collectively, they have a strong voice that they would never have as individuals. So the array of activities that these women take on before they vote, before they are full citizens, and the success they achieve is extraordinary. I mean most senators, mayors will say, Oh my gosh, if the women's clubs get behind an issue, they're going to hound me until I, I make it happen. You know, they are relentless. These are the training grounds for these women to learn how to agitate for change on their own behalf. With the turn of the 20th century came a new generation of women. Industrialization had created a demand for more women in the workforce. Increasing numbers of women attended college and were starting to enter the professions. Woman began to step out of traditional roles. The typewriter opened the door for women into the business world. The bicycle also helped to emancipate women. "It gives women a feeling of freedom and self reliance", Susan B.Anthony said, "away she goes... the picture of free untrammeled womanhood " Women's suffrage, however, had trouble getting traction. Losses in California in 1896, Washington in 1898 and Oregon in 1900 were demoralizing setbacks. But in 1906, new, more organized efforts began in earnest in Washington State. Under the leadership of two women, Tacoma resident Emma Smith DeVoe, a professional organizer for the National Women's Suffrage Association, and May Arkwright Hutton a wealthy Spokane Philanthropist, the suffrage movement was rekindled. Emma Smith DeVoe was a seasoned suffragist and brilliant organizer. Dr REBECCA MEAD: She brought a breadth of experience and a political acumen to the campaign that it had not had before at a crucial time. DeVoe was described as the perfect lady. Her forte was femininity, tact, graciousness and charm. ROSS-NAZZAL She goes by Mrs. Emma Smith-DeVoe. So she's showing that she is very much a married woman, she's middle class, she's not this revolutionary she really illustrates that suffragists can be very feminine. DeVoe allowed no noisy demonstrations, no man-hating propaganda, no militancy. College educated at eastern schools, DeVoe was cultured and refined. "She has the mind of a statesman, the manners of a gentle woman, and the persistence of a bull dog" Dr. Cora Smith Eaton, Washington Equal Suffrage Association ROSS-NAZZAL She really was a beautiful woman. Lots of people talk about how stunning she was and her beautiful singing voice, which she used at practically every meeting. She would sing a song, composed by her husband, called "A Soldier's Tribute to Women" which tended to bring tears to men's eyes. Being a veteran he decided to write a song about Union women, and really we needed to give women the right to vote because they stood by men during the war and all the wonderful things they had done. Audiences hear these songs and you read in the newspapers about how people just stand up and they clap or they cry, so she really must have been a wonderful performer. ARMITAGE DeVoe had to have been conscious of what she was doing, because in one of her newspaper interviews she says that earlier speakers on suffrage had, evoked much adverse criticism, and has caused some to look on all women suffragists as unpleasant people. And heavens above, Emma Smith DeVoe would ever be unpleasant. So she basically makes the an argument for womanly behavior. ROSS-NAZZAL Emma Smith-DeVoe was also aware of the importance of dress. She would wear outfits that would emphasize her femininity, the small waist, the puffy sleeves she dressed in lace and white silk crepe, and she showed up with flowers. So she looked like she was a very feminine woman. And really won over the society people. In 1906, Emma Smith DeVoe became the president of Washington Equal Suffrage Association. DeVoe and her followers mastered the Still Hunt strategy. It ran underneath the radar and focused on a personal level of persuasion. The heart of the Still Hunt Campaign, is to get women to persuade the men in their lives, their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, the ministers, the school teachers, to essentially move the argument out of out of sort of the global, god - women are going to vote, to Oh yes, Mrs. Smith, who is a very nice woman and who I've always had, been on good terms with, of course, she'd be a reasonable person to have to vote.And that's what made it an effective technique. DeVoe's advised women to Keep the issue single. Be for nothing but suffrage, against nothing but anti-suffrage. Pin your faith to the justice of your cause. It carries conviction. Always be good natured and cheerful. If she's trying to convince men to go to the ballot box and give women the vote, she wants to look as gentle and unthreatening as possible. So she and the women who followed her were very careful to be polite, respectful when they met with legislators, when they wrote to their town newspaper. They wanted to impress the men that they were just as thoughtful as the men who were voting. May Arkwright Hutton was the polar opposite of Emma Smith DeVoe. Hutton was flamboyant, and straight-talking. ROSS-NAZZAL She's known for wearing this striped zebra coat, and driving around town in this red automobile. Mrs. Hutton is a fearless person, who makes no pretense of being anybody but herself. It's this characteristic that makes her the dominant personality that she is. Margaret Bean, The Spokesman Review. Hutton came from a working class background. Born in Ohio, she moved west to Wallace, Idaho in 1883 to work in the silver mines as a cook. There she met her third husband, a railroad engineer, Levi Hutton Together they invested in the Hercules silver mine and struck it rich. BLAIR iI's a real rags to riches story, and I think she never forgot her roots. She was a scrapper, and she didn't have any problem speaking loudly and shocking people. ANDREWS She was a big woman, she weighed about 200 pounds, she dressed flamboyantly, sometimes she wore pants, sometimes she dressed in men's clothing. ARMITAGE She didn't always dress in what was considered the height of style, and she kind of acted like one of the boys. ANDREWS In the time that they were in Idaho, women had won the right to vote in that state, and May was very very proud of that. She was a staunch democrat, had become active in local politics, she even ran for the legislature and lost by a small margin. When the Hutton's moved to Washington State in 1906, May lost her right to vote. A situation she fumed, we need to rectify with all possible speed. We moved to the state of Washington where the only persons not allowed to vote were criminals, idiots and women! May Arkwright Hutton, 1906 Hutton quickly becomes known as a feisty, straight-talking suffrage organizer across eastern Washington. She appeal to men's sense of fair play, of justice. No taxation without representation. BLAIR She's one of the early people to have an automobile in this part of the world, she'd drive it around to the farmlands, and start to tell any farmer in site why women should vote. Of course they came to see the car, and to see a woman driving it, and giving a speech; all of these things were outrageous for the time. By 1909, Emma Smith DeVoe had reorganized and revitalized the Washington Equal Suffrage Association. ROSS-NAZZAL She wrote a new constitution, she instituted the dues system, she got people to write letters to the legislature. She also starts working with a state senator on introducing a women's suffrage bill. STEVENSON During the 1909 legislature, women from all over the state, hand-picked advocates, came to Olympia. And Emma Smith DeVoe and May Arkwright Hutton sort of set up headquarters here ANDREWS: May was determined to get the right to vote again, and her tactics were quite a bit different at times, than Emma DeVoe's. At one point she showed up at the Legislature bringing 5 fair daughters from Spokane. Some of the prettiest girls she could find, and she got them to wine and dine legislators at their inaugural ball. And Emma DeVoe of course is outraged as were many suffragists. This wasn't something that they condoned or approved of. Whether with Hutton's help or hindrance, the bill passed. Women's suffrage would be on the ballot in 1910. The Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition was held in Seattle, in the summer of 1909 on the University of Washington campus. It was a publicity bonanza for suffragists. Three million visitors from across the state and beyond attended. Thousands of visiting male voters were brought in contact with many of the nation's best known suffrage proponents. Washington women had a suffrage exhibit at the fair, passing out literature and buttons. There was even a Women's Suffrage Day, with hot air balloons, banners, speeches, and special admission prizes for women. To kick off the campaign, Emma Smith DeVoe invited the National American Women's Suffrage Association to hold their national convention during the expo to capitalize on the special event. She organized a special train, called the Suffrage Special , to bring national leaders to the convention in Seattle. STEVENSON And it was just loaded with suffragists. Anna Howard-Shaw you know, all the big names of the suffrage movement. ROSS NAZZAL They decorated the cars. They have these yellow streamers, they have flags that say "vote for women", and they have this whistle stop campaign that stops at various communities and women who are on the train go to the rear end of the train and give speeches in favor of women's suffrage. And a lot of people like this idea, and shower the women with flowers and fruit. And when it got to Spokane, May Arkwright Hutton regaled them at the Hall of Douges at the Davenport Hotel, and, there's a big do in Spokane. ANDREWS All of Spokane suffragists were there in droves. And gave them just a extravagant welcome. Spokane treated them as royally as they'd ever been treated anyplace. "Breathing for 18 hours every atom of hospitality that could be extended through the joint working of the Spokane business men and the Spokane Equal Suffrage club, 80 women suffragists from every corner of the United States held sway in Spokane. While the majority represent states where they have not yet gained the ballot, in spirit alone they ruled this city. The Spokesman Review, June 29, 1909 Dear Mrs. Brown. If we are to be victorious in this state, the best women with the best judgment must be in charge; I do not consider those who make a profession of, and earn a livelihood in, any reform, are the best elements for success. Yours in liberty, Mrs. May Arkwright Hutton For some time, Hutton, along with other prominent Seattle and Spokane suffragists, were unhappy with DeVoe's leadership. They found DeVoe too controlling, more of an organizer than a leader. Some of the women got it in their head that Emma was a politician. That she was following the money rather than really putting the cause of women suffrage first. And so a lot of women thought, well, it might be better for the cause if we had someone who wasn't getting paid. An ugly power struggle erupted at the state convention. DeVoe and close friend, Dr. Cora Smith Eaton, treasurer of the state organization, used rather heavy handed methods to insure DeVoe's re-election. It came to a head over who could become delegates at the convention, and Hutton had lined up a lot of supporters on the east side of the state, and likely to unseat DeVoe as the president of statewide association. MEAD Hutton tried to bring in a large number of women from Spokane and paid their way and the, DeVoe contingent tried to block the seating of this delegation. They, went further by trying to discredit Hutton personally. They said that she tried to buy votes in the legislature. They claimed she used foul language. And they went further and claimed that in her days in Idaho she had run a whore house. They didn't have any evidence for this. And they didn't do this in public but they did it privately trying to pressure her away from her efforts to challenge DeVoe's leadership. Hutton fired back a response. HUTTON Dr. Eaton, with regard to your threatening and blackmailing letter, It is not in your power to keep me, an officer elected at the state convention, out of the state organization. I will be at the convention, and there will be as many delegates seated in that convention as our membership entitles us to. Perhaps you thought to frighten me with this array of accusations. You have made them and it is up to you to prove them. May Arkwright Hutton Hutton arrives with all her forces and demands to be seated, and Eaton says No. I'm not going to seat you. and there's pandemonium there. and there's people that are hissing and there's all these cat calls, people are crying, there's hysteria so it's this big catfight. As a result, 200 delegates from 29 suffrage clubs withdrew from the state convention over the controversy. Without the opposition, Emma Smith DeVoe was reelected president of the Washington Equal Suffrage Association. MEAD Hutton took her complaints to the national leadership when they showed up. And they were very angry at having to be put in the middle of dealing with something like this. They cut, DeVoe's stipend, basically fired her as a national organizer and thoroughly alienated her at this point. But DeVoe remained the president of Washington Equal Suffrage Association. While Hutton formed a new organization, the Washington Political Equality League. In some ways, it made the movement stronger because, although it splintered into a lot of different groups, each of these groups knew how to best approach their constituents about why women should have the right to vote. I think it was certainly true with Hutton, who really tailored her campaign to the interest of eastern Washington and labor. Washington Women came out in force for the 1910 campaign. Working women, club women, union women, temperance women, grange women, women of difference races and creeds, put aside differences to work for women's suffrage. MEAD They had to figure out ways to reach out to an extraordinarily diverse population in the west and in Washington these people were often physically, geographically very widespread and very isolated. They had to come up with arguments, a wide range of arguments that would appeal to various different groups and figure out how to get those arguments out to the groups. ARMITAGE You have to have the women power to go out to every group&you have to have the local women who could go and make the pitch to where the men are, and make it in terms that that they would understand. Women's suffrage had not had a victory since Idaho in 1896, 14 years earlier. Many women began to recognize the need to incorporate new modern tactics, considered more masculine, to gain women's suffrage. MEAD Many younger women were frustrated by what they felt were stale, outdate techniques and were agitating for more direct action. Anything that would attract publicity, but good publicity. For example, some western women in several states including Washington climbed up on top of mountains and planted suffrage banners. And this message was then that these women were strong and courageous and determined. This was different from the message sent by British suffragists, accosting politicians, and breaking windows in parliament. ROSS NAZZAL They really focus on publicity, they have a publicity bureau. They've got a woman that's in charge of it, Dr. Adella parker, they issue press releases, they send editorials and information to the press, and it works. And a lot of these tactics that are experimented with by these Washington women in the 1910 campaign are then taken by California suffragists and expanded greatly and used in their campaign. The use of parades was just starting in Washington. Some marched, like these women in Yakima, but most decided to ride floats. ROSS NAZZAL A lot of women weren't thrilled about the idea of parades. Especially marching in parades. Because marching in parades was associated with the militant side of the house of suffrage especially in England, that would be something that militant suffragist would do. So they decide, we will sit on floats and they portrayed Washington women as being shackled, and the Goddess of Liberty, with an axe. Another savvy tactic was the publishing of the Washington Women's Cook Book sold as a fundraiser for the campaign. I think the message that they wanted to convey was that, Although they wanted a voice in the public arena, they were good cooks. They were not going to abandon their domestic responsibilities. Washington suffragists also published their own newspaper, Votes for Women. STEVENSON Which is just a gold mine of information about what was happening statewide. Votes for Women really helped legitimize the campaign, because they would often ask the governors of states, such as Idaho, how's it working there? they would give testimonials about how it is working there. Inside every issue was a poster. STEVENSON And women were encouraged to put these posters up all over their communities, in fact, there were poster brigades organized, and they had a great slogans, You know, fewer divorces where women vote. Lincoln's felt that women should vote, Roosevelt said women should vote, and even Mark Twain said women should vote. On November 8, 1910, Washington State women permanently won the right to vote. It was a big victory. By a margin of two to one, every county voted in favor of the amendment. Support cut across party lines as well as racial and ethnic populations. Washington became the fifth state to enact women's suffrage. MEAD Washington women were of course thrilled and the rest of the women suffragists in the country were thrilled as well. It had broken through the stalemate. The win in Washington revitalized the Women's Suffrage movement across the nation. MEAD It gave them new inspiration, it gave them some new ideas and it really motivated them to start using some of these new tactics in their own campaigns. The suffrage wind started to blow from west to east. STEVENSON Out here in the west, people could see what it meant for women to have the right to vote, because they were active voters. They could see what it meant and that was extremely persuasive in convincing other states and congress about the value of women voting. MEAD Many reporters went out to see what women did when they voted. They found that women went to the polls in an orderly fashion, voted for issues that were important to them, And guess what? The divorce rate did not skyrocket, families did not dissolve, civilization did not collapse as many people had predicted. "We little dreamed when we began this conquest, optimistic with hope and buoyancy of youth, that half a century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle to another generation of women. These strong young women will take our place and complete our work. There is an army of them. We were but a handful. Failure is impossible." Susan B. Anthony In 1920, ten years after Washington women win the vote, the 19th amendment is voted into law. America women, in every state of the union, had won the right to vote. "The young women of today, free to study, to speak, to write, to choose their occupation, should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price. It is for them to show their gratitude, by helping onward the reforms of their own time, by spreading the light of freedom and the truth still wider. The debt that each generation owes to the past they must pay to the future." Abigail Scott Duniway, 1912 This program is made possible by The Friends of KSPS-TV The Joel E Ferris Foundation The Friends of KSPS Endowment at the Inland Northwest Community Foundation. Providing a stable source of income to keep KSPS financially strong and independent.