Winning the Vote

The election scheduled for October 10, 1911, was a special one, in which male voters were being asked to approve three potential amendments to the California State Constitution. One of them had already aroused months-long controversy, angry debate, and opposition: Proposition 4, if it passed, would grant women the right to vote.

The other measures, Propositions 7 and 8—both of which provided for ordinary California citizens to participate more fully in the processes of their government through initiatives and the right to recall elected officials—faced no organized opposition. The year 1911 was about the middle of the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s), a period characterized by multiple social and political reforms nationwide; and the issue of woman suffrage was being raised across the country. Five states, all in the west, had already approved this very radical idea. But strong dissent—if not outright hostility—had, in 1896, led California voters to reject an attempt to enfranchise women.

The influential newspapers Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, were both adamantly against women’s right to vote. In various editorials, the Times stood firm that woman were incapable of being equal to men, rather caustically defining woman suffrage as a “disease; a political hysteria.” Further, “The possession of the ballot will not help woman, socially or industrially. It will make exactions upon her time and strength. It will invade the home and destroy its charm. It will not result in wiser laws or better government.” Perhaps its mildest published objection, if a backhanded attempt at championing male dominance in the form of male protection, “The Times opposes woman suffrage because it does not believe in burdening the women of California with the duty of voting.”  

But Proposition 4, sponsored by Republican State Senator Charles W. Bell from Pasadena, gave women all over California new hope, and they swung into action in a vast statewide campaign. The Political Equality League founded by a Pasadena businessman, and the Votes for Women Club led by attorney Clara Shortridge Foltz, strategically targeted Southern California. Elizabeth Lowe Watson, a former pastor, led the Equal Suffrage Association in northern California. Learning from earlier elections, other suffragist leaders concentrated their forces in rural districts, where women in every county organized social circles to win the support of local newspaper editors, and other prominent men.

Suffragists spoke to voters in the streets. They held fund-raising picnics, individual meetings, and mass rallies. They created pin-on lapel buttons, pennants, posters, postcards, playing cards, and shopping bags imprinted with their slogans. They used electric signs, 8-foot tall billboards, and lantern slides at night to flash their message. The ladies visited churches, clubs, schools, and private homes door to door, handing out leaflets and copies of newspaper articles, to explain the rightness of their campaign and to deflect the opinions of critics—male and female—who felt that suffrage would somehow lower the standards of womanhood.

On Election Day October 10, 1911, it initially appeared that the cause had lost again.

The measure was soundly defeated in San Francisco, and barely passed in Los Angeles.

But then ... late reports from rural counties began to swing the tally in favor of political equality for women. When the ballot-count was completed days later, Equal Suffrage had passed— by just 3,587 male votes.

California became the sixth state to grant women the right to vote, following Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Washington (state). Ironically, San Francisco, whose male voters had vetoed woman suffrage, became the most populous city in the world in which women could vote.

March is National Women's History Month.