News Articles

“Women’s Rights”

Editor Journal:
There are over 100,000 women in Oregon.  The majority of them do not want to vote. A small proportion in any given community is asking for the ballot.  Is that not true in your town?  What do the rest want?
Many of them are actively opposed.  To put upon these women a responsibility from which they have hitherto been exempted and which they do not wish to assume is not “Women’t Rights.”
Many of them are indifferent.  The indifferent male voter is one of the serious problems of the present electorate.  Would you add to it a large body of votes avowedly indifferent?
The demand for woman suffrage is the demand that woman shall assume an equal share with men in the government of the city, the state, the nation.  It means she shall enter with him the political arena.  For it is an arena.  Politics is not a conflict of opinions. It is a conflict of wills.  It carries with it public meetings, public debates, public marchings and counter-marchings, public discussions of public questions, and of the character of public candidates, and all other incidents of a campaign.
It is not democratic, nor just, nor fair to draft this large body of women into this campaign against their wills.
This is the sixth time voters of Oregon have been asked to vote upon this question in spite of the fact that every two years the opposition to it has increased so that in 1910 suffrage carried in only one county in Oregon, and in that one by five votes, the total vote being 35,270 for suffrage, the smallest vote for it since 1900, and 59,665 against, a majority of 23,795.
The Oregon State Association Opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage to Women asks that you give this amendment your earnest consideration, and that you defeat it this time by so great a plurality that the suffragists, local and imported, must bow before the will of the people of Oregon, and acknowledge that the majority rules in America.
The Oregon State Association Opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage to Women.
Mrs. Francis James Bailey, Pres.

LAST LAP OUTLINED

Suffragists Discuss Work for Final Month.

LIVELY FINISH IS IN SIGHT

Street Speeches, Tonneau Talks, Suffrage Sunday, Debates and Noon-day Factory Meetings in Windup of Campaign.

What has been accomplished in the past, and more especially in the last month, coupled with the plans formulated for the final month of the campaign for equal suffrage, were the main topics unfolded and in the address of the president, Miss Emma Wold, at the general meeting of the College Equal Suffrage League yesterday afternoon in the Journal building. Mrs. Sara Bard Field Ehrgott, but recently returned from an organization tour of the counties, and who is to leave again today, gave details of her trip and of the encouraging reports she had received on all sides. So also did Mrs. E. E. Griffith, of Columbia County.

Miss Wold laid stress on the need for the hearty co-operation of all the suffragists throughout the state. She detailed the work that had been done recently by the workers of the organization. Miss Griffith had just returned from Columbia County, while Mrs. Ehrgott had been covering Hood River and many other places.

Miss Wold announced that the latter leaves today for Forest Grove, whence she will go to Yamhill, and the week afterwards to Lane County. In the large counties in the state which are not densely populated the inhabitants will be reached by the newspapers.

Another method by which the voters had been reached, in the majority of cases with great effect, was the maintenance of booths at the county fairs. From these literature and information were given out and speeches made.

With the object of reaching every voter in Portland efforts must be made, said Mrs. Wold, in every conceivable way. Street speeches, a Suffrage Sunday, noonday meetings, talks from automobiles, and debates, one of which had been arranged to be held in the new Lincoln High School with Wallace McCamant as the the opposer, are in the final plans.

Praise for the press, information about the amount of literature sent out, and other data were given before the speaker advocated the use of billboard advertising till the close of the campaign.

A serious problem confronting not only them, but all suffrage organizations, was the monetary side. They were badly in need of subscriptions, and ways of raising money were discussed. At the conclusion of the president’s address Miss Griffith gave details of her organization work in Columbia County. She gave instances of objections she met with, the type of objections most common, and the answers she had found most fitted to individual cases.

Mrs. Ehrgott told of the towns and villages visited by her in her trip through Eastern Oregon. She gave details as to the number of members in every club, of the new clubs she had formed or helped to organize, and of a feeling of hopefulness all over Eastern Oregon that suffrage would carry.
Mrs. A. C. Newill, the president of the precinct workers and also of the Civic Progress Circles, asked for further help and more helpers for her precinct work, which, from its canvassing, provided a true line as to the opinions of the women in the city.

Suffrage Spellbinders Out
Men and Women Speakers Start on Final Campaign Tour.

Many local men and women have been leaving town recently to work in the campaign for equal suffrage. Among those to go within the next few days are: Dr. A. A. Morrison, who will speak at the Prineville County Fair: C. E. S. Wood, who goes with him: Mrs. L. W. Therkelsen and Mrs. Olive Stott Gabriel, who are going out tomorrow on an organization tour.

The county fair at Prineville is fixed for October 16 to 19. A suffrage booth has been erected on the fairgrounds, from which literature will be distributed and information given to all attending the fair.

On the previous day, October 15, William Hanley, C. E. S. Wood and Dr. A. A. Morrison will give the principal speeches at a meeting when between 2000 and 3000 are expected to be present. Mrs. Margaret M. Sharp is energetically working for the success of the meeting.
Last night in the Pendleton Hotel there was given a large suffrage luncheon similar to the one given here recently at the Portland Hotel, in that it was a “political” affair. Governor Hay, of Washington, and Governor West, of Oregon, were among the invited guests. One speaker from each political organization was heard and Mrs. Edyth T. Weatherred, who has been doing such good organization work in Umatilla County, was also a guest and speaker.

A rally of all the suffrage societies of the county is planned for next Saturday under the direction of Dr. J. P. Tamlesle at Hillsboro at the operahouse. Colonel Robert Miller and Mrs. Olive Stott Gabriel will speak and Mrs. Helen Miller Senn will give an interesting and humorous recitation.

Tomorrow evening there will be another street meeting, on the corner of Sixth and Alder, with an address from an automobile the same night in South Portland.

Mrs. Gabriel, who leaves with Mrs. Therkelsen tomorrow, is an Oregon woman who has lived the last 19 years in New York. There she is associate editor of the Woman Lawyers’ Journal and vice-president of the William Lloyd Garrison Equal Suffrage League.

EQUAL SUFFRAGE WORKERS SPEAK

Enthusiastic Street Meeting Held—Candidates Laud Cause.

The cause of equal suffrage scored Saturday night when a coterie of local politicians eliminated party affiliations and party lines, appeared in a common ground automobile at the corner of Sixth and Washington streets, and advocated “votes for women.”
B. Lee Paget, prohibition candidate for United States senator, was given permission at the close of the meeting to say a few words in behalf of his candidacy. His speech was appropriately punctuated at intervals by the rumbling of passing “water wagons.”
William “Pike” Davis, one of Portland’s most ardent advocates of equal suffrage, opened the meeting. Mr. Davis called attention to the success that has followed the granting of the right of franchise to women in the equal suffrage states, and said that the men in those states have never regretted giving women the ballot.
Mr. Davis, who is a “Bull Mooser,” introduced George S. Shephard, a Taft Republican, as the next speaker. Mr. Shephard advocated votes for women on the general ground that women are as fully qualified as men, to take part in the political activities of the nation. Mr. Shephard answered several objections that are advanced by the opponents of equal suffrage, stating that such objections are usually inconsequential and are made because of lack of understanding of the subject.
John Stevenson, Wilson Democrat, was next. Mr. Stevenson called attention to the fact that he is not a candidate for office, and that he advocates equal suffrage on the strength of his convictions that it is right. There is no good reason, Mr. Stevenson said, “why women should not vote.”
Julius Knispel, candidate on the Socialist ticket for circuit judge, explained that the Socialists favor equal suffrage on the general principle of woman’s competency to vote and of her right to do so under the constitution of the United States.
B. Lee Paget said he felt proud of the fact that an equal suffrage plank holds second place in the platform of the national Prohibition party organization.
Last night’s meeting was the first of several street meetings to be held from now on until the election on November 5.

SUFFRAGE PLAY READY

‘HOW THE VOTE WAS WON’ WILL BE STAGED FRIDAY.

Oregon City to See First Production of English Drama as Diversion in Campaign Routine.

For some weeks past rehearsals have been going on steadily for the production of the suffrage play entitled “How the Vote was Won.” The final rehearsal is set for tonight, under the direction of Mrs. Emma Watson Gillespie, who has charge of the dramatic side of the College Equal Suffrage League.
There are in all ten performers required for the production of this play, which was written and performed in England prior to its introduction over here. It has been presented in Ohio and other states.
The first performance will be given in the theater at Oregon City next Friday, following which it will be produced in Arleta and other outlying districts prior to its introduction into Portland.

Word was received at headquarters yesterday of the donation of $100 by “A Suffragist” to be used in covering, by means of noticed in the papers, the more inaccessible of the counties.
“This donation has come in very handily,” said Miss Emma Wold, the president of the College Equal Suffrage League, “Because the furtherance of the cause in the outlying and inaccessible districts is what has been worrying us considerably in the past few days. We have not the funds to send an organizer out into those parts, that being the best way of doing things, and in fact all the money have and more is being swallowed up, in a thorough organization of the counties nearer home.”
During the Gresham Fair suffrage workers have been most active. A space was allotted to them of which they made the best use. Mrs. C. Hepburn, Miss Frances Wilson, the Misses Florence and Frances Dayton, Miss E. E. Griffith and Miss Emma Wold have worked indefatigably all through the week, and have reached, either by means of literature or personal canvass, some 5000 people, the majority of them voters.
Meetings are planned for Hillsboro and McMinnville, at which Portland business and professional men will speak.
It is in connection with these meetings that the Portland Men’s Equal Suffrage League is arranging a number of out-of-door talks. They have thought it is better to hold back their efforts until the last month of the campaign, when they are going to come out into the open. Speeches are promised by political men, by attorneys and by members of the Senate. The Men’s Club has done good work quietly all along in providing speakers, when wanted, by any of the various suffrage societies. Only the other night they got up a suffrage debate, but for lack of an opponent a suffragist had to take the side of the “antis.”