News Articles

VICTORY IN SIGHT, MRS. DUNIWAY IS GLAD; QUITS AT 78
Oregon’s “Grand Old Woman of Suffrage” Issues Grateful Message at Close of 41 Years of Struggle.

“To the readers of The Journal I would say that I am deeply grateful for the demonstration that has been occasioned in honor of the closing period of my 40 odd years of work. The crowning act of appreciation, however, will come after November 5, when, as I verily believe, the voters of Oregon will justify the millions of good words I have said of them in proclaiming their chivalry and patriotism by making Oregon close the gap in the chain of Pacific coast states which have learned to concentrate their interests to hold the balance of power that belongs to us as pioneers. I believe that the men and women of Oregon will mach [sic] together in tune and time with the eternal spirit of prosperity and liberty.

“This in all probability will be my last appearance before the general public.

Sees Victory This Year
“The infirmities of years of toll in this work to which I have given the best of my life since my children were large enough to permit. My work has been in and for the home in Washington, Idaho and Oregon, and has extended from the home and in the family circle to the greater home of the state and the nation. My work in this direction has succeeded far beyond my most sanguine expectations.

“Idaho and Washington, daughters of old Oregon are now fully enfranchised, more largely as a result of my pioneer labors than any other agencies. Mother Oregon will not, as I verily believe, be allowed to linger in the shades after November 5, next.

“I have always claimed that women could not enfranchise women. This boon must come to us from man, and men are rising in their majesty in this year of grace and are listening as never before to our cry for help.”

This is the birthday message of Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, “Oregon’s Grand Old Woman,” who is 78 years old today.

At her home, 292 Clay street, Mrs. Duniway who is recovering from a long stage of illness, has been receiving visitors and telegrams and letters of congratulation all day, and tonight at the Gipsy Smith auditorium Mrs. Duniway will be the guest of honor at an all-Portland and Oregon birthday party. Governor West, Senator Chamberlain, Father Black, C.W. Fulton and others will speak in a congratulatory and reminiscent mood in honor of the guest of the evening.

Forty-one years ago Mrs. Duniway first took up the cudgel in her fight for suffrage for omen. At that time the subject of women’s rights was looked at askance by everyone, and in the early days of Mrs. Duniway’s campaign the work she did was of necessity far more strenuous than is even thought of by the most ardent suffrage workers of today.

Aided in Idaho
Mrs. Duniway was born at Groveland, Ill., October 22, 1834. In the spring of 1853 she started with her parents, John and Ann Scot, with and ox team train to cross the plains to Oregon. The mother died en route and was buried in the Black Hills. After a six month’s journey the party arrived in Oregon and settled at Lafayette, Yamhill county. The following year Miss Scott, then a school teacher, was married to Benjamin Charles Duniway, and rancher and stockman, and went with him to his donation land claim in Clackamas county, then a wilderness.

Mrs. Duniway became successively a ranchwoman, milliner and dressmaker and author, enduring all the hardships of pioneer days.

Because of the fact that in the early days no married woman held a right or title to any earthly possessions, not even her bridal trousseau, Mrs. Duniway began her fight in 1871 for the franchise of women, and once in the fray she has steadfastly championed the cause ever since.

Mrs. Duniway became on of the foremost advocates of women’s rights in the country, and appeared before legislatures and conventions in Washington, Oregon and Idaho pleading her cause. She assisted in organizing the National American Equal Suffrage association, in 1884. Moving to Portland in 1871 she became the owner and editor of the New Northwest until 1886.

Her address before the constitutional convention at Boise, Idaho, in 1889, did much toward putting Idaho in the list of equal suffrage states.

Mrs. Duniway composed the Centennial ode for the Lewis and Clark exposition in 1905, and was honored by an Abigail Scott Duniway day at that fair. She has been president and director of the Oregon Equal Suffrage Association for 33 years, and has been honorary president of the Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs and president of the Federation Governmental Study club.

She is the author of a volume of poems, “From the West to ‘the West,’” “Captain Gray’s Company,” and other works.

The monster testimonial of love and appreciation planned for Mrs. Duniway at the Auditorium tonight promises to be the most remarkable demonstration of its kind ever held on the Pacific coast.

Mrs. Duniway, though not fully recovered from a long illness, is alert and bright mentally, and will attend her city-wide “birthday party” in person.

WOMEN WORKERS ON TOUR

“Flying Squadron” of Suffragists Cover Country With Literature

Seven ardent supporters of suffrage have for the past week been engaged in a series of excursions into the territory lying about Portland, in the dissemination of suffrage literature. In an automobile a flying trip is made through some territory selected, and in the wake of the “flying squadron” the signboards, crossroads stores and private mail boxes along the rural routes blossom with a burden of suffrage literature.

Last Saturday a circle of 70 miles out of Portland through Milwaukie and Estacada was made. Signs were tacked in convenient places and a veritable storm of literature was precipitated upon the people in the district through which the party passed. Preliminary organization for the campaign was made at Estacada, where the travelers found the sentiment very favorable. On Monday a similar trip was made to Oregon City and other places in Clackamas County. Similar trips are to be made in future until all the outlying territory directly tributary to Portland has been covered.

Members of the party which has constituted itself a flying squadron for the furtherance of woman suffrage are: Mr. and Mrs. G. A. Lovejoy, Misses Florence and Frances Dayton, Mrs. Amanda Oatfield and Miss Oatfield and Miss Helen Gillespie.

SUFFRAGISTS ARE ACTIVE
REPORTS OF COUNTRY WORKERS REASSURING
Big Meeting Planned in Honor of Mrs. Duniway, October 22, Will Have Important Speakers

With the purpose of impressing upon one and all of the workers in the equal suffrage cause the necessity for redoubled energies during the closing weeks of the campaign, an extraordinary meeting of the state equal suffrage organization was held in the auditorium of the Journal building yesterday, under the presidency of Mrs. Henry Waldo Coe. Dates of future meetings were arranged, speakers settled and reports of organizers in the country received and commented upon.

Mrs. Olive Enright, of Salem, and Mrs. Stephen A. Lowell, of Pendleton, gave encouraging reports of the progress of the work in their respective spheres, while Mrs. Edythe Weatherred gave and account of the work she had accomplished in the past ten days in Wasco and Umatilla counties.

It was announced during the meeting that the Gipsy Smith Auditorium had been secured definitely for holding great suffrage rally on the birthday of the leader of the state organization. Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, who will be 78 years of age October 22.

In addition to Senator Chamberlain and ex-Senator Fulton, Governor West has promised to speak, and Mrs. Coe announced that she was busy endeavoring to obtain four more important men.

Under the auspices of the College Equal Suffrage League a meeting will be held at 8 o’clock tomorrow night at Kenilworth, in Miller Hall, corner of Twenty-ninth and Gladstone streets.

The principal speaker of the evening will be A. C. Newill, while among the others to give addresses are: Mrs. C. B. Woodruff, Mrs. Helen Miller Senn and Mrs. John Tomilson.

Today there is to be a meeting on suffrage at Jennings Lodge, and tomorrow the Milwaukie and Oak Grove Association has planned for a rally at which W. C. Brownell will deliver the principal address.

Under the auspices of the Oak Grove and Milwaukie Equal Suffrage Society, one of the most successful meetings in favor of the cause that has ever been held at Oak Grove and that which took place yesterday. Addresses were given by Mrs. M. L. T. Hidden and Mrs. Helen Miller Senn.

Mrs. Senn read for the first time a poem on suffrage, which was received with applause.

MRS. OLIVE GABRIEL TALKS
Oregon Native Daughter Speaks on
Equal Suffrage.

Mrs. Olive Stott Gabriel, a native daughter of Oregon, but who has been a resident of New York for several years, and is associate editor of the Women Lawyers’ Journal, New York, addressed the Stenographers’ Equal Suffrage League, Monday night.

“In speaking of the value of cooperation of women I wish to remind you of the small percentage of labor represented in labor unions, yet their demands are always met by legislation and politicians, as is seen by laws enacted for their protection both in regard to safety of machinery, the matter of wages and sanitation,” she said. “Women, not having the ballot, have no force to use in presenting a petition to remedy conditions under which they labor.  The status of woman is greatly due to the prejudice that has grown out of her position under the old common law, which prevails with slight changes in all of our states.  Whatever liberty women now posses (sic.) is held only by courtesy, as the power to remove any of the enabling statutes is wholly within the voter’s province.  In only 14 states in the Union does a woman hold joint guardianship in the person of her child.  This does not give her a voice in the management of its property.”

Civic Duties Versus The Political Game

Ida M. Tarbell says one of her chief objections to woman suffrage is that “it will take the attention of women from what I believe to be their real civic duties by interesting them in the political game, when they should be concentrating their attention on specific civic work.”
All right minded women want this work done, but they differ as to the method. The suffragist thinks the ballot the panacea for all ills of society. The anti-suffragist believes that the constant and effective influence now exerted by women on legislation and public affairs is due to the character and intelligence of the women who advocate good causes. A woman now interested in a matter of public welfare is known to be unselfish and to have only the interest of her cause at heart. The same woman under woman suffrage is only one of many political units, with ignorant and indifferent women voters added to the other elements arrayed against her success.
A few women today are idealizing the ballot, while what will really solve Juvenile delinquency intemperance, the white slave traffic, and the social evil is education, education and more education in the homes and from the earliest hour of childhood, and therein lies the civic duty of women, bigger than the casting of any ballot, and absorbing enough to occupy all the women of Oregon for all time.
It is to keep the women of this state out of the ‘political’ game and leave them free for this greatest of all their duties that we ask you to vote against the woman suffrage amendment at the coming election.
The Oregon State Association Opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage to women.
Mrs. Francis James Bailey,
President.