Portland Political Study League, Women Citizens, and Jury Service 1916

Many Oregon women and their supporters joined women in the U.S. and other nations and looked to women's political and civic participation beyond the vote as a key to progress. As we've seen with the case of Astoria, Oregon, women participated in civic organizations to take action to better their communities.
In Portland many women activists joined the Political Study League to prepare themselves for informed voting and other civic action. Many believed that jury service was a next step in political participation and worked to pass state legislation removing restrictions on women's jury service.
This article from the Oregonian in November 1916 reports on a meeting of the Political Study League with featured speaker lawyer and activist C.E.S. Wood. Wood echoed the view that women would bring a particular perspective to political action that was different from men. And he made this argument specifically for women's jury service.
"Woman, with her sympathy and intuition, can do more than the man," he noted. "In the jury a woman is in her own right. The judges and lawyers exalt law above justice, while the jury comes in as a fresh breeze and cares for the human side of the case."

 

"Woman Rated Higher," Oregonian, November 19, 1916, 5.

Astoria, Oregon Women and Political Activism 1914: The Civic Club

More news from Astoria's microfilmed newspapers on women's political participation.

In October, 1914 Mary (Mrs. Gabriel) Wingate wrote an article outlining the goals of the Civic Club of Astoria. She emphasized the importance of women using their newly-won civic power of the vote.

Wingate told her readers that the members of the Civic Club were interested in all forms of community betterment and the group was "wishful to have every woman who is a resident of our city and interested in its welfare to join with us and it should be a heartfelt duty with every woman to help along these lines." Like many other recently-enfranchised women in the state, Wingate emphasized that women had a civic obligation to put their votes to good use. Members saw the Civic Club as an institution to harness that duty for collective action.

Like Portland activist Sarah Evans, Wingate contrasted women's limited "influence" before they held the right to vote with the power they now wielded with the ballot. "A few years ago we had a prosperous women's club in this city," she wrote, "with a large and enthusiastic membership who were zealous to aid in all matters that would better social and business conditions." But the women learned, she said, that "any suggestions for improvement of our city, made to the powers that be, were never seriously considered by them."

The right to vote changed that, Wingate insisted. "Now that women have the vote, and a voice in affairs, conditions in that regard are radically different, and any suggestions or recommendations we may make will, no doubt, be given careful and serious consideration." Optimistic about this new power, Wingate noted that the Civic Club was an "outgrowth" of the women's club and urged Astoria's women to register to vote and to exercise their right to have a voice in community affairs.

"The Civic Club," Astoria Daily Budget, October 12, 1914, 7.

Mary Wingate and other Astoria women were part of a larger pattern when they formed civic clubs to study legislation and civic education. "It is natural for women to be interested in the governing of their city, county, and state," she wrote, "and they should all cultivate civic pride and patriotism." Wingate was not alone in her view that women could make a significant difference in their new civic roles. Oregon women achieved the vote earlier than most women in the nation but the transformation of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to the National League of Women Voters in 1920 mirrors the activities and organizations of women in Astoria and across Oregon in their local organizations after achieving suffrage in 1912.

Astoria women also worked to become office holders, to become part of and transform what Wingate called the "powers that be." The Astoria Civic Club supported the candidacy of Mary Strong Kinney for the Oregon legislature in 1921 and helped her remain there through 1927.

Mary Strong Kinney Successful Candidate for Oregon House of Representatives 1920

On a recent visit to Astoria, Oregon (a vibrant community celebrating its bicentennial) I spent time at the Astoria Public Library (thank you Jane Tucker and staff!) with the Morning Astorian on microfilm. I gathered some great information about Astorian Mary Strong Kinney, who ran for the Oregon House of Representatives in 1920, the same year Esther Lovejoy ran for U.S. Congress from Oregon's third district.
Kinney ran as a Republican in the May primary and won the field in this first election after the First World War. Oregon women had been voting since the 1912 achievement of suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment would pass in August 1920.
Her campaign advertising emphasized a variety of qualities to appeal to her constituency: she was a successful businesswoman and mother, would work to support Astoria, Clatsop County, and Oregon, and was free of "political obligations" so she could represent "all the people." And, in the postwar climate of fears about radicalism that Lovejoy and other candidates also had to face, Kinney was "not only an American, but a GOOD American."
As with other Oregon women candidates, Kinney gained support (and advertising dollars) from organized women. In Astoria the Women's Civic Club had formed after women achieved the vote with the particular purpose of studying legislation and working to make their new civic power a reality. The Civic Club members who paid for Kinney's campaign ad for the May primary also chose a frame of trees, fountains and flowers.

"Vote for Mrs. Kinney," Morning Astorian, May 21, 1920, 4.

Kinney won election that year and was a sponsor of legislation for women's jury service (more on this topic in future posts). She won election to the Oregon Senate in 1923 and 1925.

Oregon Heritage Commission Proclamation: Statewide Celebration of Woman Suffrage for 2012

Last Tuesday night at the kickoff for the upcoming centennial of woman suffrage in Oregon for 2012 Kyle Jansson, Coordinator of the Oregon Heritage Commission, read the official document proclaiming 2012 a year of statewide celebration to commemorate the centennial.
With thanks to Kyle Jansson, the Commission members and staff and Commission chair, George Kramer, here is a copy of the proclamation:

Century of Action and New Documents Projects

Last night at the official kickoff of the Oregon woman suffrage centennial commemoration at the state capitol Secretary of State Kate Brown hosted an event that did us all proud. Former Governor Barbara Roberts inspired everyone as she spoke, and Oregon Heritage Commission Coordinator Kyle Jansson read the official proclamation declaring the 2012 woman suffrage centennial a statewide event. Many thanks to everyone who attended to show their support and to the best co-conspirators possible, Jan Dilg, Project Director of Century of Action, and Eliza Canty-Jones, President of the Oregon Women's History Consortium and editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly.

The Heritage Commission grant for the Century of Action website has helped us create a dynamic resource. Last night I was proud to introduce the work of Western Oregon University history and honors students on documents projects for the website. They started with articles from local newspapers from 1912 and with additional research created contextual essays introducing these newspaper articles on themes, people, organizations and events from the 1912 campaign. They also transcribed the articles, some 130 in all, and all are hyperlinked and posted to the website.

Two history students, Sarah Hardy and Jenn Newby, facilitated class discussion on using newspapers as primary sources and their essay is included in the documents project on the site. Visit the site and return often as we add new resources.

Suffragists and the Initiative Process as the 1911 Oregon Legislature Meets

As they approached the election of 1912 Oregon suffragists believed that the system of initiative petition, part of progressive reform legislation known as the Oregon System, held great promise for empowering the people to enact legislation of importance to them. Oregon voters passed the initiative in 1902. With enough signatures of registered voters equaling a percentage of votes from the last election, citizens could place a measure on the next statewide ballot.
Suffragists used the initiative process to place a votes for women measure on the ballot in 1906, 1908, and 1910. In December 1910 they had enough signatures for the next campaign, well in advance of the deadline for the November 5, 1912 election.
I've been blogging about the Oregon 1911 legislature and state legislators' vote of support for the votes for women measure already in place for the 1912 ballot. This editorial cartoon from the Oregonian in January 1911 reflects the view of progressive Oregonians that the initiative process empowered the people to enact legislation (like votes for women) in spite of a recalcitrant legislature.

"Reckon You Won't Find Much Left To Do In There, My Friend," Oregonian, January 10, 1911, 1.

Sarah Evans on Women, Lobbying and Voting and the Oregon Legislative Session of 1911

Clubwoman and Portland Market Inspector Sarah A. Evans wrote about Oregon women and the 1911 legislative session in her weekly Women's Clubs column for the Oregon Journal (February 26, 1911, 5:7). She assessed the political action of women and contrasted lobbying and attempts to influence the political process with the greater power of the vote. Washington women had achieved the vote in 1910 and were using it; Oregon women and their supporters had gathered enough signatures to put the measure on the 1912 ballot and the Oregon legislature had just endorsed it.
These developments gave her the context to emphasize the importance of the vote for women to achieve reform. "Women," Evans wrote, "have much to be thankful to the twenty-sixth legislative assembly, and a little to be resentful for, and a great deal to study over."
Evans counted several gains. One was legislation establishing the Oregon State Board of Nursing "which will put the profession on a dignified footing and insure to the state the most efficient service." Another was the end to Oregon's controversial whipping post law for men convicted of domestic violence. "Women of Oregon would sooner have seen the whipping post abolished than kept on the statute book," she wrote, "not that they object to the wife beater being whipped, but because it is a reflection on the women of the state that they would allow themselves--even a few--to be whipped for it isn't the stuff the real Oregon woman is made of, and the world should not think she had to be protected." (For more on the whipping post law, see David Peterson Del Mar, "His Face is Weak and Sensual": Portland and the Whipping Post Law," in Women in Pacific Northwest History ed. Karen J. Blair, rev. ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988): 59-89.)
The 1911 legislative session provided a strong lesson about the need for woman suffrage for Evans. The "strongest body of women lobbyists that ever went to the legislature," she wrote, failed to convince the Oregon legislature to pass a statewide pure milk law. Portland women, led by Esther Pohl, Evans and a coalition of activists, had passed several progressively stronger city ordinances for pure milk (my forthcoming biography of Esther Pohl Lovejoy explores this in detail). In 1911 they hoped to remove state Dairy and Food Commissioner J.W. Bailey and pass a statewide bill. Governor Oswald West asked the legislature to investigate and women testified before a joint house and senate committee. The failure of this bill, for Evans, proved that women without the vote, even though working actively in the political process through coalition building and lobbying, could not hope to effect political, social and economic change in a significant way.
"Influence," she wrote, "only reaches to the narrow confines of one home each, and sometimes not that far." Suffrage supporters like Esther Pohl Lovejoy joined Evans in calling for the vote to achieve what "influence" could not.
Evans also provided a perspective on what lobbying was like for women in 1911 before the achievement of woman suffrage. "No woman enjoys lobbying: she is met with cold indifference, distrust and often jeers and jokes; she feels herself out of place and she is as long as she holds an inferior place among those she is trying to influence, and it is only the brave and courageous who will dare this for a just cause." Oregon women, she wrote, were "wrestling with the legislature."
She contrasted this with the recent action by newly enfranchised Seattle women to recall Mayor Hiram Gill, whom they felt was not addressing gambling and prostitution in the city. (For more on this see Shanna Stevenson, Women's Votes, Women's Voices: The Campaign for Equal Rights in Washington (Tacoma: Washington State Historical Society, 2009) and John C. Putnam, Class and Gender Politics in Progressive-Era Seattle (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2008).) Seattle women, she wrote, "did not have to rush to Olympia by an early train, remain away from their families several days, face a jibing crowd of political corruptionists, and plead their case before an unbelieving committee" as Oregon women had just done in Salem. They went to the polls and voted.
For Evans "this is the greatest lesson the legislature left the women of Oregon to ponder on."

Sarah A. Evans, "Women's Clubs," Oregon Journal, February 26, 1911, 5:7.