LEADING ARTICLES. 



499 



HOW WOMEN VOTE IN CALIFORNIA. 



In Australia, where the vote was 

 granted easily to women, its value was 

 not perhaps so rapidly realised as it 

 is where the vote has only been won 

 after much effort. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis 

 Edwin Sheis contribute an informing 

 article on " What California's Women 

 Did with Their Ballots " to the Pictorial 

 Review. The writers spent several 

 months in careful observation, and 

 claim to have found " just how the 

 women vote and what they vote for." 

 They were in San Francisco on Novem- 

 ber 5th, when " the last-made voters in 

 the Union were to cast their first vote 

 at a national election" and they admit 

 that at first the proceedings were " dis- 

 tinctly disappointing." The}' say : 



On the 'lavs before election we had gone 

 in hi one political headquarters to another, 

 from one suffrage body to another, and had 

 seen the newly franehised voters swarming 

 about with all the buzz and business oi a 

 beehive. We had seen them working for 

 their candidates and receiving printed mat- 

 ter for distribution at the polls and instruc- 

 tions as to the rights of "pickets," and we 

 had expected something " lively " — some- 

 thing at least interesting if not excit- 

 ing. What we saw was as tame as a chnrcn 

 .service. As we passed from poll to poll we 

 found no excitement whatever, nothing mili- 

 tant, nothing unladylike. We saw instead 

 quiet women working quietly for the good 



of their homes and city and country \t 



first it was disappointing. But it became 

 more than interesting as the significance oi 

 the thing gradually grew upon us, for San 

 Francisco's vote on election day .showed that 

 the women of that city take their politics 

 as they do their housework. And. just as 

 they clean their own domiciles, so. quietly, 

 conscientiously, determinedly, without fuss 

 or flurry, they were putting their political 

 house in order. 



One noticeable feature of the election 

 was that 1200 women were employed as 

 clerks at the polls, and one was judge 

 of elections. There were three things 

 1 for which the San Francisco women 

 were contending most at the election in 

 question: (i) the defeat of a race-track 

 amendment which was a trick bill ; 2 

 the re-election of Judge W. P. Lawlor. 

 "an able lawyer, a just judge, and an 

 arbiter without partiality." and the man 

 who presided at the San l ; ran< is,-., grail 

 trials ; and (3) the prevention of the re- 

 election of a State Senator who had 

 oted against the bil winch 



v 



against 



abolished gambling on horse-racing, 

 who was " a relic of the old machine 

 days," and who " was out of nlace in a 

 progressive administration." It was to 

 secure these results, and the adoption of 

 some other measures, such as free text- 

 books for school children, that the 

 women of San Francisco " marched to 

 the polls to cast their votes, or stood 

 long hours on the cold, wet sidewalk 

 trying to win other voters to their way 

 of thinking." They showed, too, that 

 they were no mere tyros at the election 

 business. They prepared clever little 

 "dodgers" against the race-track 

 amendment which the voters could take 

 with them into the booths, and which 

 explained just how they should 

 mark their ballots : and in the Italian 

 quarter, where some promised dodgers 

 failed to arrive on time, thev printed 

 the instructions and warning in coloured 

 chalk on the sidewalks. 



At first, banding themselves together 

 merely to fight for enfranchisement, in 

 the end the women of California 

 " turned their temporary organisations 

 into perpetual legions, to battle forever 

 for human rights." An idea of the tre- 

 mendous power at the back of the 

 women's movement in California may 

 be gathered from the following con- 

 densed extracts from the article: — 



The Club Women's Franchise League, hav- 

 ing 2500 members, and local branches 

 throughout California, became the Now Era 

 League of San Francisco. The Woman's 

 City Club of Lev Angeles, which started in 

 May. L911, with l"(i members, and is a non- 

 partisan body of women citizens, aiming to 

 produce in women alertness of mind and 

 .canity oi judgment, and whose greal object 

 is instruction in citizenship, now has MOO 

 names on its roster. Then there is the 

 Friday Morning Club of Los Angeles, also 

 ,,n for social service. And perhaps the 

 most influential of all is the California Civic 

 League, the direct descendant oi the College 

 Equal Suffrage League, with thirty or more 

 affiliated clubs or centres covering the entire 

 upper portion oi the State, and ranging .n 

 size from II to L000 members, or, all told, 

 more than 3000 active members. Corres- 

 ponding to this, and covering the lower end 

 oi the State, is the Civic League ot Southern 

 California, an outgrowth or the Woman's 

 Progressive League, and having a total mem- 

 bership of over 10,000. Then there is the 

 State Federation ol Women's Clubs, with 



