This was promptly done, and so enraged him that the following week he published a tirade of abuse consisting of brazen falsehoods, whereupon a gentleman called a halt, by faithfully promising to chastise him if he did not desist, which had the desired effect so far as his paper was concerned.
W. S. Wait bought the _Argus_ at the end of four months, changed its politics to Republican, and its name to the Lincoln _Beacon_, in which I established a woman suffrage department, under the head of "Woman as a Citizen," with one of Lucretia Mott"s favorite mottoes, "Truth for Authority, and not Authority for Truth"; and weekly, for six years, it has gone to a constantly increasing circle of readers, and contributed its share to whatever strength and influence the cause has gained in this portion of the State. In the summer of 1880, G. W. Anderson announced himself a candidate for the legislature. He had just before made himself especially obnoxious by shockingly indecent remarks about the ladies who had partic.i.p.ated in the exercises of the Fourth of July celebration. At a meeting of the suffrage society, held August 6, the following resolution, suggested by Mrs. S. E. Lutes, were unanimously adopted:
WHEREAS, We, as responsible members of society, and guardians of the purity of our families and community, are actuated by a sense of duty and our accountability to G.o.d for the faithful performance of it; and
WHEREAS, George W. Anderson, editor and proprietor of the Lincoln _Register_, during his few months" residence in our county has, by constant calumny and scurrility, both verbal and through the columns of his paper, sought to injure the reputation of the honorable women who compose the Lincoln suffrage and temperance a.s.sociations, and of all women everywhere who sympathize with the aims and purposes which these societies represent; and
WHEREAS, His utterances through the columns of the Lincoln _Register_ are often unfit to be read by any child, or aloud in any family, because of their indecency, we are unanimously of the opinion that his course is calculated to defeat the aims and purposes of Christianity, temperance and morality; therefore
_Resolved_, That whenever George W. Anderson aspires to any position of honor, trust or emolument in the gift of the voters of Lincoln county, we will use all honorable means in our power to defeat him; and we further urge upon every woman who has the welfare of our county at heart, the duty and necessity of cooperating with us to accomplish this end.
The above preamble and resolution appeared in the woman"s column of the Lincoln _Beacon_ the following week, and 250 copies were printed in the form of hand-bills and distributed to the twenty-three post-offices in Lincoln county. It did not prevent his election, and we did not expect it would, but we believed it our duty to enter our protest against the perpetration of this outrage upon the moral sense of those who knew him best. We ignored him in the legislature, sending our pet.i.tions asking that body to recommend to congress the adoption of the sixteenth amendment, to Hon. S. C. Millington of Crawford, who had come to our notice that winter by offering a woman suffrage resolution in the House. In 1882 Anderson sought a second indors.e.m.e.nt as a candidate for the legislature, but that portion of the community which he really represented had become disgusted with him; he struggled against fate with constantly waning patronage for another year, when he succ.u.mbed to the inevitable and sought a new field, a wiser if a sadder man. His mantle has fallen upon E.
S. Bower, whose capacity and style were graphically portrayed in caustic rhyme by Mrs. Ellsworth, making him the target for the wit of the women long after.
I have given more s.p.a.ce and prominence to these two editors than they merit, but the influence of a local newspaper is not to be despised, however despicable the editor and his paper may be; and it takes no small degree of courage to face such an influence as that exerted in this county by the one in question, which, I am happy to say, has gradually dwindled, until to-day it is too trifling, both in extent and character, to deserve recognition.
Six years ago I do not believe there was a paper in the State of Kansas which contained a woman suffrage department, and we rarely saw any reference whatever to the subject; now, within a radius of fifty miles of Lincoln Centre, fully two-thirds of all newspapers published have a column devoted to suffrage or temperance, or both, edited by women. The reason this is not true of the press of the entire State is because our indefatigable corresponding secretary, Mrs. Bertha H. Ellsworth, has not yet had sufficient time to personally present the matter; but there has been such a growth on the subject that by the press generally it seems to be accepted as one of the living issues of the day. A very efficient agency in bringing about this desirable result was the printed column, ent.i.tled "Concerning Women," sent out gratis every week during the year 1882, by Mrs. Lucy Stone, from the office of _The Woman"s Journal_, to all newspapers that would publish it. Many Kansas editors availed themselves of this generous offer, greatly to the advantage of their patrons and themselves.
But to return to the Lincoln Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation. The first year our membership increased to twenty-seven; the second, to forty, including six gentlemen. We did not invite gentlemen to join the first year; owing to the character and att.i.tude of the opposition, we preferred to demonstrate our ability to conduct the affairs of the society without masculine a.s.sistance. During our six years" existence we have enrolled eighty members, eighteen of whom are gentlemen. Of this number, forty-five women and fourteen men still reside in Lincoln county. We have held, on an average, one parlor meeting a month and ten public meetings.
In 1880, Mesdames Emily J. Biggs, Mary Crawford, Bertha H.
Ellsworth and myself were a.s.signed places on the programme for the Fourth of July celebration, after solicitation by a committee from our society. To me was a.s.signed the reading of the Declaration of Independence, and I embraced the opportunity of interspersing a few remarks not found in that honored doc.u.ment, to the delight of our friends and the disgust of our foes. The other ladies all made original, excellent and well-timed addresses. In 1881 we got up the Fourth of July celebration[475]
ourselves, and gave the men half the programme without their asking for it. In 1883 we had a "Foremothers" Day" celebration, and confined the programme to our own society. In September, 1882, the society sent the writer as delegate to the annual meeting of the National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, held at Omaha, Nebraska; and in March, 1884, we sent Bertha H. Ellsworth to the Washington convention in the same capacity. Our society has taken an active part in the annual school district elections in Lincoln Centre. In the last five elections we have been twice defeated and three times successful. Our defeats we claimed as victories, inasmuch as we forced our opponents to bring out all their friends to outvote us. Fifty per cent. of all the votes cast at the last three elections were by women. Only twelve women in the town failed to vote in 1884. This increase is general all over the State; and, although we have only once tried in Lincoln Centre to elect a woman, and then failed, yet very many of the country districts have one, some two women on the school-board, and at one time all three members in one district were women.
That they are honest, capable and efficient is the verdict in every case.
In the spring of 1881, Mrs. Emily J. Biggs organized the Stanton Suffrage Society, eight miles from Lincoln Centre, with a membership of over twenty, more than half of whom were gentlemen.
Mesdames Mary Baldwin, N. Good, T. Faulkner, M. Biggs, Mrs. Sw.a.n.k and others were the leading spirits. All their meetings are public, and are held in the school-house. Through this society that portion of the county has become well leavened with suffrage sentiment. Failing health alone has prevented Mrs. Biggs from carrying this school district organization to all parts of the county and beyond its limits, as she has been urgently invited to do. "Instant in season and out of season" with a word for the cause, she has, individually, reached more people with the subject than any other half-dozen women in the society. Her pen, too, has done good service. Over the _nom de plume_ of "Nancy,"
in the _Beacon_, she has dealt telling blows to our ancient adversary, the _Register_. In October, 1882, the writer went by invitation to Ellsworth and organized a society[476] auxiliary to the National, composed of excellent material, but too timid to do more than hold its own until the summer of 1884, when Mrs.
Gougar, and later, Mrs. Colby, lectured there, soon after which Mrs. Ellsworth canva.s.sed the town with literature and a pet.i.tion for munic.i.p.al suffrage, which was signed by eighty of the eighty-five women to whom it was presented, showing that there was either a great deal of original suffrage sentiment there, or that the society had exerted a large amount of "silent influence." In October, 1883, Mrs. Helen M. Gougar came to fill some lecture engagements in the southeastern part of the State.
During this visit she organized several clubs.[477]
In June, 1884, Mrs. Gougar again visited Kansas, lecturing for a month in different parts of the State. She drew large audiences and made many converts. A suffrage society was organized at Emporia, Miss M. J. Watson, president. The active friends availed themselves of her a.s.sistance to call a State Suffrage Convention, which met in the Senate chamber in Topeka, June 25, 26, and organized a State a.s.sociation.[478] Mrs. Gougar, by the unanimous vote of the convention, presided, and dispatched business with her characteristic ability. In view of all the circ.u.mstances, this convention and its results were highly satisfactory. The attendance was not large, but the fact that the call was issued from Topeka to the press of the State but eight days before the convention met, and probably did not reach half the papers in time for one insertion, accounts for the absence of a crowd. Some even in Topeka learned that the convention was in progress barely in time to reach its last session. Reporters for the Topeka _Capital_, the Topeka _Commonwealth_ and Kansas City _Journal_ attended all the day sessions of the convention, and gave full and fair reports of the proceedings. After the adjournment of the State convention, the women of Topeka formed a city society. The corresponding secretary, Mrs. Ellsworth, with Mrs. Clara B.
Colby, made an extensive circuit, lecturing and organizing societies. They were everywhere cordially welcomed.[479]
Kansas has a flourishing Women"s Christian Temperance Union which at its last annual meeting adopted a strong woman suffrage resolution; Miss O. P. Bray of Topeka is its superintendent of franchise. Mrs. Emma Molloy of Washington, both upon the rostrum and through her paper, the official organ of the State Union, ably and fearlessly advocates woman suffrage as well as prohibition, and makes as many converts to the former as to the latter.
Mrs. A. G. Lord did a work worthy of mention in the formation of the Radical Reform Christian a.s.sociation, for young men and boys, taking their pledge to neither swear, use tobacco nor drink intoxicating liquors. A friend says of Mrs. Lord:
Like all true reformers she has met even more than the usual share of opposition and persecution, and mostly because she is a woman and a licensed preacher of the Methodist church in Kansas. She was a preacher for three years, but refuses to be any longer because, she says, under the discipline as it now is, the church has no right to license a woman to preach. Trying to do her work inside the church in which she was born and reared, she has had to combat not only the powers of darkness outside the church, but also the most contemptible opposition, amounting in several instances to bitter persecutions, from the ministers of her own denomination with whom she has been a.s.sociated in her work as a preacher; and through it all she has toiled on, manifesting only the most patient, forgiving spirit, and the broadest, most Christ-like charity.
The R. R. C. A. has been in existence two and a half years, and has already many hundreds of members in this and adjoining counties, through the indefatigable zeal of its founder. Mitch.e.l.l county has the honor of numbering among its many enterprising women the only woman who is a mail contractor in the United States, Mrs. Myra Peterson, a native of New Hampshire. The _Woman"s Tribune_ of November, 1884, contains the following brief sketch of a grand historic character:
Marianna T. Folsom is lecturing in Kansas on woman suffrage.
She gives an interesting account of a visit to Mrs. Prudence Crandall Philleo. Miss Crandall over fifty years ago allowed a girl with colored blood in her veins to attend her young ladies" school in Connecticut. On account of the social disturbance because of this, she dismissed the white girls and made her school one for colored pupils. Protests were followed by indictments, and these by mobbings, until she was obliged to give up her school. For her fort.i.tude, the Anti-Slavery Society had her portrait painted. It became the property of Rev. Samuel J. May, who donated it to Cornell University when opened to women. Miss Crandall married, but has now been a widow many years. She is in her eighty-third year, and is vigorous in mind and body, having been able to deliver the last Fourth of July oration at Elk Falls, Kan., where she now lives and advocates woman suffrage and temperance.
In the introduction to Chapter VII., Vol. I., of this history, appears this sentence: "To Clarina Howard Nichols[480] the women of Kansas are indebted for many civil rights which they have as yet been too apathetic to exercise." Uncomplimentary as this statement is, I must admit its truthfulness as applied to a large majority of our women of culture and leisure, those who should have availed themselves of the privileges already theirs and labored for what the devotion of Mrs. Nichols made attainable.
They have neither done this, nor tried to enlighten their less favored sisters throughout the State, the great ma.s.s of whom are obliged to exert every energy of body and mind to furnish food, clothes and shelter for themselves and children. Probably fully four-fifths of the women of Kansas never have heard of Clarina Howard Nichols; while a much larger number do know that our laws favor women more than those of other States, and largely avail themselves of the school ballot. The readiness with which the rank and file of our women a.s.sent to the truth when it is presented to them, indicates that their inaction results not so much from apathy and indifference as from a lack of means and opportunity. Among all the members of all the woman suffrage societies in Central Kansas, I know of but just one woman of leisure--one who is not obliged to make a personal sacrifice of some kind each time she attends a meeting or pays a dollar into the treasury. Section 6, Article XV., of the const.i.tution of Kansas reads:
The legislature shall provide for the protection of the rights of women, in acquiring and possessing property, real, personal, and mixed, separate and apart from her husband; and shall also provide for their equal rights in the possession of their children. In accordance with the true spirit of this section, our statute provides that the law of descents and distributions as regards the property of either husband or wife is the same; and the interests of one in the property of the other are the same with each; and that the common-law principles of estates of dower, and by courtesy are abolished.[481]
[Ill.u.s.tration: "The world needs women who do their own thinking.
Cordially yours, Helen M. Gougar"]
The rights of husband and wife in the control of their respective properties, both real and personal, are identical, as provided for in sections 1, 2, 3, and 4. Chapter 62, page 539, compiled laws of Kansas, 1878:
SECTION 1. The property, real and personal, which any woman in this State may own at the time of her marriage, and the rents, issues, profits, and proceeds thereof, and any real, personal, or mixed property which shall come to her by descent, devise, or bequest, or the gift of any person except her husband, shall remain her sole and separate property, notwithstanding her marriage, and not be subject to the disposal of her husband, or liable for his debts.
SEC. 2. A married woman, while the marriage relation subsists, may bargain, sell and convey her real and personal property, and enter into any contract with reference to the same, in the same manner, to the same extent, and with like effect as a married man may in relation to his real and personal property.
SEC. 3. A woman may, while married, sue and be sued, in the same manner as if unmarried.
SEC. 4. Any married woman may carry on any trade or business, and perform any labor or services, on her sole and separate account, and the earnings of any married woman from her trade, business, labor or services, shall be her sole and separate property, and may be used and invested by her in her own name.
It is a fact worthy of note that the above legislation, also the pa.s.sage of the law of descents and distributions, immediately followed the woman suffrage campaign of 1867.
In 1880, the Democrats of Kansas, in their State convention at Topeka, nominated Miss Sarah A. Brown of Douglas county, for superintendent of public instruction, the first instance on record of a woman receiving a nomination from one of the leading political parties for a State office. The following is Miss Brown"s letter of acceptance:
OFFICE OF SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, Douglas } Co., Kansas,} LAWRENCE, Kansas, Sept. 30, 1880. }
_To Hon. John Martin, Topeka, Kansas, Chairman of the State Democratic Central Committee:_
SIR:--I am in receipt of your communication of August 30, advising me of the action of the Democratic convention of August 26, in nominating me as their candidate for State superintendent of public instruction.
In making this nomination the Democratic party of Kansas has, with a liberal and enlightened spirit, and with a generous purpose, yielded to the tendency of the times, which demand equal rights and equal opportunities for all the people, and it has thus shown itself to be a party of progress. It has placed itself squarely and unequivocally before the people upon this great and vital question of giving to woman the right to work in any field for which she may be fitted, thus placing our young and glorious State in the foremost rank on this, as on the other questions of reform.
Furthermore, in nominating one who has no vote, and for this reason cannot be considered in politics, and in doing this of its own free will, without any solicitation on my part, the Democratic party of this State has shown that it is in full accord with the Jeffersonian doctrine that the office should seek the man and not the man the office; and also that it fully appreciates the fact which is conceded by all persons who have thought much on educational matters, that the best interests of our schools demand that the office of superintendent, both of the State and county, should be as far as possible disconnected from politics, and it has done what it could to rescue the office from the vortex of mere partisan strife. For this reason I accept the nomination, thanking the party for the honor it has conferred upon me.
Respectfully, SARAH A. BROWN.
Miss Brown was defeated. The vote of the State showed the average Democrat unable to overcome his time-rusted prejudices sufficiently to vote for a woman to fill the highest educational office in the gift of the people, so that Miss Brown"s minority was smaller even than that of the regular Democratic ticket.
January 21, 1881, Hon. S. C. Millington of Crawford county introduced in the House a joint resolution providing for the submission to the legal voters of the State of Kansas of a proposition to amend the const.i.tution so as to admit of female suffrage. The vote on the adoption of the resolution stood 51 ayes and 31 noes in the House, and a tie in the Senate. Later in the same session, Hon. A. C. Pierce of Davis county introduced in the House a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the const.i.tution which should confer the right of suffrage on any one over 21 years of age who had resided in the State six months. Mr.
Hackney of Cowley county, introduced a like resolution in the Senate.
In December, 1881, Governor St. John appointed Mrs. Cora M. Downs one of the regents of the State University at Lawrence. In 1873, Mrs. Rice was elected to the office of county clerk of Harper county, and Miss Alice Junken to the office of recorder of deeds, in Davis county. In 1885 Miss Junken was reelected by a majority of 500 over her compet.i.tor, Mrs. Fleming, while Trego county gave a unanimous vote for Miss Ada Clift as register of deeds.
In proportion to her population Kansas has as many women in the professions as any of the older States. We have lawyers, physicians, preachers and editors, and the number is constantly increasing. In Topeka there are eight practicing physicians, holding diplomas from medical colleges, and two or three who are not graduates. In the Woman"s Medical College of Chicago, Kansas now has four representatives--Mrs. Sallie A. Goff of Lincoln, Miss Thomas of Olathe, Miss Cunningham of Garnett, and Miss Gilman of Pittsburg.
All female persons over the age of twenty-one years are ent.i.tled to vote at any school-district meeting on the same terms as men.
The right of a woman to hold any office, State (except member of the legislature), county, township or school-district, in the State of Kansas, is the same as that of a man. In 1882, six counties, viz., Chase, Cherokee, Greenwood, Labette, p.a.w.nee, and Woodson, elected women as superintendents of public instruction.
Section 23, Article II., Const.i.tution of Kansas, reads: "The legislature, in providing for the formation and regulation of schools, shall make no distinction between males and females."
Under the legislation based upon this clause of our const.i.tution, males and females have equal privileges in all schools controlled by the State. The latest report of the State superintendent of public instruction shows that over one-half of the pupils of the Normal school, about two-fifths in the University, and nearly one-third in the Agricultural College, are females.
In the private inst.i.tutions of learning, including both denominational and unsectarian, over one-half of the students are females who study in the same cla.s.ses as the males, except in Washburn college which has a separate course for ladies.