Chapter 47

OREGON.[150]

The advent of 1901 found the suffrage cause in Oregon almost becalmed upon a sea of indifference. With an ultra conservative population, defeats in five previous campaigns, the existence of bitter prejudices and an utter lack of cooperation among the suffragists themselves, the outlook was almost hopeless, except for the one outstanding fact that each failure had carried the women a little nearer their goal. An inactive State organization had been maintained for years and in 1901-1904 the officers were: President, Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway; vice-president-at-large, Dr. Annice Jeffreys; vice-president, Mrs. Ada Cornish Hertsche; corresponding secretary, Miss Frances Gotshall; recording secretary, Mrs. W. H. Games; treasurer, Mrs. Henry Waldo Coe. No regular conventions were held.

Mrs. Duniway, the mother of suffrage in Oregon, always advocated the "still hunt," preferring to centralize and individualize the effort through prominent men and women rather than through a large and general organization. Shortly before her death in 1915, speaking of her work she said: "Occasionally I would gather a few women together in a suffrage society but on the whole I did not find my time thus spent at all profitable. Some traveling lecturer would often come along and after speaking before the little local band of a dozen members would receive the contents of the treasury, leaving the society to ravel out for lack of funds. These experiences led me to give up organizing suffrage societies, as I had learned that lecturing, writing serial stories and editorials and correspondence afforded a more rational means of spreading the light.... The only time for general, active organization is after a few devoted workers have succeeded in using the press for getting the movement squarely before the voters in the shape of a proposed State suffrage amendment."

This will answer very largely the many criticisms that came from the National Association and from equal suffrage States over the apathy of Oregon women from 1900 to 1904. What the result might have been, with the State and national growth of suffrage sentiment, had there been a strong, active organization is problematic, but Oregon might have had the proud distinction of being first instead of last of the Pacific Coast States to liberate her women politically. In 1905 the following officers were elected: Honorary president, Mrs. Duniway; president, Mrs. Coe; vice-president, Dr. Jeffreys Myers; secretary, Dr. Luema G. Johnson; treasurer, Mrs. Abbie C. French; auditors, Dr. Mary Thompson, Mrs. Martha Dalton and Mrs. Frederick Aggert.

The Legislature had many times submitted the amendment but its repeated failures had discouraged the most ardent supporters in that body. The gains in the various campaigns were not sufficient, they argued, to warrant the expense of resubmission in the near future. This reason was freely and courageously given from the Chair of the Senate by one of the staunchest friends suffrage ever had in the State, the Hon. C. W. Fulton, when he voted "no" on re-submission in the Legislature of 1899, and the defeat of 1900 intensified this feeling.

Hope revived when the Initiative and Referendum Act was adopted by the voters in 1902. The District Judges decided against its constitutionality and an appeal was carried to the State Supreme Court by Attorney Ralph Duniway, whose able argument resulted in a reversal and the establishment of the legality of the new law. This decision was rendered Dec. 22, 1903, and on Jan. 2, 1904, a suffrage petition was issued. This required the signatures of 8 per cent. of the legal voters of the State based on the highest number of votes cast at the election of 1902, in round numbers 7,200 names, and compelled the submission of the amendment. In less than three weeks 7,900 had been obtained but as only half of them had been verified and classified before the limited time expired the work was of no avail.

During the following two years another force had been contributing indirectly to the suffrage cause through the preparations for the National Exposition which was to celebrate in Portland the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In 1904 the Hon. Jefferson Myers, president of the Exposition Commission, with his wife, Dr. Annice Jeffreys, attended the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association at Washington, D. C., and so eloquently presented the claims of Oregon that its unanimous decision was to hold its next meeting in Portland. Stimulated by this prospect the Legislature of 1905 yielded to pressure and submitted the amendment to be voted on in November, 1906.

It was a proud day for Oregon when the national convention was called to order on June 21, 1905, by Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, national president, in the First Congregational Church. The honorary president, Miss Susan B. Anthony, then 85 years old, favored every session with her gracious presence. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the vice-president; Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, the recording secretary, with her father, Henry B. Blackwell; Miss Kate Gordon, corresponding secretary, and Miss Laura Clay, auditor, were present and with Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, Misses Gail Laughlin, Mary and Lucy Anthony, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, Mrs. Maud Wood Park and other well known women were heard during the convention. [See Chapter V,