Jeannette Rankin – Temporary California Girl – 1911
A Missoula Girl’s Stern Campaign
The New York Sun prints a pretty story of the participation of Missoula girl in the strenuous California suffrage campaign, which resulted in the extension of the right to vote to the women of the Golden state. It is a story which will be read with much interest by the home friends of Miss Rankin:
Echoes of strenuous suffrage days in California have come back to New York with Miss Jeannette Rankin, well known as a suffrage worker in this city, who gave her service without compensation in the California campaign, as she had previously done in that of Washington, says the Sun.
Miss Rankin stumped five counties; Yolo, Siskiyou, Trinity, Shasta and Butte. She made out her own routes, generally hired her own halls, when she had one, hired the band to drum up the crowd, and put up her own posters. Four nights was the longest she slept in any one place during the campaign, and that was in a sleeping car.
One day she started for Weaverville, in Trinity county. Weaverville is 52 miles from the railhead and she had to cross three ranges of mountains to reach it.
At French Gulch they stopped an hour for dinner. Miss Rankin stood on the steps of the hotel and looked down the one street of French Gulch. It had 12 buildings with store fronts. Six of the buildings were saloons, and in front of each sat a group of men. She asked a man who strolled by to please go and tell all those men to come over to the hotel steps, because she wanted to make them a suffrage speech. The man looked embarrassed and said he had something else to do at the moment. She asked the hotel clerk and he also had pressing business. She asked a boy, and he went and did it, but not a man stirred.
She went down to the group in front of the first saloon and began to make a suffrage speech to them. There wasn’t any noise in French Gulch. The tall fir-clad mountain rose quite still on either side the one street. Her voice carried, and the men in front of the other five saloons all got up and came over. In a few minutes all the male inhabitants of French Gulch were lined up too, and she heard the driver say: “How’re we going to get her in here?”
She went on talking till finally the driver called out. “All aboard for Weaverville, unless you want to stay behind.” Then she boarded the stage. The men of French Gulch had stood perfectly silent and passive throughout the speech. But now one man darted forward and threw a dollar in her lap. And across the street a woman at an open window called out, “Let us know when you’re coming back.” The driver knew the name of the woman who had called after her. From the next stopping place she telephoned to this woman to tell her the day when she would stop in French Gulch for dinner again.
When the day came she found the hotel parlor packed with women gathered in from a radius of 20 miles over the surrounding country. She talked to them for half an hour. Then she went out and talked to the men on the street for another half hour. Then she climbed on the stage and went on, not to return this time; but they gave her a good lunch in a box to supply the place of her last dinner.
When the returns came in Trinity county had gone two to one for suffrage and French Gulch almost made it unanimous. It was by such work as this that the women overcame the adverse majority in San Francisco.
She reached Dorris, away up by the Oregon border, just at dusk one night and asked for a certain man who had promised to arrange her meeting when she came.
“Why,” said the station agent, “that man went off on that train you just got off from.”
She didn’t know whether the man had failed to receive her letter or had received it and ran away. The station agent took her over to the one hotel. He stuck his head inside the bar and said, “Lady out here.”
The bartender, who happened also to be the proprietor, came out wiping his hands on his white apron and showed the lady to a room. Later she got hold of this man’s wife, who was willing to help her arrange a street meeting. There was no band, not even a dinner bell, and they tried to find some kind of a light that would attract a crowd. In the back of the young campaigner’s head lurked a queer bit of knowledge. She remembered that rock salt in wood alcohol would give a brilliant light. The druggist said he could fix it for her if she would get a can. They borrowed a can, which was the wrong shape, largely concealing the flame. However, it made a queer unusual kind of flame and people came to see what it might be. Then mounted on a soap box she made a suffrage speech at 9 p.m., in the bitter cold of a mountain town at night. It was a useful meeting, for she caught one shift of men just going home from the shingle factory and they all stopped and listened.
At another place, in contrast, she was entertained in the home of a woman who was the head of a 40,000 acre corporation ranch. The house, far out in the country, had a living room 40×18 feet in dimensions, with a huge fireplace. The woman had been deeply interested in politics all her life. She arranged Miss Rankin’s campaign in Siskiyou county, and in her automobile took her to many places far from the railroad. One day a place 25 miles from the railroad telephoned in that they wanted a speaker. Miss Rankin told them that she would be going through the town the town the next day at 3, and if they would have the people in the street she would speak to them from the car. When she arrived she found the farmers for miles around in their buggies, and the townspeople on foot, gathered in front of the post-office. The telephone was what made these quickly arranged meetings possible.
At Yreka, a famous old-time mining town, they had an automobile suffrage parade. Five decorated cars were in line and paraded over and over again up and down the one street suitable for parade purposes. Then they went into the opera house, which was packed. There was a good orchestra, and 12 girls sang the California suffrage song. At the end somebody moved three cheers for “suffrage and the speakers.” The whole audience rose and gave three deafening cheers.
At another place in this county the women had arranged a meeting in the Congregational church. They were terribly afraid the people would not come, and so they got out and paraded the town beforehand, dressed in sheets and pillow cases and carrying red and green calcium lights. The crowd came. The minister’s wife took part in this performance.
Miss Rankin was one of the speakers the night before election at that vast meeting in Union square. San Francisco, where Nordica appeared.[1] At a central point they had a platform for the diva, and all around the square was drawn up a solid rank of automobiles full of speakers. Nordica made her speech. Then the band played “Star Spangled Banner.” At the proper moment the singer waved the musicians to silence and sang the stanza. The she waved in all the people, and the vast assemblage joined in the chorus. After that, as the crowd turned away, the speakers in the automobiles caught them and held them for an hour or two longer.
“It was a magnificent finale to a great campaign,” said Miss Rankin. “It took brains to plan and execute it. And yet, I think, in the last analysis, that Gail Laughlin[2] won the election. Miss Laughlin was a Colorado lawyer whom the San Francisco women had put in charge of election day.”
“It was reported very freely in San Francisco that the liquor interest had determined to count out one vote in each precinct. There are 3,131 precincts in San Francisco. One vote in each could never be traced and it was enough to defeat us. Miss Laughlin got volunteer watchers, men and women. In addition she hired experienced, competent men who were in sympathy with us as paid watchers in every precinct. In some precincts she also had detectives and at every county seat she had paid watchers to watch the official count. I believe we would have been counted out if it had not been for her work.
“The California women did every single thing that could be done. They made a great deal of use of music. In San Francisco they had a tall beautiful woman who sang exquisitely. Every night she would go to some different point in the streets, stand up in the automobile and sing the old ballads like ‘Annie Laurie’ and ‘Old Kentucky Home.’ When the crowd was collected she would tell them that that was her contribution to the campaign, her way of asking them to vote for the amendment, and then turn them over to the speakers. The use of automobiles was a great feature of the campaign.
“I encountered a curious objection which I never knew to cut any figure anywhere else. All over the country regions I found that the men did not want the women to serve on juries. It was almost the only objection they offered to the amendment. I met it frankly by stating the kind of cases in which I thought women ought to serve.
“Our case was fought out strictly on its merits in California. No man voted for the amendment or neglected to vote against it because he didn’t know what it meant, for it said plainly on the ballot that the amendment was to give votes to women.”
The above article appeared in the Sunday Missoulian on December 10, 1911.