CHAPTER L.. Kansas.

KANSAS.

Effect of the Popular Vote on Woman Suffrage--Anna C. Wait--Hannah Wilson--Miss Kate Stephens, Professor of Greek in State University--Lincoln Centre Society, 1879--The Press--The Lincoln Beacon--Election, 1880--Sarah A. Brown, Democratic Candidate--Fourth of July Celebration--Women Voting on the School Question--State Society, 1884--Helen M. Gougar--Clara Bewick Colby--Bertha H. Ellsworth--Radical Reform Association--Mrs. A. G. Lord--Prudence Crandall--Clarina Howard Nichols--Laws--Women in the Professions--Schools--Political Parties--Petitions to the Legislature--Col. F. G. Adams' Letter.

We closed the chapter on Kansas in Vol. II. with the submission and defeat of the woman suffrage amendment, leaving the advocates of the measure so depressed with the result that several years elapsed before any further attempts were made to reorganize their forces for the agitation of the question. This has been the experience of the friends in every State where the proposition has been submitted to a vote of the electors--alike in Michigan, Colorado, Nebraska and Oregon--offering so many arguments in favor of the enfranchisement of woman by a simple act of the legislature, where the real power of the people is primarily represented. We have so many instances on record of the exercise of this power by the legislatures of the several States in the regulation of the suffrage, that there can be no doubt that the sole responsibility in securing this right to the women of a State rests with the legislature, or with congress in passing a sixteenth amendment that should override all State action in protecting the rights of United States citizens.

We are indebted to Anna C. Wait for most of the interesting facts of this chapter. She writes:

I watched with intense interest from my home in Ohio, the progress of the woman suffrage idea in Kansas in the campaign of 1867, and although temporary defeat was the result, yet the moral grandeur displayed by the people in seeking to make their constitution an embodiment of the principle of American liberty, decided me to become a citizen of that young and beautiful State. Gov. Harvey's message was at that time attracting much attention and varied comments by the press. For the benefit of those who have not studied the whole history of the cause, we give the following extracts from his message, published February 9, 1871:

The tendency of this age is towards a civil policy wherein political rights will not be affected by social or ethnological distinctions; and from the moral nature of mankind and the experience of States, we may infer that restrictions merely arbitrary and conventional, like those based upon color and sex, cannot last much longer than they are desired, and cannot be removed much sooner than they should be. This consideration should give patience to the reformer, and resignation to the conservative.

Let us have a true republic--a "government of the people, by the people, for the people," and we shall hear no more the oligarchical cry of croaking conservatism calling for a "white man's government"--appealing by this, and like slogans of class and caste to the lowest and meanest principles of human nature, dangerous alike to real republicanism and true democracy. Expediency, that great pretext for the infringement of human rights, no longer justifies us in the retention of a monopoly of political power in our own favored class of "white male citizens."

In the summer of 1871, Mr. Wait and myself removed to Salina, where Mrs. Hannah Wilson resided. She was the only person in this section of Kansas I ever heard of doing any suffrage work between the years of 1867 and 1877. She was a woman of great force of character, and a strong advocate of suffrage. She was born in Hamilton county, Ohio, and came to Salina in 1870. After Miss Anthony lectured in that city in 1877, Mrs. Wilson circulated petitions to the legislature and to congress. She was also active and aggressive in the temperance cause. When she learned of the Lincoln Beacon, and its advocacy of woman suffrage, she wrote an article for the paper, and accompanied it with a kind letter and the price of a year's subscription. Mrs. Wilson was a Quaker, and in her dress and address strictly adhered to the peculiarites of that sect.

Miss Kate Stephens, professor of Greek in the Kansas State University, writes that she has made diligent search during the past summer among the libraries of Topeka and Lawrence for record of suffrage work since the campaign of 1867, and finds absolutely nothing, so that I am reduced to the necessity of writing, principally, of our little efforts here in central Kansas. In the intensely interesting letters of Mesdames Helen Ekin Starrett, Susan E. Wattles, Dr. R. S. Tenney and Hon. J. P. Root, in Vol. II., all written since 1880, I find no mention of any woman suffrage organizations. Mrs. Wattles, of Mound City, says: "My work has been very limited. I have only been able to circulate tracts and papers"; and she enumerates all the woman suffrage papers ever published in America, which she had taken and given away. A quiet, unobtrusive method of work, but one of the most effective; and doubtless to the sentiment created and fostered by this sowing of suffrage literature by Mrs. Wattles, is largely due the wonderful revival which has swept like one of our own prairie fires over south-eastern Kansas during the past year; a sentiment so strong as to need but "a live coal from off the altar" to kindle into a blaze of enthusiasm. This it received in the earnest eloquence of Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, who has twice visited that portion of the State. All these writers express their faith in a growing interest in the suffrage cause, and, some of them, the belief that if the question were again submitted to a vote of the people, it would carry.

In our State suffrage convention, June, 1884, among the demands which we resolved to make of our incoming legislature, was the submission of an amendment striking out the word "male" from the State constitution. For myself, I entertained no hope that it would succeed further than as a means of agitation and education. On reflection, I hope it will not be done. The women of Kansas have once been subjected to the humiliation of having their political disabilities perpetuated by the vote of the "rank and file" of our populace. While I believe the growth of popular opinion in favor of equality of rights for women has nowhere been more rapid than in Kansas, yet I do not lose sight of the fact that thousands of foreigners are each year added to the voting population, whose ballots in the aggregate defeat the will of our enlightened, American-born citizens. Besides, it is a too convenient way for a legislature to shirk its own responsibility. If the demand is made, I hope it may be done in connection with that for municipal and presidential suffrage.

The history of the woman suffrage organizations in Kansas since 1867, may be briefly told. The first owes its existence to one copy of the National Citizen and Ballot-Box subscribed for by my husband, W. S. Wait, who by the merest chance heard Miss Anthony deliver her famous lecture, "Woman wants Bread, not the Ballot," in Salina, in November, 1877. The paper was religiously read by Mrs. Emily J. Biggs and myself; although we did not need conversion, both being radical in our ideas on this question, we had long felt the need of something being done which would fix public attention and provoke discussion. This was all we felt ourselves competent to do, and the knowledge that nobody else in our section of the country would do it, coupled with the inspiration of the National Citizen, culminated, in November 1879, in sending to the Saline Valley Register, George W. Anderson, editor and proprietor, a notice for a meeting of women for the purpose of organizing a suffrage society. In response to the call, Mrs. Emily J. Biggs, Mrs. Sarah E. Lutes, and Mrs. Wait, met November 11, 1879, at the house of A. T. Biggs, and organized the Lincoln Auxiliary of the National Association. We elected a full corps of officers from among ladies whom we believed to be favorable, interviewed them for their approval, and sent a full report of the meeting to be published as a matter of news in the Register, which had given our call without comment. The editor had a few weeks previously bought the paper, and we were totally ignorant in regard to his position upon the question. We were not long left in doubt, for the fact that we had actually organized in a way which showed that we understood ourselves, and meant business, had the effect to elicit from his pen a scurrilous article, in which he called us "the three noble-hearted women," classed us with "free-lovers," called us "monstrosities, neither men nor women," and more of the same sort. Of course, the effect of this upon the community was to array all true friends of the cause on our side, to bring the opposition, made bold by the championship of such a gallant leader, to the front, and cause the faint-hearted to take to the fence. And here we had the discussion opened up in a manner which, had we foreseen, I fear our courage would have been inadequate to the demand. But not for one moment did we entertain a thought of retreating. Knowing that if we maintained silence, the enemy would consider us vanquished, I wrote an article for his paper, quoting largely from Walker's American Law, which he published; and Mrs. Biggs also furnished him an article in which she showed him up in a manner so ludicrous and sarcastic that he got rid of printing it by setting it up full of mistakes which he manufactured himself, and sending her the proof with the information that if he published it at all, it would be in that form. It appeared the following week, however, in the first number of The Argus, a Democratic paper, Ira C. Lutes, editor and proprietor, in which we at once secured a column for the use of our society. About a dozen ladies attended our second meeting, at which the following resolutions were unanimously adopted, all the ladies present being allowed to vote:

WHEREAS, The local newspaper is adjudged, by common consent, to be the exponent of the intelligence, refinement, and culture of a community, and, in a large degree, the educator of the rising generation; and

WHEREAS, In one issue of the Lincoln Register there appears no fewer than forty-seven misspelled words, with numerous errors in grammatical construction and punctuation; also a scurrilous article headed "Woman vs. Man," in which the editor not only grossly misrepresents us, but assails the characters of all advocates of suffrage everywhere in a manner which shocks the moral sense of every true lady and gentleman in this community; therefore

Resolved, That this association present the editor of the Register with a copy of some standard English spelling-book, and English Language Lessons, for his especial use.

Resolved, That as he has been so kind as to offer his advice to us, unsolicited, we reciprocate the favor by admonishing him to confine himself to facts in future, and to remember that the people of Lincoln are capable of appreciating truth and common decency.

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be furnished the editor of the Lincoln Register, with the books above named.

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 participated 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 God 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 associations, 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 coöperating 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 petitions 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 indorsement 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 succumbed 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 space 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, entitled "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 Association. 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 attitude of the opposition, we preferred to demonstrate our ability to conduct the affairs of the society without masculine assistance. 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 assigned places on the programme for the Fourth of July celebration, after solicitation by a committee from our society. To me was assigned the reading of the Declaration of Independence, and I embraced the opportunity of interspersing a few remarks not found in that honored document, 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 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 Association, 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. Swank 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 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 canvassed the town with literature and a petition for municipal 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.

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 assistance to call a State Suffrage Convention, which met in the Senate chamber in Topeka, June 25, 26, and organized a State Association. Mrs. Gougar, by the unanimous vote of the convention, presided, and dispatched business with her characteristic ability. In view of all the circumstances, 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.

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 Association, 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 associated 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. Mitchell 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 fortitude, 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 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 mass 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 assent 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 constitution 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.

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: