Volume IV Part 133 (1/2)

EDUCATION: For the higher education the women of Virginia must go outside of their State.[454] The State Superintendent of Free Schools and the Secretary of the State Board of Education both express great regret at this fact, and the hope that all inst.i.tutions of learning will soon be opened to them. Secretary Frank P. Brent says:

We have as yet no women acting as school superintendents or members of school boards, but I feel sure the Const.i.tutional Convention will make women eligible to one or both of these positions.

Last year I had the honor to decide that in matters pertaining to the educational affairs of this State, the wife may be regarded as the head of the family, although the husband is living; and this decision has just been reaffirmed by the United States Court of Appeals.[455]

Women are admitted to several of the smaller colleges. The Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, and the Woman's College at Lynchburgh, both under the same presidency, rank well among inst.i.tutions for women only. Miss Celestia C. Parrish is vice-president. Hampton Inst.i.tute, for negroes and Indians, is co-educational.

The public schools make no distinction of s.e.x. There are 2,909 men and 5,927 women teachers. The average monthly salary of the men is $32.09; of the women, $26.39.

FOOTNOTES:

[454] The State Universities are closed to women only in Virginia, Georgia and Louisiana, and the undergraduate departments in North Carolina.

[455] The decision of the court was ”When an intelligent, active, industrious, frugal woman finds she has married a man who, instead of coming up to the standard of a husband, is a mere dependent ... and leaves to her the support of the family, it would be contradictory of fact and an absurd construction of the law to say that he, and not she, is the head of the family.”

This is believed to be the first legal decision of the kind and has created wide discussion.

CHAPTER LXIX.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON.[456]

The history of woman suffrage in Was.h.i.+ngton begins with the pa.s.sage of a bill by the Legislature, giving women the full rights of the ballot on the same terms as men, which was approved Nov. 23, 1883, by the Territorial Governor, William A. Newell. This was due princ.i.p.ally to the efforts of a few individuals, both men and women, as there was no organization.[457]

The munic.i.p.al elections of the following spring brought the first opportunity to exercise the newly-acquired right. The women evinced their appreciation of it by casting 8,368 ballots out of the whole number of 34,000, and the leading papers testified to the widespread acknowledgment of the strength and moral uplift of their vote.

The general election of November, 1884, naturally showed a larger vote by both men and women, the latter casting 12,000 out of the 48,000 ballots. It was estimated at this time that there were less than one-third as many women as men in the Territory. When the scattered population, the long distances and the difficulties of travel are taken into consideration it must be admitted that women took the largest possible advantage of the recently granted privileges.

For the next two years they continued to use the franchise with unabated zeal, and newspapers and public speakers were unanimous in their approval. In a number of instances the official returns, during the three-and-a-half years they possessed the suffrage, exhibited _a larger percentage of women voting than of men_. Chief Justice Roger S.

Greene of the Supreme Court estimated that at the last election before they were disfranchised four-fifths of all the women in the Territory went to the polls.

Many women have remarked upon the increased respect and courtesy of the men during this period. Mrs. Elizabeth Matthews, who removed from New Orleans to Port Townsend in 1885, states that, although accustomed from babyhood to the deferential gallantry of the men of the South, she never had dreamed that any women in the world were receiving such respectful consideration as she found in Was.h.i.+ngton Territory at that time. The political parties realized the necessity of putting their best men to the front, and it was fully conceded that ethics had become a factor in politics.

Prior to the Legislature of 1886 some discussion arose as to the const.i.tutionality of the Equal Suffrage Law, and, in order to remove all doubt, a strengthening Act was pa.s.sed, which was approved by Gov.

Watson C. Squire, November 29.

On Feb. 3, 1887, the case of _Harlan vs. Was.h.i.+ngton_ came before the Territorial Supreme Court. Harlan had been convicted of carrying on a swindling game by a jury composed of both men and women, and he contested the verdict on the ground that women were not legal voters.

The Supreme Court, whose _personnel_ had been entirely changed through a new Presidential administration, decided that the law conferring the elective franchise upon them was void because it had not been fully described in its t.i.tle. This decision also rendered void nineteen other laws which had been enacted under the same conditions.

The members of the next Legislature had been elected so long before the rendering of this decision that their seats could not be contested; and as their election had been by both men and women they were determined to re-establish the law which the Supreme Court had ruthlessly overthrown. Therefore the Equal Suffrage Law was re-enacted, perfectly t.i.tled and worded, and was approved by Gov.

Eugene Semple, Jan. 18, 1888.

The members of a convention to prepare a State const.i.tution were soon to be chosen, and the opponents of woman suffrage were most anxious to have the question considered by the Supreme Court before the election of the delegates. They arranged that the judges of the spring munic.i.p.al election in a certain precinct should refuse to accept the vote of a Mrs. Nevada Bloomer, the wife of a saloon-keeper and herself an avowed opponent of woman suffrage. This was done on April 3, and she brought suit against them. The case was rushed through, and on August 14 the Supreme Court decided that the Act of January 18 was invalid, as a Territorial Legislature had no right to enfranchise women, and that in consequence the Equal Suffrage Law was void. The Judges responsible for this decision were a.s.sociate Justices George Turner and William G. Langford.

The very Act of Congress which organized the Territory of Was.h.i.+ngton stated explicitly that, at elections subsequent to the first, _all persons should be allowed to vote upon whom the Territorial Legislature might confer the elective franchise_.

By the organic act under which all the Territories were formed women had been voting in Wyoming since 1869 and in Utah since 1870. The arbitrary disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the women of the latter by Congress in 1887 demonstrated that this body did have supreme control over suffrage in the Territories, and therefore unimpeachable power to authorize their Legislatures to confer it on women, as had been done by that of Was.h.i.+ngton. There never was a more unconst.i.tutional decision than that of this Territorial Supreme Court. Congress should have refused to admit the Territory until women had voted for delegates to the const.i.tutional convention and on the const.i.tution itself.[458]