Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/1027

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
UTAH.
953

pointing women on all State boards of public institutions where it was wise and possible. Two out of five places on the Board of the Deaf and Dumb Institute were given to women, Harriet F. Emerson and Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon.

The first Legislature, 1896, passed "An act for the establishment of sericulture" (raising of silk worms). Women had worked energetically to secure this measure, and it was appropriate that five of them, three Republican and two Democratic, should be appointed as a silk commission, Zina D. H. Young, Isabella E. Bennett, Margaret A. Caine, Ann C. Woodbury and Mary A. Cazier. Each was required to give a thousand-dollar bond. <A later Legislature appropriated $1,000 per annum to pay the secretary.

Two women were appointed on the Board of Regents of the State University, Mrs. Emma J. McVicker, Republican and Gentile; Mrs. Rebecca E. Little, Democrat and Mormon. Both are still serving. Two were appointed Regents of the Agricultural College, Mrs. Sarah B. Goodwin and Mrs. Emily S. Richards.

At the close of the Legislature the Republican State Central Committee was reorganized; Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells was made vice-chairman, Miss Julia Farnsworth, secretary. The Democratic party was quite as liberal toward women and the feeling prevailed that at the next election women would be placed in various State and county offices. There were many women delegates in the county and also in the State conventions of both parties in 1896, and a number of women were nominated.

It was a Democratic victory and the women on that ticket were elected — Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon to the Senate, Eurithe Le Barthe and Sarah A. Anderson to the House; Margaret A. Caine, auditor of Salt Lake County; Ellen Jakeman, treasurer Utah County; Delilah K. Olson, recorder Millard County; Fannie Graehl (Rep.), recorder Box Elder County, and possibly some others.

In the Legislature of 1897, Mrs. Le Barthe introduced a bill forbidding women to wear large hats in places of public entertainment, which was passed. Dr. Cannon championed the measure by which a State Board of Health was created, and was appointed by the Governor as one of its first members. She had