Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/557

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CALIFORNIA.
493

110,355 for; 137,099 against; defeated by 26,744. The majority against in San Francisco County was 23,772; in Alameda County, comprising Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley, 3,627; total 27,399—665 votes more than the whole majority cast against the amendment. Berkeley gave a majority in favor, so in reality it was defeated by the vote of San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda.[1] Alameda is the banner Republican County and gave a good majority for the' Republican ticket. There never had been a hope of carrying San Francisco for the amendment, but the result in Alameda County was a most unpleasant surprise, as the voters were principally Republicans and Populists, both of whom were pledged in the strongest possible manner in their county conventions to support the amendment, and every newspaper in the county had declared in favor of it. The fact remains, however, that a change of 13,400 votes in the entire State would have carried the amendment; and proves beyond question that, if sufficient organization work had been done, this might have been accomplished in spite of the combined efforts of the liquor dealers and the political "bosses."[2]

As it is almost universally insisted that woman suffrage amendments are defeated by the ballots of the ignorant, the Vicious and the foreign born, an analysis of the vote of San Francisco, which contains more of these elements than all the rest of California, is of interest. Not one of the eighteen Assembly Districts was carried for the amendment and but one precinct in the whole city. It is not practicable to draw an exact dividing line between the best and the worst localities in any city, but possibly the 28th, or water front, district in San Francisco may come under the latter head and the 4oth under the former. The vote on the amendment in the 28th was 355 ayes, 1,188 noes; in the 40th, 890 ayes, 2,681 noes, a larger percentage of opposition in the district containing the so-called best people. Districts 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43 would probably be designated the most aristocratic of the city. Their vote on the amendment was 5,189 ayes, 13,615 noes, an opposing majority of 8,426, or about 1,400 to the district. This left the remainder to be distributed

  1. Los Angeles County gave a majority of 4,600 in favor of the amendment.
  2. Many personal incidents and anecdotes of this campaign will be found in the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Chap. XLVII.