among the other eighteen districts, including the ignorant, the vicious and the foreign born, with an average of less than 1.300 adverse votes in each district.
The proportion of this vote was duplicated in Oakland, the most aristocratic ward giving as large a negative majority as the one commonly designated "the slums."
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.[1]
In the spring of 1885 the first woman suffrage association of Southern California was organized in Los Angeles at the home of Mrs. Elizabeth A. Kingsbury, a lecturer and writer of ability and a co-worker with the Eastern suffragists in pioneer days. This small band of men and women held weekly meetings from this time until the opening of the Amendment Campaign in 1896, when it adjourned — subject to the call of its president — and its members became a part of the Los Angeles Campaign Committee.
The principal work of this early suffrage society was educational. Once a month meetings were held to which the public was invited, addresses were given by able men and women, good music was furnished and suffrage literature distributed. For five years Mrs. Kingsbury continued its efficient president and then returned to her Eastern home. She was succeeded by Mrs. Margaret V. Longley, another pioneer worker from the East, who served acceptably for the same length of time, when Mrs. Alice Moore McComas was elected. Under her regime was called the first county suffrage convention ever held in the State.
All other organizations of women wholly ignored the suffrage association during these years. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union had its franchise department, but it was by no means so popular as the other thirty-nine. Discouragement was met on every hand, but the faithful few, adhering to the principles of political liberty, saw year by year a slow but certain growth of sentiment in favor of the ballot for women.
In the winter of 1887, an effort was made to secure a bill from the Legislature conferring Municipal Suffrage upon women.
- ↑ This portion of the chapter was prepared by Mrs. Alice Moore McComas, former president of the Los Angeles Woman Suffrage Association and chairman of the Southern California press committee during the amendment campaign of 1896. A considerable amount of space is given because it presents so admirable an example of the manner in which the work in such a campaign should be done.
