sixty years ago. They claimed to have thousands of members but never held a meeting and depended on intimidation by their rather formidable list of names of local influence.
The Women's Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage was more active. It was formed in Los Angeles, with Mrs. George A. Caswell, head of a fashionable school for girls, as its president. It organized also in Northern California with Mrs. C. L. Goddard president and Mrs. Benjamin Ide Wheeler heading the list of honorary presidents. Both branches had a long list of officers, some with social prestige, and maintained headquarters. They also claimed to have a large membership but held only parlor and club meetings. The National Anti-Suffrage Association sent its secretary, Miss Minnie Bronson, to speak, write, organize and have charge of headquarters. Mrs. William Force Scott came as a speaker from New York. The association was not an important factor in the campaign.
Theodore Roosevelt lectured in California in the spring of 1911. He had been in the State twice in preceding years and each time had referred disparagingly to woman suffrage. During the present visit he spoke in the Greek Theater at the State University in Berkeley to an audience of 10,000 on March 25 and the San Francisco Examiner of the next morning said in its report:
Here is what Colonel Roosevelt said on the burning question of woman suffrage:
"A short time ago I was handed a letter from the president of an Equal Suffrage Association asking me to speak in behalf of it. I have always told my friends that it seemed to me that no man was worth his salt who didn't think deeply of woman's rights and no woman was worth her salt who didn't think more of her duties than of her rights. Personally I am tepidly in favor of woman suffrage. I have studied the condition of women in those States where that right is exercised but I have never been able to take a great interest in it because it always seemed to me so much less important than so many other questions affecting women. I don't think the harm will come of it that its opponents expect, and I don't think that one-half of one per cent. of the good will come from it that its friends expect. It is not a millionth part as important as keeping and reviving the realization that the great work of women must be done in the home. The ideal woman of the future as of the past is the good wife and mother, able to train numbers of healthy children."
