Legislation
After investigations and publicity come remedial measures, legislative and social. Legislation for the protection of girls is fostered by women in nearly all the states now and much of it has been initiated by them. The Protective Agency for Women and Children, an outgrowth of the Chicago Woman’s Club, has secured legislation in Illinois, making crimes of indecent offenses against children. One of the most significant stories is that of the struggle for an adequate age of consent law in the states.
Lavinia Dock, in her study of “Sex and Morality,” tells of that struggle in Illinois:
The other bill, presented in the name of the federated club women of the state, amended the existing statute by raising the age of consent from 14 to 18. The course of this bill through the Legislature affords a good illustration of the difficulties met by women when they undertake to create new legislation that affects dominant man. At every meeting of the legislature since the year 1887 an amendment raising the age of consent had been presented and had been smothered in committee. This bill narrowly escaped a like fate. It was introduced in the Senate and the senators were practically unanimous in their promises to vote for it; of course their mental reservation was “if it ever gets out of committee.” The women in charge of the bill were allowed to plead their cause. Two features of the meeting were that many members of the committee who had promised support were “unavoidably absent” and that a lawyer from Chicago who was not required to disclose the interests he represented was allowed to make an elaborate attack on the proposed amendment. It quickly became evident that the Committee would not favorably consider the raise to 18 years. On a compromise at 16 the result hung in doubt until the friendly chairman, Senator Juul, who introduced the bill, decided a tie vote on the motion to report the bill. Once before the Senate, the senators stood by their promises and the bill was quickly passed unanimously.
In the House the bill met with a reception that was far from friendly. The committee refused to hear the women in charge of the bill and the program was silence and secrecy. The House Committee, however, did not dare to kill the bill and contented itself with adding several minor amendments apparently intended to afford loopholes of escape to offenders. When the amended bill was returned to the Senate, the women, believing the amendments to be innocuous and regarding the raising of the age by two years as a substantial victory, requested that it be passed. It was.
This bill has been a great aid to all the organizations interested in protecting young girls, and convictions have been frequent under it. But the club women were actually obliged to print both the old law and the amended law and post them in police stations and police courts to secure these convictions.
In this connection it should be stated that the very first legislation undertaken by the Iowa State Federation of Women’s Clubs was in 1894, when it petitioned the legislature to raise the age of consent in that state from 15 to 18 years; the age was raised to 16.
In practically every state in the Union women have worked for a similar age of consent but it is by no means yet established at 18 years in many places. They have also supported all other measures giving more security to girls.
The way in which California women have striven for remedial legislation is thus described by Mary Roberts Coolidge in The Survey, under the title of “California Women and the Abatement Law”:
Women voters, it is now generally conceded, were chiefly responsible for the passage by the California legislature of 1913 of two important measures dealing with the social evil. One, the bill to appropriate $200,000 for a detention home for girls, met with little opposition, because perhaps it was preventive in character. The other, the red-light abatement bill, was bitterly fought, not only upon the floor, but by every secret device known to vicious interests throughout the state.
Although it passed the Assembly by a vote of 62 to 17 and the Senate by a scarcely less significant majority of 29 to 11, it was apparent in the debates that many of the legislators were yielding to the demands of urgent constituents rather than to willing conviction. A political pressure, to which all politicians are accustomed when corporate and financial interests are involved, made them squirm unhappily when brought to bear by 50,000 organized women.
The red-light bill had scarcely received the governor’s signature and the women had scarcely turned their minds to the emergency measures which would be needed by those who would be thrown out of their miserable trade by the law, when rumors of a referendum to be invoked against it began to be heard. The so-called Property Owners’ Protective Association, with offices in the Phelan Building, San Francisco, became the distributing center for the referendum petitions. Two months later it was announced that they had secured over 30,000 names. As only 19,283 signatures of qualified voters were necessary to hold up the law, the referendum was assured of a place on the ballot of November, 1914.
Although disappointed that the abatement law was not to go into effect in August, some of the women leaders saw an opportunity in this delay to educate citizens further in the intent of the law itself. In this way they could insure more intelligent public support when it should finally become operative. At this stage of readjustment the questionable methods and support behind the anti-abatement referendum were suddenly exposed by the discovery that hundreds—and since then, thousands—of signatures to the petitions were not genuine. So many, indeed, that, if the facts had been known before the petitions were certified, there might have been enough to invalidate the referendum itself.
The Property Owners’ Protective Association had declared that they would get these signatures outside the bay cities in order to prove that the country was as much opposed as the cities to the law. But a scrutiny of the petitions from each county shows that out of a total of 31,930 signatures certified, 53 per cent. (17,119) were from San Francisco alone and that Alameda and San Francisco counties together furnished 60 per cent. of the whole, while Los Angeles gave only 19 per cent., Sacramento less than 5 per cent. and each of the other counties a negligible hundred or two names.
These figures showed where the enemy lived. The fight against this law was being made by the vice-and-liquor combination of San Francisco and Oakland, backed by property owners who were reaping the rentals of the tenderloin districts but dared not let their names be known. Against such as these, women citizens had no direct recourse. But they addressed themselves to the district attorney of San Francisco, whose duty it was to prosecute the offenders.
But in spite of the fact that forged names appeared on the referendum petitions, no indictments were made. Early in December it looked as if nothing further would be done about these frauds. The district attorney gave little evidence of continuing the cases. But until he definitely refused to take action, the governor could not be expected to direct the attorney-general to take the matter out of the district attorney’s hands.
Various committees of women continued to urge action upon the district attorney, and one group from the San Francisco Center of the California Civic League made it their business to visit him week after week to inquire what he intended to do about these forgeries. On each occasion he refused to commit himself definitely, but he could not put his polite questioners out of the office—they were women of too much social backing. Besides, all these committees of women were voters and leaders, perhaps, of unnumbered feminine electors. An uncomfortable plight certainly for an official who might not wish to go on record on a ticklish question.
The district attorney, in search of further evidence, finally sent to the office of the secretary of state at Sacramento for the original petitions. Although he declared that he had been shamefully abused by some of these groups of women, he was nevertheless compelled to take the forgery cases before a new grand jury. And, meanwhile, the press of the state was demanding results and insisting that the attorney general should prosecute the cases if the district attorney failed.
About the middle of February the district attorney again presented the matter before the grand jury. Indictment of one Belle Weil, who had circulated one of the referendum petitions, resulted.
In a struggle against entrenched and highly profitable evils, women may seem to be at great disadvantage. In this case there is also a body of men—small, perhaps, but of a sort that cannot be pooh-poohed—who have been carrying on an equally effective campaign of publicity and education. Women, in fact, have some advantages over men in such a contest against the powers of evil. They have as yet no party traditions to hamper them; no direct business relations to be jeopardized; and, above all, they have a larger amount of daytime leisure in which to do detail reform work and to convert small groups of people.
The various bodies of organized women who were behind the demand for the abatement and injunction law last year are now pouring out thousands of leaflets which defend and explain the cause in a simple and effective way. They are training women to speak on the subject and providing them with carefully digested information. In Berkeley the education committee of the civic center is prepared to send a speaker to any meeting where the subject may be presented; and is, moreover, asking every social, civic and religious organization—of which there are over a hundred in the town—to give time for a statement of the issues involved in the anti-abatement referendum.
Whatever the fate of the referendum, the campaign of education, which is now going on, is of the highest value to the citizens of the state. And since this referendum has been invoked by vicious methods it becomes evident that the very principles of direct legislation are at stake. If this law may be held up and perhaps defeated by forgeries, then any other may be.
Whatever the individual citizen may think of the policy of attacking the property owner who reaps the profits of commercialized vice—which is the sole aim of the abatement law—he cannot ignore the duty of guarding the referendum principle. It should be made unpleasant and unprofitable for men to tamper with petitions. And at the next legislature the law should be so strengthened as to make the punishment of such acts swift and easy.
The act was sustained but a test case was soon made in order to bring the law before the Supreme Court, where its constitutionality must be decided.
Women are equally alert to fight legislation, dealing with the social evil, which discriminates against the sex. This fight is constantly carried to the courts, the final place of appeal, if the battle is lost in the legislature. Women succeeded in having a piece of legislation declared unconstitutional in New York four or five years ago as a result of their almost united protest against it; that is, the social workers, the suffragists, the medical women and nurses, women’s club leaders and others united in an endeavor to prevent an important measure from being put into effect after it had passed the state legislature.
The object of their attack was Clause 79 in what is known as the Page Law, which clause provided for medical examination of convicted prostitutes and their compulsory detention during treatment. Their objection to this process of “hygienizing” vice was made by the women on the ground that the prostitutes were not being imprisoned until reformed, or until sufficiently punished, but until presumably well, when they were to be returned to the streets. It was contended that this clause was utterly worthless from a sanitary standpoint and “its indirect influence, as has been proved by the history of every regulative act, will be to increase the evil which its direct influence will not be competent to cure.”
Pamphlets describing the law and its inevitable consequences were printed by the women and distributed widely among their organizations. One of these was signed by the following groups of persons: the Women’s Prison Association, which took the lead in this struggle; National Woman Suffrage Association; Hygienic Committee of the Woman’s Medical Association; Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, State of New York; The American Purity Alliance; the National Vigilance League (Men’s); Friends’ Philanthropic Committee; Council of Jewish Women, New York Section; Woman Suffrage Party, New York City; Equality League of Self-Supporting Women; Brooklyn Auxiliary of the Consumers’ League; and the American Federation of Nurses.
The battle for remedial measures is only half won when the desired legislation is placed on the statute books. It is hardly half won, for the enforcement of these laws is contested inch by inch by powerfully organized forces of vice with almost unlimited financial resources and the aid of the most skilled lawyers. Women are alive to this fact, and realize the necessity of eternal vigilance in law enforcement. A few passages of recent history will illustrate their determination not to relax their efforts simply because good laws have been obtained.