CALIFORNIA WOMEN AND THE VICE SITUATION
A red light injunction and abatement bill, not essentially different from the law now in effect in Iowa and Nebraska, passed both houses of the California Legislature with good majorities and was signed by Governor Hiram W. Johnson on April 7. The law declares houses of prostitution and assignation to be nuisances and holds responsible both the proprietor of the house and the owner of the building. It enables any citizen, whether personally damaged or not, to bring action; and it levies a fine against the property itself and forbids its use at any future time for such purpose.[[2]]
The bill has had a somewhat dramatic history. In 1911 it was introduced at the request of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union by Assemblyman Wyllie, but though favorably reported from the Public Morals Committee it was killed by re-reference to the Judiciary Committee too late to be returned to the floor.
The tremendous general awakening since then on the subject of the social evil and the exposure in San Francisco of the enormous sums reaped by organized vice under the Schmitz-Ruef regime, led to the formation of a society of social hygiene. The efforts of the United States Department of Justice to suppress the traffic in girls led to the establishment of an anti-slavery society; and the State Board of Health, under the leadership of Dr. William F. Snow, made venereal, like other contagious diseases, reportable, though only by case numbers.
Attention has been gradually focussed upon the question of the desirability of segregation of vice or “red light” districts which exist in nearly all the cities of California except Los Angeles, and in most of the larger towns. San Francisco is the only city to make an attempt at systematic regulation and medical examination and this city has been the object of repeated criticism on the part of those who do not believe in the European system of regimentation. It has also done its part in preparing the public mind for a more intelligent discussion of such measures as the injunction and abatement bill, the requirement of a health certificate for marriage, and the several bills limiting the liquor traffic which were offered in the present Legislature.
The bill as passed was sponsored by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and endorsed by the State Federation of Women’s Clubs and the California Civic League, thus rallying to its support the many thousands of women who were given the vote by last year’s suffrage amendment. It is a significant fact that the measure, though approved by many men, was formally endorsed only by ministerial bodies. The large property interests involved and the subterranean coercion of liquor and certain real estate interests, made it impossible to obtain the formal support of commercial organizations.
The campaign on behalf of the measure was, therefore, necessarily a woman’s movement. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union which, as Franklin Hichborn has pointed out, has “the largest single block of votes in the state,” educated their own membership and their men folk. The California Civic League—chiefly composed of those who had been active in the suffrage campaign and whose motto is “study and service”—undertook the systematic work of educating the public on the general subject of the social evil. For four successive months it published syllabi to be studied by its three thousand members in thirty centers. Beginning in January, the union carried on a publicity campaign in the newspapers and during the last two months kept several women speakers in the field talking on the “red light” bill before church congregations, mass meetings, conferences and clubs.
The California Legislature met for the first time under the new law of a divided session, bills being received in January, a recess taken in February, and measures then being discussed and voted upon. During the recess most of the legislators were invited to speak at mass meetings in their own district and to put themselves on record on this particular bill. It soon became known that the delegations from San Francisco and from Alameda County were, with the exception of a very few men, against the bill, while the members of the delegation from southern California were almost unanimously for it.
A picturesque episode of the campaign lay in the selection of Edwin D. Grant of San Francisco to introduce the bill in the senate, for Senator Grant is the successor of a well-known politician, Eddie Wolf, who had misrepresented San Francisco for sixteen years in the Legislature. The replacing of Wolf by Grant was one of the first political results of woman suffrage in the city. Although young and relatively inexperienced, Mr. Grant stood the ridicule of the reactionary press that constantly heckled him as “the boy reformer” and, with the support of older men on the floor, got his bill through without any weakening amendments.