Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

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.