CHAPTER XXVI.
ARIZONA.[160]
The Territory having elected delegates to a convention to be held in Phoenix in August and September, 1891, to prepare a constitution for Statehood, Henry B. Blackwell and Lucy Stone of Massachusetts sent Mrs. Laura M. Johns of Kansas to Arizona in August to endeavor to secure a clause in this constitution granting suffrage to women. She was received in Tucson by Mr. and Mrs. Hughes, editors and proprietors of an influential daily paper, who gave every possible assistance.
Mrs. Johns soon went to Phoenix, where the convention was in session, and followed up a previous correspondence with the delegates by personal interviews. She found a powerful champion in ex-Attorney-General William Herring, chairman of the committee which had the question of woman suffrage in charge. When she asked permission to address this committee it set an early date and suggested that it might be pleasanter for the ladies if the hearing should be held in a private residence. Accordingly Mrs. E. D. Garlick, formerly of Winfield, Kansas, opened her parlor, invited a number of ladies who were interested and the committee met with them and listened courteously to their plea for the ballot. A favorable report was presented to the convention and General Herring, Mrs. Johns, Mrs. Hughes and others spoke eloquently in favor of its acceptance. The measure was lost by three votes.
So much interest had been manifested that a Territorial Suffrage Association was formed, with Mrs. Hughes as president and Mrs. Garlick as corresponding secretary. Mrs. Johns intended to organize the Territory but was suddenly called home by a death in her family.
Four years later, in 1895, while she was working in New Mexico for the National Association, she was requested by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman of its organization committee, to speak at the annual convention in Phoenix; and on the way she held preliminary meetings at Tucson, Tempe and other places.
In January, 1896, Mrs. Hughes, whose husband was now Governor, went to the convention of the National Association in Washington to interest that body in Arizona, which it was then expected would soon enter Statehood. She made a strong appeal, assuring the delegates that the pioneer men of the Territory were willing to confer the suffrage on the women who had braved the early hardships with them, and saying:
It is of the most vital importance that our women be enfranchised before the election of delegates to the approaching constitutional convention, as the Congressional enabling act provides that all persons qualified as voters under the Territorial law shall be qualified to vote for delegates to this convention and for the ratification or rejection of the same.
If our women are enfranchised before the enabling act is passed, then Arizona is safe and no power can prevent them from being accorded their rights in the constitution, and if their rights are not conceded they will see to it that the constitution fails of ratification.