Following the act of the Legislature twenty months were left to carry on the campaign destined to enfranchise the 175,000 women of the State. It was a favorable year for submission, as no other important political issue was before them and there was a reaction against the dominance of the political "machines."
The campaign was unique in its methods and was won through the tireless energy of nearly a hundred active, capable women who threw themselves into the work. The outstanding feature of the plan adopted by the State Equal Suffrage Association under the leadership of Mrs. DeVoe, was the absence of all spectacular methods and the emphasis placed upon personal intensive work on the part of the wives, mothers and sisters of the men who were to decide the issue at the polls. Big demonstrations, parades and large meetings of all kinds were avoided. Only repeated informal conferences of workers were held in different sections of the State on the call of the president. The result was that the real strength was never revealed to the enemy. The opposition was not antagonized and did not awake until election day, when it was too late. Although the women held few suffrage meetings of their own, their speakers and organizers constantly obtained the platform at those of granges, farmers' unions, labor unions, churches and other organizations.
Each county was canvassed as seemed most expedient by interviews, letters or return postals. Every woman personally solicited her neighbor, her doctor, her grocer, her laundrywagon driver, the postman and even the man who collected the garbage. It was essentially a womanly campaign, emphasizing the home interests and engaging the cooperation of home makers. The association published and sold 3,000 copies of The Washington Women's Cook Book, compiled by the suffragists and edited by Miss Linda Jennings of LaConner. Many a worker started out into the field with a package of these cook books under her arm. In the "suffrage department" of the Tacoma News a "kitchen contest" was held, in which 250-word essays on household subjects were printed, $70 in prizes being given by the paper. Suffrage clubs gave programs on "pure food" and "model menus" were exhibited and discussed.
Thousands of leaflets on the results of equal suffrage in other States were distributed and original ones printed. A leaflet by Mrs. Edith DeLong Jarmuth containing a dozen cogent reasons Why Washington Women Want the Ballot was especially effective. A monthly paper, Votes for Women, was issued during the last year of the campaign with Mrs. M. T. B. Hanna publisher and editor, Misses Parker, Mary G. O'Meara, Rose Glass and others assistant editors. It carried a striking cartoon on the front page and was full of suffrage news and arguments, even the advertisements being written in suffrage terms.[199]
State and county fairs and Chautauquas were utilized by securing a Woman's Day, with Mrs. DeVoe as president of the day. Excellent programs were offered, prominent speakers secured and prizes given in contests between various women's societies other than suffrage for symbolic "floats" and reports of work during the year. Space was given for a suffrage booth, from which active suffrage propaganda went on with the sale of Votes for Women pins, pennants and the cook book and the signing of enrollment cards. The great Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909 at Seattle was utilized as a medium for publicity. A permanent suffrage exhibit was maintained, open air meetings were held and there was a special Suffrage Day, on which Judge Ben B. Lindsey of Denver spoke for the amendment. The dirigible balloon, a feature of the exposition, carried a large silken banner inscribed Votes for Women. Later a pennant with this motto was carried by a member of the Mountaineers' Club to the summit of Mt. Rainier, near Tacoma, said to be the loftiest point in the United States.[200] It was fastened to the staff of the larger pennant "A. Y. P." of the exposition and the staff was planted in the highest snows on the top of Columbia Crest, a huge white dome that rises above the crater.
The State association entertained the national suffrage convention at Seattle in 1909 and brought its guests from Spokane on a special train secured by Mrs. DeVoe, as an effective method of advertising the cause and the convention.
The State Grange and the State Farmers' Union worked hard for the amendment. State Master C. B. Kegley wrote: "The Grange, numbering 15,000, is strongly in favor of woman suffrage. In fact every subordinate grange is an equal suffrage organization.... We have raised a fund with which to push the work.... Yours for victory." The State Federation of Labor, Charles R. Case, president, at its annual convention in January, 1910, unanimously adopted with cheers a strong resolution favoring woman suffrage and urged the local unions to "put forth their most strenuous efforts to carry the suffrage amendment ... and make it the prominent feature of their work during the coming months."
Practically all the newspapers were friendly and featured the news of the campaign; no large daily paper was opposed. S. A. Perkins, publisher of eleven newspapers in the State, gave a standing order to his editors to support the amendment. The best publicity bureau in the State was employed and for a year its weekly news letter carried a readable paragraph on the subject to every local paper. Besides this, "suffrage columns" were printed regularly; there were "suffrage pages," "suffrage supplements" and even entire "suffrage editions"; many effective "cuts" were used, and all at the expense of the publishers.
The clergy was a great power. Nearly every minister observed Mrs. DeVoe's request to preach a special woman suffrage sermon on a Sunday in February, 1910. All the Protestant church organizations were favorable. The Methodist Ministerial Association unanimously declared for the amendment April 11 at the request of Miss Emily Inez Denney. The African Methodist Conference on August 10 passed a ringing resolution in favor, after addresses by Mrs. DeVoe and Miss Parker. The Rev. Harry Ferguson, Baptist, of Hoquiam was very active. In Seattle no one spoke more frequently or convincingly than the Rev. J. D. O. Powers of the First Unitarian Church and the Rev. Sidney Strong of Queen Anne Congregational Church. Other friends were the Rev. Joseph L. Garvin of the Christian Church, the Rev. F. O. Iverson among the Norwegians, and the Rev. Ling Hansen of the Swedish Baptist Church. Mrs. Martha Offerdahl and Mrs. Ida M. Abelset compiled a valuable campaign leaflet printed in Scandinavian with statements in favor by sixteen Swedish and Norwegian ministers. The Catholic priests said nothing against it and left their members free to work for it if they so desired. Among Catholic workers were the Misses Lucy and Helen Kangley of Seattle, who formed a Junior Suffrage League. Father F. X. Prefontaine gave a definite statement in favor of the amendment. Distinguished persons from outside the State who spoke for it were Miss Janet Richards of Washington, D. C., the well-known lecturer; Miss Jeannette Rankin of Montana, afterwards elected to Congress; Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby of Nebraska and Washington, D. C., and Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon.
None of the officers and workers connected with the State association received salaries except the stenographers. For four-and-a-half years Mrs. DeVoe, with rare consecration, gave her entire time without pay, save for actual expenses, and even these were at crucial times contributed by her husband, from whom she received constant encouragement and support. For the most part of the entire period she was necessarily absent from home, traveling over the State, keeping in constant personal touch with the leaders of all groups of women whether connected with her association or not, advising and helping them and on special days speaking on their programs. Her notable characteristics as a leader were that she laid personal responsibility on each friend and worker; from the first assumed success as certain and avoided arousing hostility by mixing suffrage with politics or with other reforms. She asked the voters everywhere merely for fair play for women and made no predictions as to what the women would do with the vote when obtained. It was her far-sighted generalship and prodigious personal work that made success possible.