It is estimated that there is a white population of 30,000 of whom between 5,000 and 6,000 are women. Probably not 500 native women are voters. Indian men have a vote if they have "severed tribal relations," which is interpreted to mean that if an Indian moves to a white man's town or lives on a creek or in a camp in such a way that the missions or the marshals think he has left his tribe, he can vote. Indian women have a vote if they marry white men who have a vote; if they are unmarried and have "severed tribal relations"; if they are married to an Indian who has "severed tribal relations." The original code said definitely that Juries should be drawn from the male citizens and it has never been changed. With this exception the rights of men and women are the same.
Two other bills of importance passed by the first Legislature provided for the compulsory education of white children and for Juvenile Courts to look after dependent children and create a Board of Children's Guardians. This board consists of the District Judge and U. S. Marshal in each judicial division, together with one woman appointed by the Governor, thus creating four such boards in the Territory, one for each division.
The interest of Alaska women in questions affecting local or Territorial conditions is intense and their efforts effective, as their work in the prohibition campaign of 1916 proved. This was essentially a woman's campaign, so well handled that at the plebiscite held at the time of the general election in November, 1916, the vote was about two to one in favor of prohibition. As a result, Congress enacted the Bone Dry Prohibition law for the Territory Feb. 14, 1917. It is believed that about three-fourths of the qualified women vote but there is no means of knowing. The percentage of illiteracy among white women is negligible and the young native women taught at the Government and mission schools can read and write.
The women of Alaska did their share in all kinds of war work, for conservation, bond drives, Red Cross and kindred activities. On account of the vast distances and small means of transportation any general cooperation is impossible. There are two daily papers in Fairbanks with a wide circulation over the entire district, which is larger than Texas. The organizing for Red Cross work had to be largely done through these papers but in a few months there were about 600 knitters, practically all the women in the district, and thirty organizations in the mining camps, many of these having only two or three women. In Fairbanks, by means of dances, card parties, sales, etc., $8,000 were raised just to buy wool, besides all the funds and "drives."
The interest of Alaskan women in such public questions as affect women elsewhere is that of the spectator rather than of the worker. When legislation on housing and tenement laws, protection of factory workers, prevention of child labor and like problems becomes necessary they will not be lacking in interest or energy.
HAWAII.
The Organic Act under which the Territories of the United States were created said that at the first election persons with specified qualifications should be entitled to vote and at subsequent elections such persons as the Territorial Legislature might designate. It was under this Act that Wyoming and Utah enfranchised their women in 1869 and 1870 and Washington in 1883.
When in 1899 the Congress was preparing to admit Hawaii as a Territory the commission framed a constitution which specifically refused the privilege that had been granted to every other Territory of having its own Legislature decide who should vote after the first election, by inserting a clause that it "should not grant to ... any individual any special privilege or franchise without the approval of Congress." This constitution gave the suffrage to every masculine citizen of whatever nationality—Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese—who could read and write English or Hawaiian, and it repeatedly used the word "male" to bar women from having a vote or holding an office. The members of this commission were Senators John T. Morgan of Alabama and Shelby M. Cullom of Illinois; Representative Robert R. Hitt of Illinois; President Sanford B. Dole and Associate Justice Frear of Hawaii. Justice Frear said over his own signature that he and President Dole desired that the Legislature should have power to authorize woman suffrage but the rest of the commission would not permit it. Miss Susan B. Anthony president, and the Official Board of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, made vigorous objection to this abuse of power, sent a protest to every member of Congress and followed this with petitions officially signed by large associations but to no avail. The Act was approved by President William McKinley April 30, 1900.[214]
The women had always exercised great influence in political affairs and the people of Hawaii resented this discrimination but the U. S. Congress then and for years afterwards was adamant in its opposition to woman suffrage anywhere. After the women of Washington, California and Oregon were enfranchised in 1910-11-12 this resentment found expression among the women of Honolulu in 1912, when they called on Mrs. John W. Dorsett to help them organize a suffrage club. They learned in October that by good fortune Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, would stop there on her way home from a trip around the world and they arranged by wireless messages for her to address a mass meeting at the opera house the one evening she would be there. The audience was large and sympathetic and she learned that every legislative candidate at the approaching election had announced himself in favor of getting the vote for women. She met with the suffrage club and found its constitution modeled on the one recommended by the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She was in touch with the women afterwards and the interest was kept alive.
By 1915 the more thoughtful men of the Territory were beginning to feel that its women must be enfranchised. Both political parties declared in favor of asking the U. S. Congress for an Act giving the Hawaiian Legislature authority in this matter and that body itself passed a bill to this effect. This was taken to Washington by the Delegate from the Territory, J. K. Kalanianaole, who presented it but it received no attention. He presented it again in 1916, with a like result. Soon afterwards Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin F. Pitman of Brookline, Mass., visited the Islands. Mr. Pitman was the son of a Hawaiian Chiefess and although he had not been there since childhood he was the person of the highest rank. Mrs. Pitman was prominent among the suffrage leaders in Massachusetts and was deeply interested in the situation in Hawaii. She attended the opening of the Legislature and conversed with nearly all the members, finding them to a man in favor of the bill, and the Legislature adopted strong resolutions calling upon Congress to sanction it. In answer to a request for her experience to use in this chapter she wrote: