In 1901 the six States of Australia federated in a commonwealth with a National Parliament and one of its earliest acts in June, 1902, was to confer the complete universal suffrage on women and eligibility to this body. About 800,000 women were thus enfranchised. This action had been preceded by the granting of the State suffrage by the Legislatures in South Australia in 1894 and in West Australia in 1899 and this was done in New South Wales in August, 1902. Women received the State suffrage in Tasmania and Queensland in 1905, Victoria in 1908. South Australia was the only one that gave the right to sit in the Legislature with the State suffrage. This eligibility was not conferred until 1919 in New South Wales and Victoria; 1920 in West Australia and does not yet exist in Tasmania and Queensland. One must be a property owner to be a municipal voter or office holder.
Australia has largely substituted advanced legislation for women for the English Common Law. The statistics relating to the voting of women follow closely those of New Zealand. There never has been a proposal to take away the political privileges of women, which could be done by an Act of Parliament. On the contrary during the years when the contest for woman suffrage was being carried on in Great Britain its Parliament was more than once urged by that of Australia to grant it. In 1917, when the struggle was at its height, the strongest possible memorial was adopted by the National Parliament of Australia, which said:
Appreciating the blessings of self-government in Australia through adult suffrage, and appreciating the desire of Your Majesty's Government to vindicate the claims of the small nations to self-government, we are confident that Your Majesty will recognize the justice of the same claim in the case of the small nation of women in Your Majesty's kingdom—women who, in this great crisis in the history of the British Empire ... have proved themselves as worthy soldiers as those on the battlefield, and as worthy of the protection of the ballot, which is conceded to men.... We are deeply interested in the welfare of the women of the Empire and we again humbly petition Your Majesty to endow them with that right of self-government for which they have petitioned for nearly three-quarters of a century.
The most prominent statesmen of Australia and New Zealand in their visits to Great Britain, Canada and the United States have given testimony as to the benefits of woman suffrage.
DOMINION OF CANADA.
When Volume IV of this History was written in 1900 four pages sufficed for an account of woman suffrage in Canada. It was confined to a Municipal or School franchise or both in the Provinces for widows and spinsters, and in some of them married women were included. This privilege began in Ontario in 1884 and the situation remained unchanged until 1916, when the World War, which brought the full enfranchisement of women in many countries, began to have its effect in Canada. For the large amount of valuable material from which the following brief résumé is made the History is indebted to Dr. Augusta Stowe Gullen, a leader of the woman suffrage movement. Its foundation was laid in 1878 and following years by the mother of Dr. Gullen, the pioneer woman physician, Dr. Emily Howard Stowe, a friend and contemporary of Susan B. Anthony[217]. Dr. Stowe was a founder and the first president of the Dominion Women's Enfranchisement Association, which secured many privileges for women.
The first woman suffrage society was organized in 1883 in the city council chamber of Toronto with the Mayor in the chair. Mrs. Donald McEwan was made president and other officers were Dr. Stowe, Miss Mary McDonnell and Dr. James L. Hughes, afterwards Inspector of Schools. Petitions were sent to the Dominion Parliament and bills presented but when in the late 90's the Electoral Act was changed to make the voters' list for its members coincide with the lists in the Provinces, the latter became in a large measure the battle ground, although the efforts for a national law were not discontinued. The movement for Prohibition had a strong influence in the granting of woman suffrage in the Provinces and it was hastened by the splendid war work of the women.
The first Provincial Legislature to enfranchise women was that of Manitoba, Jan 27, 1916. A convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union as early as July, 1902, passed a resolution to press the work for it and later in the year the Labor Party endorsed equal suffrage through its paper, The Voice, and its officers affiliated with the suffrage club. Dr. Amelia Yeomans was a devoted worker. In 1906 when there was a prospect that the Municipal vote would be taken away from married women property owners, the Liberal party convention made its retention a plank in their platform but the Conservative Legislature abolished it. In 1907 it was restored. In 1913 the women succeeded in getting a full suffrage bill before one House of the Legislature, which was defeated by 21 to 14 votes. The next year the Liberal Party pledged itself to give the complete franchise if it won the election. It did so and the women rolled up a big petition as a backing. Premier Norris and the Cabinet supported the bill. The Executive Board of the Political Equality League were invited to seats on the floor of the House the day of the third reading and the bill giving women equal suffrage and eligibility was passed amid great enthusiasm by unanimous vote.
The suffragists of Alberta began extensive work in 1910 to have the Municipal franchise possessed by widows and spinsters extended to married women and the agitation was continued to include the full suffrage. Following the example of Manitoba Premier A. L. Sifton announced on Feb. 24, 1916, before the Legislature opened, that the Government would introduce a woman suffrage bill of the widest scope. The bill passed in Alberta in March with the full approval of press and people and the suffragists met at once in the home of Mrs. Nellie McClung at Edmonton to arrange for taking up their new duties. Mrs. O. C. Edwards had been a ceaseless worker here and in Saskatchewan. In 1914 the first woman Judge in Canada, Mrs. Jamieson, president of the Local Council of Women of Calgary, was appointed by the Attorney General as Commissioner of the Juvenile Court. In February, 1918, two women, Mrs. L. M. McKinney and Miss Roberta McAdams, a Lieutenant on the staff of the Canadian military hospital in Orpington, Kent, were elected to the Legislature, the first women legislators in the British Empire.
In 1910 the women of Saskatchewan sent in petitions, some of them endorsed by city councils, asking Municipal suffrage for married women, but the Government refused it. In opening the Legislature on Mar. 14, 1916, Lieutenant Governor Lake said: "In future years the one outstanding feature of your program will be the full enfranchisement of women." The suffragists of the Province had been organized about five years and the president of the Franchise Board, Mrs. F. A. Lawton, had presented to Premier Scott a petition signed by 10,000 names to show that public sentiment was in favor of this action. He answered that he could give them a definite answer and, as he had already announced, their request would be granted. He said that although Manitoba had been the first to give women the suffrage those of Saskatchewan would be the first to have a chance to use it. At an early and full meeting of the Legislature a number of members spoke in favor of it and it passed practically without opposition. In 1919 Mrs. M. O. Ramsden was elected to the Legislature.