The legislative council of the State Federation of Women's Clubs holds weekly meetings during the sessions of the Legislature and takes up bills for consideration, particularly those relating to women and children, education and public health. After discussion and study these bills are approved or not approved and the legislators, the club women and the general public are informed as to their action.
There is no law prohibiting women from filling any offices in the State and it has been said that a really determined effort could place a woman even in that of chief executive. The office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction has been filled by a woman since 1894 and no man has been nominated for it. Those who have held this important office are Antoinette J. Peavey, Grace Espey Patton, Helen L. Grenfell (three terms), Katharine Craig, Katharine Cook, Helen M. Wixson (two terms), Mary C. C. Bradford from 1915 to the present time. During her second term she was elected president of the National Education Association. Mrs. Walling succeeded Mrs. Sarah Platt Decker as vice-president of the Civil Service Commission and served six years. In 1913 Mrs. Alice Adams Fulton became secretary and chief examiner of the commission. Mrs. Mary Wolfe Dargin was appointed register of the U. S. Land Office in 1915 and Miss Clara Ruth Mozzer to the office of Assistant Attorney General in 1917. There have been women clerks, auditors, recorders and treasurers in seventy-five cities and towns, including Denver, and several aldermen. Mrs. Lydia Tague was elected judge in Eagle county. A few years ago 600 women were serving on school boards.
Prior to the year 1900 nine women had sat in the House of Representatives—three in each Legislature after the passage of the equal suffrage law, and there have been nine or ten since then, a number of them re-elected. In 1913 Colorado's first woman Senator, Mrs. Helen Ring Robinson, was elected. She was the second in the equal suffrage States, Mrs. Martha Hughes Cannno of Utah the first. In 1917 Mrs. Agnes Riddle was elected.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] The History is indebted for this chapter to Katherine Tipton (Mrs. George E.) Hosmer, president of the State Equal Suffrage Association. Mrs. Hosmer wishes to express her obligation for assistance in securing data to the past presidents and executive officers of the association.
[20] Among those who worked in the first decade of this century were: Helen L. Grenfell, Mary C. C. Bradford, Ellis Meredith, Hattie E. Westover, Mrs. John F. Shafroth, Minnie J. Reynolds, Gail Laughlin, Drs. Elizabeth Cassady, Jean Gale, Mary Long, Mary E. Bates, Rose Kidd Beere and Sarah Townsend; Lillian C. Kerns, Martha A. Pease, Alice Polk Hill, Mrs. A. C. Sisk, Mrs. A. L. Cooper, Bessie Lee Pogue, Helen Wixson, Anna M. Scott, Carrie Marshall, Nora B. Wright, Laura Holtzschneider, Hattie Howard, Rosetta Webb, Sarah Purchase, Helen Bedford, Inez Johnson Lewis, Eva Rinkle, Evangeline Heartz, Louisa M. Tyler, Mary Nichols, Helen Miller, Louise Blanchard, Margaret Keating, Lillian Hartman Johnson.
[21] The day before a joint session of the two Houses had been held that they might listen to the reading of a poem written for the occasion by one of the oldest members of the association, Mrs. Alice Polk Hill.