The bill as passed was sponsored by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and endorsed by the State Federation of Women’s Clubs and the California Civic League, thus rallying to its support the many thousands of women who were given the vote by last year’s suffrage amendment. It is a significant fact that the measure, though approved by many men, was formally endorsed only by ministerial bodies. The large property interests involved and the subterranean coercion of liquor and certain real estate interests, made it impossible to obtain the formal support of commercial organizations.
The campaign on behalf of the measure was, therefore, necessarily a woman’s movement. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union which, as Franklin Hichborn has pointed out, has “the largest single block of votes in the state,” educated their own membership and their men folk. The California Civic League—chiefly composed of those who had been active in the suffrage campaign and whose motto is “study and service”—undertook the systematic work of educating the public on the general subject of the social evil. For four successive months it published syllabi to be studied by its three thousand members in thirty centers. Beginning in January, the union carried on a publicity campaign in the newspapers and during the last two months kept several women speakers in the field talking on the “red light” bill before church congregations, mass meetings, conferences and clubs.
The California Legislature met for the first time under the new law of a divided session, bills being received in January, a recess taken in February, and measures then being discussed and voted upon. During the recess most of the legislators were invited to speak at mass meetings in their own district and to put themselves on record on this particular bill. It soon became known that the delegations from San Francisco and from Alameda County were, with the exception of a very few men, against the bill, while the members of the delegation from southern California were almost unanimously for it.
A picturesque episode of the campaign lay in the selection of Edwin D. Grant of San Francisco to introduce the bill in the senate, for Senator Grant is the successor of a well-known politician, Eddie Wolf, who had misrepresented San Francisco for sixteen years in the Legislature. The replacing of Wolf by Grant was one of the first political results of woman suffrage in the city. Although young and relatively inexperienced, Mr. Grant stood the ridicule of the reactionary press that constantly heckled him as “the boy reformer” and, with the support of older men on the floor, got his bill through without any weakening amendments.
DEBATE BEFORE THE LEGISLATURE
The debates in both houses over this bill brought clearly into view the high political and social ideals of the younger and more recently elected members of the Legislature; and it proved that the women of California, though wholly inexperienced in politics, knew what they wanted and would stand solidly for it. They won, not by lobbying, but by systematic education of the constituencies of the legislators. It is reported that one legislator asked a doubtful colleague if he intended to vote for the bill and the other replied: “Don’t I have to go home?” The floor leader of the senate complained publicly of the “threats” of his constituents who had urged him to vote for the bill and said that they would remember their enemies as well as their friends. Assemblyman Nelson, chairman of the Assembly Public Morals Committee, said that he received 1,800 letters on this subject during the recess.
Although the debate in the assembly was sickening at times, in its revelation of the attitude of certain men toward the whole matter of vice, the measure passed by a vote of 62 to 17. In the senate a strong effort was made by Senator Beban of San Francisco to sidetrack it by substituting an investigation into the relation of women’s wages and vice. But the senate refused to postpone the injunction bill until this special committee should report, and in spite of a five-hour debate, chiefly carried on by those who were trying to explain plausibly why they were going to vote against it, the measure passed by a vote of 29 to 11. Thus, out of a legislature of 120 members, only 28 voted against the bill and of these a majority were from San Francisco and from Alameda County.
After the bill had passed, a final dramatic touch was given by the demand of certain so-called “real estate” interests in San Francisco for a hearing before the governor. The governor announced a public hearing to which came about forty persons, both men and women, representing all the more important protective, civic and moral associations of northern California. The opponents, who perhaps had hoped to get a private hearing, did not appear; whereupon the governor signed the bill.
Meanwhile, even before the bill was signed, money had been raised and tentative plans made for taking care of the women and girls who should be thrown out of the segregated districts. These plans are now being extended to cover the whole state. It is expected that the companion measure, a state training home for girls which carries an appropriation of $200,000, will also pass and this will ultimately provide for minors and those who go through the probation courts. As fast as the injunction measure is enforced the women’s organizations intend to offer a home, medical attendance and employment, if possible, to all refugees who will accept them.