Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/1173

 He goes on to say that he arrived in Seattle on Sunday, and was surprised at the quiet and order he found prevailing, and at the general Sunday closing of the places of business: "Even the bars of the hotels were closed; and this was the worst town in the Territory when I first saw it. Now its uproarious theaters, dance-houses, squaw-brothels and Sunday fights are things of the past. Not a gambling house exists."

Women served on juries, and meted out the full penalty of the law to gamblers and keepers of disorderly houses. The Chief Justice of the Territory was the Hon. Roger S. Greene, a cousin of U. S. Senator Hoar, a man of high character and integrity, and a magistrate celebrated throughout the Northwest for his resolute and courageous resistance to lynch law. In his charge to the grand jury at Port Townsend, August, 1884, he said:

"The opponents of woman suffrage in this Territory are found allied with a solid phalanx of gamblers, prostitutes, pimps, and drunkard-makers — a phalanx composed of all in each of those classes who know the interest of the class and vote according to it."

In his charge to another grand jury later, Chief Justice Greene said:

"Twelve terms of court, ladies and gentlemen, I have now held, in which women have served as grand and petit jurors, and it is certainly a fact beyond dispute that no other twelve terms so salutary for restraint of crime have ever been held in this Territory. For fifteen years I have been trying to do what a judge ought, but have never till the last six months felt underneath and around me, in the degree that every judge has a right to feel it, the upbuoying might of the people in the line of full and resolute enforcement of the law."

Naturally, the vicious elements disliked "the full and resolute enforcement of law." The baser sort of politicians also disliked the independent voting of the women. The Republicans had a normal majority in the Territory, but they nominated for a high office a man who was a hard drinker. The Republican women would not vote for him, and he was defeated. Next they nominated a man who had for years been openly living with an Indian woman and had a family of half-breed children. Again the Republican women refused to vote for him, and he was defeated. This brought the enmity of the Republican "machine" upon woman suffrage. The Democratic women showed equal independence, and incurred the hostility of the Democratic "machine."

Between 1884 and 1888 a change of administration at Washington led to a change in the Territorial Supreme Court. The newly appointed Chief Justice and a majority of the new judges of the Supreme Court [appointed by President Cleveland] were opposed to equal suffrage, and were amenable, it 1s said, to the strong pressure brought to bear upon them by all the vicious elements to secure its repeal. A gambler who had been convicted by a jury composed in part of women contested the sentence on the ground that women were not legal voters, and the Supreme Court decided that the woman suffrage bill was unconstitutional, because it had been headed "An Act to Amend Section So and So, Chapter So and So of the Code," instead of "An Act to Enfranchise Women."When the Legislature met in 1888 it re-enacted the woman suffrage bill, giving it a full heading, and strengthening it in every way possible.

Washington was about to be admitted as a State, and was preparing to hold a Constitutional Convention to frame a State constitution. There was no doubt that the majority of the women wanted to vote. Chief Justice Greene estimated that four-fifths of them had voted at the last election before they were deprived of the right. Two successive Legislatures elected by men and women jointly had re-enacted woman suffrage (for its continuance had been made a test question in the choice of the first Legislature for which the women voted, and that Legislature had been careful to insert the words "he or she" in all bills relating to the election laws). It was admitted on all hands that if the women were allowed to vote for members of the Constitutional Convention, it would be impossible to elect one that would wipe out woman suffrage. It was therefore imperative to deprive the women of their votes before the members of the convention were