anti-treat law; also legislation relative to the sale of cigarettes and obscene literature; and a restriction placed on immoral houses relating to distance from churches and public schools; the age of protection for young girls was raised from twelve to fourteen years; also efficient work resulted in the defeat of the State lottery bill in 1888. Petitions on behalf of suffrage and prohibition were presented but ignored. The Legislature of 1891 was the third to be petitioned for woman suffrage.

In 1890, the Reno union purchased a lot on Second street, corner of West, for State headquarters.

A convention was held at Virginia City in 1895, at which time the president reported that the last payment on the State tablet in the Temperance Temple, at Chicago, had been made. In 1897, a convention was held at Reno, but the record is lost. The departments adopted were: Evangelistic, Sunday School, Scientific Temperance Instruction, Health and Heredity, Flower Mission, Legislation and Petition.

The

of the

first delegate to represent Nevada at a national convention was Mrs. Flora McRae, of Reno, who went to Seattle in 1899. In the spring same year, the national president, Mrs. Lillian M. N. Stevens, and Miss Anna A. Gordon visited Reno and addressed a meeting at the Opera House. In 1901 Miss Florence Murcutt stopped at Elko and came on to Reno, spending a week, encouraging the local union to call a State convention, which was held in October. Miss Marie Brehm, of Illinois, was present and gave two addresses.

Mrs.

began

A. E. Hershiser, of Reno, was elected president and a new era for the State work.

It required almost heroic efforts to again place Nevada in working

order.

the new

But a few of the faithful members coöperated effectively with officers. Mrs. Hershiser attended the national conventions at

Fort Worth, in 1901; at Los Angeles, in 1905, also Mr. and Mrs. O. G.

Church,

went to

of Logan; at Denver, in 1908. Miss Gertrude Bonham, of Reno, Cincinnati in 1903; Mrs. W. E. Bell, of Sparks, to Omaha in 1909; Mrs. Alice Chism, of Reno, to Baltimore in 1910, and Mrs. S. G. and Mrs. Sarah Roberts, of Reno, to Portland, Oregon, in 1912. Organization. The main objects of the temperance army being to

Blum

create

Sentiment and to aid in the enactment of good laws, the divisions

of organization and legislation rank first. The State president has ar

ranged

routes for fifteen or more national organizers, entertained them

and the lecturers in her own home, and followed up their work by personal letters and literature.

Mrs. Alice Elder, of Reno, organized a Y. W. C. T. U. at the University. Mrs. Ella Becker, of Sparks, organized a young people's branch there and at Fallon.

Mrs. Wm. Van Buren, when president of the Reno Union, presented a fine drinking fountain to the city, the gift of the Union and the Red Cross Society, combined.

Sixteen local unions have been organized. The largest paid up membership was one hundred and seventy-five, in 1910. Washoe and Churchill Counties are organized for the first time. Eleven Loyal Temperance Legions were started, but most of them soon failed for lack of leaders. Nevada has been aided by money from the National Organizing Fund, raised by offerings at the meetings held on February 17 of each year all over the nation, in loving memory of Miss Frances E. Willard.

Legislation. The bill incorporating the W. C. T. U. was passed in 1903, at our request. An amendment to a bill increasing the fine for selling to minors also passed and became law.

Under the inspiring influence of a lecture by Miss Marie Brehm, the W. C. T. U. took the initial step in the anti-gambling crusade.

Petitions have been presented to three legislatures pleading for an industrial school for boys; while this has not been granted, the agitation paved the way for the juvenile court, with a salaried probation officer and an assistant.

Three times petitions for local option have been presented and lost. In 1911 over 2,000 signatures were obtained. In 1905 the Legislature repealed the law protecting girls, from sixteen years down to fourteen years; and in 1909 a petition was sent to Carson City asking that eighteen years be the limit, but the law was passed making sixteen years again the age. The question of suffrage was considered by the State Executive Committee, but was not adopted on account of the pressure of the work for the boys and girls.

A marked influence has been exerted on behalf of purity, of uniform divorce laws, for an anti-polygamy amendment, to regulate or suppress the white slave traffic, to abolish prize fights, and also to obtain and retain the anti-gambling law. The law forbidding to sell to minors was re

enacted by the 1911 Legislature; also at the same time a law was enacted not to sell to habitual drunkards, nor drunken men.

Evangelistic.-The spirit of the early crusade days has been kept alive by faith and prayer, by work in mothers' meetings, among railway men, by literature sent to mining camps and isolated places, by teaching the principles of pure living and the results of impurity, and by efforts to raise the moral tone of the community. The children's rescue work has benefited and saved infants and children and cared for a girl lured by a white slaver. Mrs. Jennie G. Nichols, of Oakland, is endorsed and aided in this grand work of mercy and redemption.

Social

-Under the social division, we note many parlor meetings in homes and churches, with their gains in membership; the flower mission. department, including all forms of charity, through the distribution of flowers, with Scripture text-cards attached, is the chief line of work. Educational.—Under this division, there have been held prize essay contests in the public schools, six silver medal declamation contests and one gold medal contest, at Reno. Through the State Sunday School Association, literature has been sent to over one hundred Sunday Schools for use on the quarterly temperance Sundays. Lessons in physical cul

ture were

the State.

given to contestants and white ribboners by an expert teacher.

Temperance literature, also petition work, have gone to fifty towns in A convention has been held each year save one, Reno, Sparks and Fallon sharing in the entertainment. One of our honorary members, Major G. W. Ingalls, has supplemented the work by forming boys' antileagues at Reno, Sparks, Fallon, and Elko.

cigarette May, endeavo

913, will witness the close of three decades of temperance in Nevada.

CHAPTER XLIII.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

BY MISS ANNE MARTIN.

The movement to enfranchise Nevada's women and give them full electoral and constitutional rights with men is not exclusively local, nor is it sporadic or ephemeral. It is part of the great world movement for democracy and freedom which is one of the dominant characteristics of the history of the nineteenth century, the realization of which will be the crowning achievement of the twentieth century. The establishment of this sounder democracy, which for so many decades has been the dominating influence in the thought and action of the dreamers of this world will create greater equality of opportunity for every human being, irrespective of sex, and many of the evils of our time will be eliminated by a process of evolution toward a higher and completer type of civilization. That this great movement is not "anti-man," that it has not produced sex-antagonism, is proved by the fact that there are more than thirty men's leagues for woman suffrage in the United States, with a national organization and headquarters. There is also an international organization of men for woman suffrage.

When a democracy based on human instead of sex-rights is established, there will be less waste and destruction of human material by blind government Juggernauts which cannot see their goal, there will be more and more conservation of human and social forces, and greater usefulness and happiness for a far greater number. We are living in great and stirring times. Every Nevada woman who joins and lends her aid to the cause of equal suffrage is assisting constructive forces which will make the world a better place, will help to evolve the dream of one generation in to the reality of the next.

The history of the woman suffrage question in Nevada is part of the evolution of a great human movement. Referring to the Journals of

the Nevada Legislature from the earliest times, we find the Hon. C. J. Hillyer delivering a speech for woman suffrage in the Assembly on February 16, 1869, which should be preserved among the orations on human rights and liberty. At a time when equal suffrage had not been tried in any modern government (except in the Territory of Wyoming), and in the same year that the women of the State of Wyoming were enfranchised, we find this man anticipating every argument urged today for woman suffrage, now based upon practical experience and the good use women have made of the vote in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Washington, and California. His peroration is significant and interesting historically as well as intrinsically. At the time he spoke the Civil War and life of Lincoln were but four years ended:

the great

nation can

"To my fresh, and Republican friends I say: Look to your laurels. They are green and magnificently abundant, but they may wither and fade, and your brow yet go une rowned, unless fresh garlands are gathered. With us the past is at least secure. I would not barter for the highest political preferment which this bestow the satisfaction that I have a part, however insignificant, that I share, however humbly, the rich glories which cluster around the history of our yet youthful Party. But we must remember that we have succeeded, not because we were the Republican party, but because we were right. We have won because, in a progressive age, we have been the party of progress; because when the nation Was marching we have marched in the van; because we had the courage to pluck out, from the overwhelming mass of prejudice in which it was buried, a principle ruth; dared boldly to inscribe it on our banners and to march to battle watchword of universal freedom Beware of a halt. . . . . The Iaw of progress will not modify itself to suit our movements; it will not Say its operation through either respect for our party name or past achievements, relentlessly consign us to defeat and oblivion as it has for the same the great question of the hour. .

of eternal

with the

inexorable

but will as

cause there consigned our Democratic predecessors.

"Here is

was this

Although greeted with "round after round of applause" at the conclusion of his speech, "the loneliness of those who think beyond their time" statesman's portion, as the proposed amendment to strike the word "male" from the suffrage clause of the Constitution was shortly afterward laid on the table. So far as attempted legislation goes, the Suffrage question appears to have been quiescent for some years. Resolutions to amend Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution with refer* ale suffrage were dealt with by successive Legislatures, notably 1885, and 1893, but there seems to have been scant effort to reform the Constitution for the benefit of women.*

woman

ence to

in 1883,

investigation of the Senate and Assembly Journals for the purposes of this article has been done by Mass Clara Smith, president of the College Equal Suffrage League of the University of Nevada.