The Rise of Women Voters

As Election Day approaches, both political parties are jockeying for a constituency that may determine the outcome, especially in swing states—women voters. It was the same in 1912, the first year California women had the right to vote in a presidential election.

Then, as today, American politics were fractured, not only by polarization between the two major parties, but by divisions within them. The main election issue was that the economy had run amok with corporate monopolies protected by high tariffs. The cost of living was high, the gap between rich and poor was widening, jobs were being eliminated by new technologies, immigrants were streaming into the country, and Jim Crow was rampant.

The American Socialist Party, traditionally associated with organized labor, was gaining support from middle class voters by calling for reforms that returned power to the people, including enacting a minimum wage scale, banning child labor, adopting the ballot initiative, imposing federal management of the banking system, and federal inspections of workshops, factories, and food producers. As models of socialism, they pointed to public schools, highways, and the postal service.

In Petaluma, the local Socialist party was led by two painting contractors, Lewis H. Hall and David Gutemute, and a shoe factory worker, William Boyd. In addition to working at the shoe factory, Boyd also operated a three-acre chicken ranch on Webster Street across from the Petaluma High football field. In 1911, after crushing two of his fingers in a feeding machine accident, Boyd quit the factory and launched a socialist newspaper called the Pacific Leader.

The Leader was printed by a fellow socialists, Anna Morrison Reed and her son Jack, whose print shop on Main and Martha streets beside Hill Plaza (today’s Penry Park) also printed Reed’s Sonoma County Independent newspaper and Northern Crown literary magazine. A well-known poet and journalist, Reed canvassed California in 1911 on behalf of the Equal Suffrage Association for the state’s amendment granting women the vote, which passed by a narrow margin of 50.7 percent.

Anti-suffragists claimed the amendment would have little impact on the 1912 election, as the majority of women were not interested in politics, then a dirty business of men in smoke-filled back rooms, and would vote as their husbands did. It was certainly no place for a lady, they contended, and definitely not a lady uneducated in political matters.

Boyd set out to help change that by hosting women speakers at the Petaluma Woman’s Club and the Socialist Hall to school women on the different parties and their platforms. He also traveled throughout Sonoma and Marin counties lecturing on the need for “humanitarian measures,” such as compassion for the poor, prohibition of child labor, equal pay and lower hours for women workers, “white slavery” or prostitution, and protection of the home against sickness, irregular employment, and old age through the adoption of a social insurance.

Recent passage of suffrage amendments in California and Washington state increased the number of states in which women could vote to six. That meant 1.3 million women of voting age were now eligible to participate in a national election that would ultimately draw 15 million voters. Initially, only the Socialists courted women, making suffrage part of their platform, and fielding a number of female candidates in state races, including governor of Washington. They were largely ignored by Republicans and Democrats, for whom a woman’s place remained in the home.

That changed once Theodore Roosevelt, after losing the Republican nomination to William Howard Taft, formed a third party called the Progressives. Looking to block the rising popularity of the Socialists, Roosevelt offered reforms designed to retool capitalism by restoring competition and minimizing exploitation of the working class, but at the same time drawing the line at fundamentally changing the economic power structure.

The Democrats, then the party of states’ rights and Jim Crow, adopted a similar platform after nominating reform-minded Woodrow Wilson. Neither party had any intention of letting socialism spread throughout America.

With his new Progressive Party, Roosevelt had a sudden change of heart regarding women. Embracing suffrage and adopting “social legislation” as the Progressives’ mantra, he appealed to women with many of the Socialists’ “humanitarian measures.”

In California cities like Petaluma, where Roosevelt clinched the nomination of both the Progressive and Republican parties, making Taft a non-presence in the state election, Boyd battled toe-to-toe with Roosevelt backers. The jostling resulted in drawing out more women voters, as it meant that for the first time in history, presidential candidates were treating women as important to victory.

In 1912, women nearly doubled the total number of registered Petaluma voters, making up 44 percent of the electorate. Election Day was marked by a torrential downpour. Local Socialists and Progressive party members organized fleets of automobiles to carry women voters to the polling stations, which themselves had been transformed thanks to having women appointed members of the elections board for the first time in the city. Men could be seen removing their hats as they entered polling places, and many left their cigars and cigarettes outside.

In Petaluma, a strong turnout of women voters is attributed to both Roosevelt’s close win over Wilson with 43 percent of the vote, and to Socialist candidate Eugene Debs capturing 14 percent, the largest percentage ever for a Socialist presidential candidate. Statewide, the results were much the same, with a Roosevelt win, and Debs drawing 12 percent of the vote.

Nationally however, Roosevelt’s Progressive Party resulted in both splitting the Republican Party and Wilson winning the election with only 42 percent of the vote.

Following the 1912 election, William Boyd and other local socialists continued to press their cause, running a Socialist ticket for local elections in 1913. But the 1912 election in many ways represented a high-water mark for the Socialist Party, in that it had managed to reform the two major parties. Not to mention that, going forward, political parties would no longer take the vote of women for granted.

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A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 29, 2020

SOURCES:

Books, Journals, Magazines, and Websites

Jo Freeman, We Will Be Heard: Women’s Struggles for Political Power in the United States (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008).

Jill Lepore, “Eugene V. Debs and he Endurance of Socialism,” The New Yorker, February 11, 2019.

Robert Tuttle, “The Appeal to Reason and the Failure of the Socialist Party in 1912,” Mid-American Review of Sociology, 1983, Vol. VIII, No. 1:51-81.

Index to Registration Affidavits of the Election Precincts of Sonoma County, California, General Election, November 5, 1912. Ancestory.com.

Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census, 13th Census of the U.S. Taken in the Year 1910, Vol II, Population, California, Table IV (Gov’t Printing Office, 1913). Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library.

Newspapers

Petaluma Argus: “Woodmen Convention,” Mary 19, 1910; “W.M. Boyd Has Accident,” May 23, 1911; W.G. Henry to Lecture (at Socialist Hall),” August 17, 1911; “To Start a New Paper Soon,” November 18, 1911; “Bessie Beatty’s, Splendid Effort,” January 17, 1912; “Miss Maley at the Hill,” March 7, 1912; “The Adjutant General Did Not Order Arrangements for Debate,” March 13, 1912; “Was Arrested on Charge of Criminal Libel on Saturday,” March 16, 1912; “Indictment Dismissed,” April 27, 1912; “Was Endorsed by Marin County Organizations,” June 17, 1912; “Pacific Leader Now the Name of Labor Journal,” July 12, 1912; “W.M. Boyd Leases the Reed Job Printing Office,” October 10, 1912; “Quiet Election and Full Voting Strength Will Not Be Polled,” November 5, 1912; “The Socialist Vote Here,” November 6, 1912.

Petaluma Courier: Boyd ad for pullets at Pearce Street farm, October 16, 1909; “Socialist Club Elects Officers”, January 10, 1910; “Elected Officers,” March 30, 1910; “W. Boyd Will Open Discussion,” November 3, 1911; “Will Give Series of Lectures,” July 20, 1912; “Local Delegates Elected,” August 17, 1912; “Attended Meeting at Santa Rosa,” August 25, 1912; “Socialist Candidate for President,” August 26, 1912; Boyd Speaks at San Anselmo Woman’s Club, August 28, 1912; “A Challenge,” October 28, 1912; “Roosevelt Bait for Suffragists,” October 29, 1912.