Helen Sommers: An Oral History

Women Advances in Government
In 1883, many in the Legislature who supported
the bill that would grant women’s suffrage were
Eastern Washington farmers, who may have viewed
women voters as a way to clean up the morals of
the territory, Stevenson said.
Elections in 1884 were attended by a greater
percentage of women voters than men. They
helped vote out municipal governments run by
men involved in gambling and liquor and elect
legislators sympathetic to their concerns. The following
year, the Legislature made laws calling for
alcohol education and alcohol prohibition where
local citizens wanted it.
The gambling and saloon lobby began to fear
that women voters would further push prohibition
and that uppity female activities might harm the
territory’s chance to achieve statehood. Suffrage
was bad for business, they argued. In 1888, the
conservative territorial Supreme Court overturned
on a minor technicality the legislation granting
women’s suffrage.
Washington became a state in 1889.
In 1892, state officials needed to choose a flower
that would represent Washington state the following
year at the Chicago World’s Fair. The state’s
fair commission decided that only women would
participate in the election to choose the state flower.
After all, state officials decided, women were
concerned about the beautification of cities. And
they were, along with more serious issues such
as environmental conservation, clean water and
underground sewers (for sanitation and to keep
their long dresses out of the foul-smelling gutters.)
Most women, many of whom had lobbied for
decades for social change and suffrage, were not
offended by the request to choose the state flower,
Stevenson said.
Indeed, the flower election was popular. In
post office polling places from Seattle to Spokane,
women signed their names next to their choice
for Washington’s flower. The ballot included the
rhododendron, dogwood, wild rose, Oregon grape
and clover — a frontrunner.
In her book, Stevenson tells the story of Alsora
Hayner Fry’s support for the rhododendron, which
is native to much of Western Washington.
pg. 247
Fry ran her campaign from a drugstore in downtown
Seattle. To dissuade other ladies from voting
for the clover, Fry set up a store window display of
fresh clover and live bunnies to eat it.
When the ballots were counted, the winner
was the rhododendron. Fry wore a fancy dress
printed with pink rhody blossoms to the state ball
in Olympia the following year.
In celebration of the centennial of suffrage in
Washington, women are again using the rhododendron
as a symbol of enthusiasm for the right to vote.
Women’s clubs in Washington kept the suffrage
movement simmering early in the 20 th century.
Organizations such as the Everett Book Club, as
well as music clubs, ladies’ aid societies and hospital
guilds, taught women how to organize and get
results. Women rode bicycles and began to hike
and climb mountains in the state, proving their
physical abilities and stamina.
And though teaching had for many years been
a career dominated by women, the state now had
three teacher-training schools, and these colleges
were populated primarily by young women who
wanted the right to vote along with their teaching
certificates.
Women were entering the work force in greater
numbers, though many were underpaid. This
disturbed the labor unions, whose members were
worried about losing their jobs to those willing to
work for less.
So, women’s right to vote became a union cause,
too. Labor leaders thought women would surely
vote to support better working conditions, safety
regulations and eight-hour workdays for everybody.
But women also would vote for equal pay for equal
work, and then, the union bosses figured, employers
were sure to hire men instead of women.
By 1908, the suffrage movement was back in
full swing in Washington.
The campaign was funded with quarters pilfered
from grocery budgets, the support of labor unions,
the state Grange and a few churches, and by the
sales of “Washington Women’s Cookbook: Votes