Earning Power: Women and Work in Los Angeles, 1880-1930

5. Suffrage and Politics in Los Angeles

Suffrage and Politics in Los Angeles “THE SAF E, M I D D LE GROUND” In 1911 California prepared for local and statewide elections. Even to those individuals with a great deal of political experience, there seemed to be something different in the air that autumn. In Southern California women were suddenly everywhere in the political process because two of those elections dealt with issues near and dear to their hearts. The first election, scheduled for October, would grant or deny California’s women the right to vote. The second, the election for Los Angeles’s mayor, to be held in early December, would determine whether a Socialist-labor coalition or Progressives would gain control of the city. From handing out free doughnuts tagged with “Votes for Women” ribbons to stumping for one mayoral candidate or the other, women of every political stripe seemed to be on the campaign trail. The results of those two elections, many women seemed to recognize, would have direct consequences not only for women who worked but for every woman in the region. With unions producing at best mixed results for female industrial workers , it is hardly surprising that some women, particularly white-collar workers and those who did not have access to unions, put their faith in political reform. Across Southern California working women of all classes gave their voices to the fight for statewide suffrage. In so doing they carved out surprisingly effective but short-lived cross-class, cross-racial, and cross-gender alliances . The suffrage victory was followed by a wave of new organizations and investigations, including the California Bureau of Labor Statistics, California Industrial Welfare Commission, Los Angeles National Women’s Trade Union League (lanwtul), and Los Angeles meetings of the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. With the Progressives triumphant in the city Suffrage and Politics in Los Angeles 87 after 1912, the focus shifted to bringing the power of government to bear to solve the “working woman problem.” The suffrage fight and subsequent events illustrate that the difficulty reformers faced was not a lack of awareness about the problems working women faced. Rather, it was that reformers themselves, male and female, had such diverse opinions about how to improve conditions that it was difficult to agree on and stick with a consistent approach. Would gaining the right to vote be enough? Did Los Angeles perhaps need a new kind of government? Should that government be Progressive or Socialist? Did the State of California or the federal government need to intervene in the local economy, or would that be too much government intrusion? This chapter considers how women forged coalitions, particularly around the issue of suffrage, but also how quickly those coalitions dissolved in the face of political differences. Like the industrial unions, both the fight for suffrage and the subsequent organizations became mired in political differences between male and female, labor and capital, organized and unorganized workers, and white and nonwhite workers. Women and Politics in Turn-of-the-Century Los Angeles Los Angeles early on captured the Progressive spirit that swept across the United States between 1896 and 1914. On December 1, 1902, Los Angeles became one of the first American cities to officially approve the initiative, referendum , and recall, as well as civil service reform, for the city. Other organizations took up the call for reform. At its first meeting in May 1907, the local Lincoln-Roosevelt Republican League, at the urging of Katherine Phillips Edson, endorsed female suffrage as part of its new platform. Edson, a prominent local club woman, argued that with so many women now working outside the home, only equal suffrage would give women a voice in policy making. The lrrl’s platform also called for the direct primary; a statewide initiative, referendum, and recall; regulation of utility rates; a minimum wage for women and children; and worker’s compensation laws. In 1909, when Los Angeles Mayor Harper resigned in the face of corruption charges, advocates of reform, or “Good Government,” ran George Alexander as their candidate. Alexander managed to narrowly beat the Socialist candidate to become mayor. This success, however, left male reformers in an awkward position. Angry conservative Republicans recognized that the election had nearly gone to the Socialists. Led by Harrison Gray Otis of the Los Angeles Times, these Republicans took to mockingly calling the Good Governments the “goo goos.” 88 E A R N I N G...