This Day in History: 1894-01-07

The Pueblo Chieftain publishes an article on how women in Colorado achieved their right to vote.

Colorado Daily Chieftain, January 7, 1894

WOMAN’S WORLD IN PARAGRAPHS.

How Colorado Was Carried For Woman Suffrage—The Women Worked.

Now that the story of how Colorado was carried for woman suffrage has come out, the charge that women do not want to vote will be refuted forever, so far as Colorado women are concerned. The history of the battle and victory is as inspiring as the story of the Boston tea party.

Aug. 1 a wealthy Denver lady gave the use of a room in the Opera House block to the suffrage workers. They had almost no money, hut they had stout hearts. Immediately they prepared sets of suffrage resolutions and sent them out so that they would be read in every county convention in the state.

Some of the 55 counties had two or three conventions, and it required 180 sets to go around. The result was that two-thirds of the conventions indorsed the resolutions, and many of them put a suffrage plank into their own platforms. Next suffrage leagues were organized in every hamlet in the state. These did work in appointing meetings and distributing “leaflets,” as the ladies called their tracts. No less than 65,000 of the tracts gave instructions on how to vote for the bill.

The country schoolhouse everywhere did valiant service for the women. The trustees allowed it to be opened to the suffrage speakers. Speakers were sent everywhere, well known ones if they could be had; if not, then the neighborhood women took it on themselves to address the meetings, and some of these quiet home keepers surprised themselves and all their acquaintances by developing into really effective and ready talkers.

Besides that the ladies laid siege to prominent political leaders of all parties and won over almost every lawyer and preacher in Colorado to their cause.

Neither were the newspaper editors let alone. They received every kind of document sent out. The women labored with them, too, and these gallant editors opened their columns for discussion of the question and in many cases advocated woman’s right to the ballot with the imperial “we.”

The ladies did not let their efforts lag for one day, but held meetings up to the last evening of the campaign. So Colorado was carried for woman suffrage by over 6,000 majority.

Some intelligent people labor under the impression that in Wyoming and Colorado women may vote for all officers except national ones, such as congressmen and presidential electors. This is a mistake. In both these states women vote for all candidates, state and national, just the same as male voters do.

-Eliza Archard Conner.