Indexes and Bibliographic Notes

From Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz -- Online Notes For The Book

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Contents 1 Getting started 2 The Women’s Movement, Free Love and Spiritualism 3 10. San Francisco Social Life and Clara Foltz’s Circle 4 8. Women and Divorce 5 Women and Jury Service 6 Women as Public Lecturers 7 San Diego in the Real Estate Boom 8 Nineteenth Century Newspaper Publishing 9 San Diego Bee 9.1 The Boom 9.2 Outside News 9.3 Local Excitement 9.4 Regular Items 9.5 Civic Events 9.6 Society and Fashion 9.7 Last Days at the Bee 10 Bellamy Nationalism 11 The Woman’s National Liberal Union Convention 11.1 Matilda Gage 11.2 Theosophy and Madame Blavatsky 11.3 Notable Attendants 11.3.1 William Aldrich and Josephine Caples 11.3.2 Elliott and Emily Coues 11.3.3 Charlotte Smith 11.4 Reaction to Foltz’s Remarks 12 Late Nineteenth Century Politics 12.1 A. General Sources: Populism; Coxey’s Army; Women’s Political Participation, Haymarket; Pullman Strike; California and the 1894 Election 12.2 B. Foltz as Reform Lobbyist in the 1890s 12.3 C. Mary Elizabeth Lease (also known as Mary Ellen) 12.4 D. Stephen White 12.5 E. Anna Ferry Smith

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The Women’s Movement, Free Love and Spiritualism

Ann Braude in her comprehensive and very readable study of the connection between suffragists and spiritualism, RADICAL SPIRITS, SPIRITUALISM AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA (1989) says there were more “mediums and radicals” in the West than elsewhere at the end of the nineteenth century. Id. at 195. At its inception, the California women’s movement “relied almost exclusively on trance speakers” such as H.M.F.Brown, Laura Gordon, and Addie Ballou. Id. at 193. Robert J. Chandler has written several informative and interesting studies of the spiritualists and their impact. In the Van: Spiritualists as Catalysts for the California Women's Suffrage Movement, 73 CALIFORNIA HISTORY 189 (1994); Emma Hardinge: A Spiritual Voice for the Slave and the Union, 29 DOGTOWN TERRITORIAL QUARTERLY 6 (1997) (name changed to CALIFORNIA TERRITORIAL QUARTERLY with volume 50; includes many references to Hardinge’s speeches). Some of Foltz’s closest associates, Laura Gordon, J.J.Owen and Abigail Duniway were Spiritualists; as were some of her clients. Early in her career, Foltz’s pardon application for Charles Colby came through Spiritualist connections. See Chapter Two for more on Colby.

While in San Diego at the end of the 1880s she represented a woman who claimed that potential purchasers of her property had promised to build a Spiritualist retreat there and then reneged and planned to sell it to a large corporation. When she lost in the trial court on the ground that the facts did not support a legal claim, Foltz appealed and won rescission of the contract. Newman v. Smith, 77 Cal. 22, 18 P. 791 (1888), Spirit Thieves, L. A. TIMES, Apr 9, (1888). The Spook Home, L.A.TIMES, May 8, 1889. For more about this case and where cases like it fit into Foltz’s practice, see On-line Bibliographic Note, Law Practice in the West.

Foltz herself does not seem to have had Spiritualist leanings, though in her period of Bellamy Nationalism and Populism especially she worked closely with those who did. Addie Ballou is an example of a person, like Charlotte Gilman (Chapter 2) and Anna Smith (Chapter 3) who were activist figures and Spiritualists that Foltz knew, probably well and worked with in many contexts.

Addie Ballou is constantly in Clara Foltz’s story from her earliest suffrage activities to the Portia farewell ceremonies in 1895. Indeed, the two may have met first at the 1880 legislative session, where Foltz was a legislative clerk, and Ballou was a prominent member of the suffrage lobby. See e.g. S. F. Chronicle March 12, 1880 describing a suffrage meeting in the Assembly chamber, mentions “Addie Ballou, Miss Clara Foltz and others” as speakers. Further, Addie Ballou, a prison reformer, joined Foltz and Gordon in lobbying for the bill allowing women to be Notary Publics in California. REDA DAVIS, CALIFORNIA WOMEN 138-139 (1968). (This book is not annotated, but is obviously based on a scouring of many newspaper sources. It describes Ballou’s activities as both a suffragist and a spiritualist; like Laura Gordon, Ballou was also a medium and trance speaker.)

Addie Ballou was one of the few activist women at the farewell party for Foltz in the mid-nineties when she moved from San Francisco to New York. All Bade Her Godspeed, San Francisco Call, Nov. 5, 1895. Coming from Laura Gordon’s generation, a decade older than Foltz, Ballou appears as a footnote in many California and suffrage histories, see e.g. III HWS 755 noting that in 1870, she was one of the earliest speakers for suffrage in California (1870). But Ballou’s life is not fully covered in any of the major biographical indexes of either the nineteenth or twentieth centuries.

Perhaps the time that Foltz and Ballou were the closest ideologically was when they were both Bellamy Nationalists at the end of the1880s. Mari Jo Buhle, WOMEN AND AMERICAN SOCIALISM, 1870-1920 (1981) has a passage illustrating the appeal of this movement to women, especially to Addie Ballou. She describes Ballou as the “dynamic president of the state’s banner club in San Francisco.” Relating her own history, Ballou “saw in Nationalism the culmination of a long search for a universal reform movement. Recalling her father’s part in the underground railroad, her own work with the wounded during the Civil War, the call she signed for Victoria Woodhull’s Equal rights party in 1872, her stints as a spiritualist and suffrage lecturer, Ballou claimed that Bellamy nationalism trumped all previous causes because as far as women were concerned it was aimed at “a slavery more prevalent and more destructive than even that of the negro.”at 78.

EVERETT W. MCNAIR, EDWARD BELLAMY AND THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT 217-20 (1957) describes the scene in April 1890 when the Nationalists made their only attempt at a political convention and were faced with instant schism. Addie Ballou and Laura Gordon played big roles in the proceedings. Ballou was a painter and a poet. Her most notable painting was of Emperor Norton, a legendary San Francisco character. Addie L. Ballou, Personal Recollections of Norton 1, Emperor of the United States, reprinted from the San Francisco Sunday Call, September 27, 1908. ROBERT ERNEST COWAN, ANNE BANCROFT, ADDIE L. BALLOU, THE FORGOTTEN CHARACTERS OF OLD SAN FRANCISCO (1938).

In 1896 she published a collection of her (very undistinguished) verse, titled DRIFTWOOD. By feminist accounts she was the author of a popular song and hymn “Where is my wandering boy tonight?” See Reda Davis, supra, at 139. (Several men are credited with the song on a Google search, though some sources say the author is unknown.) Ballou had a husband and children but her family seldom figures in the public record.

Victoria Woodhull was the best known Spiritualist in the country in the seventies. Her activities are well documented in a number of biographies. MARY GABRIEL, NOTORIOUS VICTORIA: THE LIFE OF VICTORIA WOODHULL, UNCENSORED (1998). BARBARA GOLDSMITH, OTHER POWERS; THE AGE OF SUFFRAGE, SPIRITUALISM AND THE SCANDALOUS VICTORIA WOODHULL (1998); LOIS BEACHY UNDERHILL, THE WOMAN WHO RAN FOR PRESIDENT (1995). MADELEINE B. STERN, THE PANTARCH: A BIOGRAPHY OF STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS, (1968); THE VICTORIA WOODHULL READER (1974). See also Geoffrey Blodgett, NOTABLE AMERICAN WOMEN (Woodhull entry) for a fine short account. OTHER POWERS has a gripping description of the free love speech in 1871 and its circumstances. Id. at 303 (quote in text); see also descriptions in WOODHULL READER at 23-24. NOTORIOUS VICTORIA at 143-50. On Woodhull’s connection with Beecher -Tilton scandal, covered in Chapter Six, see in addition to other sources, DEBBY APPLEGATE, THE MOST FAMOUS MAN IN AMERICA: THE BIOGRAPHY OF HENRY WARD BEECHER (2006).

In the midst of the Beecher-Tilton scandal, two of the Beecher sisters, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catherine Beecher (an educator, home economist and anti-suffragist) sided with their brother. Isabella Beecher, however, took Woodhull’s part, prompted by her own Spiritualist beliefs, including free love (See Chapters 1 and 6) for more on the connections between Spiritualism, free love, and suffrage. Isabella Beecher is a well documented woman and plays a role in many nineteenth century biographies. Most sympathetic to her and attentive to her contributions to the women’s movement is BARBARA A. WHITE. THE BEECHER SISTERS (2003).

10. San Francisco Social Life and Clara Foltz’s Circle

KEVIN STARR, AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM 1850-1915 (1981) portrays the social, artistic and literary life of San Francisco mainly through mini-biographies of people such as Jack London, Ambrose Bierce and George Sterling and their circles. See especially, the chapter entitled, Bohemian Shores. [hereafter STARR, DREAM]. BARBARA BERGLUND, MAKING SAN FRANCISCO AMERICAN: CULTURAL FRONTIERS IN THE URBAN WEST, 1846-1906 (2007), describes how San Francisco evolved from a frontier boomtown into “a civilized, conquered, and thus fully American place.” For accounts of the atmosphere and cultural events, see AMELIA RANSOME NEVILLE, THE FANTASTIC CITY: MEMOIRS OF THE SOCIAL AND ROMANTIC LIFE OF OLD SAN FRANCISCO (1932); JULIA ALTROCCHI, THE SPECTACULAR SAN FRANCISCANS (1949); Doris Muscatine, OLD SAN FRANCISCO: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A CITY FROM EARLY DAYS TO THE EARTHQUAKE(1975); Gertrude Atherton, who was a member of the highest circles of society, wrote about San Francisco in novels and memoirs. CALIFORNIA, AN INTIMATE HISTORY (1914); ADVENTURES OF A NOVELIST (1932).

Atherton’s life overlapped with Clara Foltz’s at many points, and they may well have met each other. But neither mentioned the other on the public record. See Chapter 5 for a description of Atherton’s novel PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES, which features a woman accused of murdering her husband. See On-line bibliographic note Women Murder Defendants and Equal Justice; For a fascinating account of Atherton’s life and the circles in which she moved, see EMILY WORTIS LEIDER, CALIFORNIA’S DAUGHTER: GERTRUDE ATHERTON (1991). On Atherton, and other figures in late nineteenth century San Francisco society, see FRANCES MOFFETT, DANCING ON THE BRINK OF THE WORLD: THE RISE AND FALL OF SAN FANCISCO SOCIETY (1977).

These works all discuss the various hotels, restaurants, social activities, plays and performances, publications and famous people of San Francisco. Muscatine is the best indexed and most interested in women’s role. “The early stirring of women’s liberation spreading across the country made possible broader opportunities… increased social flexibility. During the 90’s… women could dine respectably in the French restaurants, could pursue a wider range of education enter previously limited professions and followed their interests, including intellectual in formal groups that managed more than quilting bees and death benefits for members in good standing….” at 344.

Books by Oscar Lewis, the local historian (not to be confused with the anthropologist of the same name) give a good sense of the life of the city. SAN FRANCISCO: MISSION TO METROPOLIS (1966). OSCAR LEWIS AND CARROLL D. HALL, BONANZA INN, AMERICA’S FIRST LUXURY HOTEL (1939) is particularly good on the atmosphere of the 1880s, as seen from the Palace Hotel. Frank Mazzi, Harbingers of the City: Men and Their monuments in Nineteenth Century San Francisco, 55 S. CAL. Q. 141 (1973) is excellent on the civilizing effects of fine hotels and theater buildings early in the city’s history, with many striking pictures and contemporary quotations. WILLIAM ISSEL AND ROBERT W. CHERNY, SAN FRANCISCO, 1865-1932, at 76 (1986) (quoting Samuel Williams in 1875 who wrote that “living at a first-class hotel is a strong presumption of social availability… but living in a boarding house indicates a nobody.”). 344 (1975)

PETER R. DECKER, FORTUNES AND FAILURES, WHITE-COLLAR MOBILITY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY SAN FRANCISCO 196-230 (1978) (Chapter eight, entitled “A Social Geography of the Urban Landscape,” describes different neighborhoods and the rise of Van Ness Avenue where Foltz lived after the World’s Fair); CHARLES CALDWELL DOBIE, SAN FRANCISCO: A PAGEANT 278-9 (1934).

Many histories of San Francisco mention the Montgomery block where Foltz had several offices over the years, including her first one in the city. IDWAL JONES, ARK OF EMPIRE, SAN FRANCISCO’S MONTGOMERY BLOCK (1951) is devoted entirely to the building’s history. Built in 1853, its construction on a raft of redwood logs that had been bolted together in a deeply excavated basement, with thick masonry walls, was considered the safest building in the west (and indeed it survived the 1906 earthquake and fire). It attracted lawyers, engineers, judges, scientists, business people plus artists and writers including Jack London, George Sterling, Lola Montez, Lotta Crabtree, Gelett Burgess, Maynard Dixon, Frank Norris, Ambrose Bierce, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain. HARR WAGNER, JOAQUIN MILLER AND HIS OTHER SELF 105 (1929) tells of how Montgomery St. between Jackson and California Streets was “the literary center of SF.” In addition to Joaquin Miller, Wagner mentions many other writers as regulars in a Bohemian group centered in the Golden Era offices: Millicent Shin, Harry McDowall, Arthur McEwen, Ambrose Bierce, Madge Morris, Ella Sterling Cummins (later Mighels), Carrie Stevens Walter and Eliza D. Keith. “Frequently at noon, young law students, poets and artists would meet in the Golden Era office and listen to the reading of good, bad and indifferent ms. We would pool our small change and adjourn to Hjul’s coffee shop… Among the young men who gathered there that achieved more than local fame were James G. Maguire, Judge Gore Cabaniss, Franklin K. Lane, E. E. Cothran and Robert Duncan Milne.”).

In the city, Foltz had a circle of friends who were writers, and in that sense career women, but who were not her political allies. These included especially Frona Wait, Ella Cummins, and Madge Morris. Frona Wait Colburn, 1859-ca. 1946 was a California journalist, the first woman to write for the San Francisco EXAMINER. She also worked for the San Francisco CALL and the San Francisco CHRONICLE. Biographical Introduction, Colburn Manuscript Collection, California State Library. Wait was said to be the model for the heroine (Frona Welse) of Jack London's first novel, A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS (1902).

In 1942, Wait wrote in memory of “my old friend Clara Foltz” (outgoing correspondence, found in Box 1066, Folder 30). She told of the friendship of the three young ambitious women, and added “Mrs Foltz was an ardent suffragist. I was not in favor of woman suffrage at all.” Wait remembered their last meeting, probably in the 1930’s when Foltz admitted that she was “ashamed” of the tactics of the suffragists in the final campaign. Earlier, in an obituary of Morris, A California Poetess—As I Knew Her, OVERLAND MONTHLY & OUT WEST MAGAZINE, 204-206 (May 1924), Wait wrote of the life-long trio of Foltz, Morris and herself, relating that Morris reached the peak of her fame when she was celebrated at the World’s Fair as the author of Liberty’s Bell. In the same set of obituaries, Ella Cummins (Mighels), Her Pen is Stilled described the romance of Madge Morris with Harr Wagner when she wrote for his magazine, The Golden Era and became his wife.

In the early nineties, Ella Cummins put together an exhibit of California writers for the World’s Fair, and later published her findings in THE STORY OF THE FILES, A REVIEW OF CALIFORNIA WRITERS AND LITERATURE (1893), a book of 450 pages of pictures, excerpts, and idiosyncratic opinions. Cummins’ thesis was serious--that a true regional literature had been invented in pioneer California. The writer’s exhibit covered the few famous writers, such as Bret Harte and Mark Twain, and the semi-famous, Joaquin Miller and Ina Coolbrith. Cummins persuaded Ambrose Bierce and Gertrude Atherton to contribute to the exhibit, described in EMILY WORTIS LEIDER, CALIFORNIA’S DAUGHTER 131-32 (1993). Cummins also mentioned Wait (spelling it with an “e”) at 316 noting that some of her magazine sketches were “excellent, notably one on Clara Foltz, the lady lawyer.” Her husband Adley Cummins, a lawyer and writer, died, and Cummins later re-married and published LITERARY CALIFORNIA, POETRY, PROSE AND PORTRAITS (1918) under the name Ella Sterling Mighels. Clara Foltz is pictured in the book at page 174, the only woman among “orators, editors and prose writers.” For more on Cummins, see ELLA STERLING CUMMINS MIGHELS, NO ROOMS OF THEIR OWN; WOMEN WRITERS OF EARLY CALIFORNIA 259-92 (Ida Rae Egli ed., 1992). She published her autobiography under the pen name Aurora Esmeralda entitled LITERARY CALIFORNIA, LIFE AND LETTERS OF A FORTY-NINER’S DAUGHTER 184-89 (1934). Though disclaiming feminism, Cummins pursued a journalistic career which featured many forgotten women in her exhibit, and spoke on women’s contributions to California literature. See Cummins, The Women Writers of California, THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN: HELD IN THE WOMAN'S BUILDING, WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, CHICAGO, U. S. A., 1893, (Mary Kavanaugh Oldham Eagle ed. 1894). For a picture of many of the early writers and magazines in San Francisco, which credits Cummins with preserving it, see FRANKLIN WALKER, SAN FRANCISCO’S LITERARY FRONTIER (1930).

8. Women and Divorce

In Babcock, Reconstructing the Person: The Case of Clara Shortridge Foltz, 12 Biography 5 (Winter 1989), reprinted in REVEALING LIVES: AUTOBIOGRAPHY, BIOGRAPHY, AND GENDER (Susan Groag Bell and Marilyn Yalom, eds.) 131. WLH website. I tell the story of Foltz’s marriage and divorce based mainly on the court records. The Foltz v. Foltz divorce papers are in the archives of the San Jose Superior Court. Foltz handled many divorce cases throughout her career and had a standard lecture on marriage. She argued that when women achieved political equality there would be less strife between the sexes and less cause for divorce. Woman As Partner, S.F. CALL, November 5, 1895 is one account of this lecture.

In the nineteenth century there were widely variant state divorce laws, with the west providing the easiest access for women. The law did not recognize consensual divorce; indeed in some states only “innocent plaintiffs” were allowed to marry again. Lawrence M. Friedman, Rights of Passage; Divorce law in Historical Perspective, 63 OR.L. REV. 649, 653 (1984). Naomi Cahn, Faithless Wives and lazy Husbands; Gender Norms in Nineteenth Century Divorce Law, 2002 U. ILL L. REV. 651 (2002) is very good on the procedures of these cases. Juries were all-male, and were advisory in most but not all places.

On marriage and divorce in the West, a primary work is Glenda Riley’s THE LIVES OF WESTERN WOMEN: BUILDING AND BREAKING FAMILIES IN THE AMERICAN WEST (1996), an examination of the historical roots of the West’s high divorce rates. Riley concludes that they were caused by greater economic opportunities for Western women and notions of “individualism, change, and reform” that were part of the Western ideal. On divorce in California particularly, see ROBERT L. GRISWOLD, FAMILY AND DIVORCE IN CALIFORNIA, 1850-1890 VICTORIAN ILLUSIONS AND EVERYDAY REALITIES (1982) and Apart But Not Adrift: Wives, Divorce, and Independence in California, 1850-1890, 49 PAC. HISTORIAL REV. 2 (May 1980). Griswold illustrates that the divorce court was an “effective institution in enabling women to establish their own lives.” Even in the west, however, divorced women (but not men) were socially stigmatized in some circles. Frances Moffat relates how San Francisco’s society matriarch in the 1880s refused to allow divorced women at her dinner parties. Frances Moffat, DANCING ON THE BRINK OF THE WORLD, (1977) at 72. Also see Donna Schuele, Community Property Law and the Politics of Married Women’s Rights in California, WESTERN LEGAL HISTORY 7:2 (Summer 1994), 245-281, and Susan Gonda, Not A Matter of Choice: San Diego Women and Divorce 1850- 1880, 37 J. OF SAN DIEGO HIST. 195 (1991).

Toward the end of the century, fewer divorce cases were actually contested in court though if any real property was involved, the out-of-court proceedings were very adversary. WILLIAM E. CARSON, THE MARRIAGE REVOLT A STUDY OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE (1915). A pioneer woman lawyer, Lelia Robinson in her book, LAW OF HUSBAND AND WIFE (1889) listed the most common grounds for divorce. Imprisonment; Drunkenness (generally, habit must have been contracted before marriage); Cruelty, Desertion, and Adultery (the only ground that was universally accepted). Contemporary articles, which Foltz is likely to have read were written in THE GOLDEN ERA, one by her friend Ella Sterling Cummins: A Series of Divorce Pictures, in THE GOLDEN ERA, February- 1884 in which she painted a picture of divorce lawyers as incompetent and/or greedy. Her husband Adley Cummins wrote on the subject of divorce that it was “scandalous, unclean, and absolutely wrong.” The Rights of Married Women in California GOLDEN ERA, August 1885 at 263. H.V. Morehouse, Divorce From a Legal Standpoint, GOLDEN ERA, June 1884. 106. (prevalent sentiment is that divorce an evil, but actually serves good purposes.)

For national studies, see NANCY COTT, PUBLIC VOWS: A HISTORY OF MARRIAGE AND THE NATION (2000), on the importance of marriage in shaping fundamental notions of American citizenship; and HENDRIK HARTOG, MAN AND WIFE IN AMERICA: A HISTORY (2000), on the law’s impact on spousal identities and marital roles. Joanna L. Grossman reviewed Hartog’s book in 53 Stanf. L. Rev 1613 (2001). Excellent general background on the range of opinions among the suffragists and their supporters, see Norma Basch, Review Essay: The Emerging Legal History of Women in the United States; Property, Divorce and the Constitution American Legal History Signs,12 J. OF WOMEN IN CULT. AND SOC. (1986), see especially citations in footnote 21.

Women and Jury Service

In A Place in the Palladium: Women's Rights and Jury Service, 61 U. CIN. L. REV. 1139 (1993), I describe women’s quest for jury service “as one facet of a greater struggle for recognition in the public life of the community.” I think it is important to see the fight for jury service as one with that for the vote and for entry into the legal profession. The same arguments were made against women doing each of the three, the same women fought for all three. The unity of the causes, or at least their close connection, seems to me both to reflect the history accurately, and to be a useful explanatory tool. On the other hand, Cristina Rodriguez, Clearing the Smoke Filled Room: Women Jurors and the Disruption of an Old-Boys’ Network in Nineteenth Century America, 108 YALE L. J. 1801 (1999) urges that disaggregating jury service from suffrage helps analyze the objections to women in the courtroom. She does, however, acknowledge a strong nexus between women being lawyers and serving on juries. Though I don’t agree with the disaggregation thesis, this is an excellent discussion of the cases and scholarly treatment of women jurors, an is especially interesting and insightful on the Washington and Wyoming experiences. See Gretchen Ritter, Jury Service and Women’s Citizenship Before and After the Nineteenth Amendment, 20 L. HIST. REV. 479Autumn (2002), for an account of the litigation and arguments over whether the federal suffrage amendment necessarily implied the duty or right of women to perform jury service. In Women's Jury Service: Right of Citizenship or Privilege of Difference, 46 STAN. L. REV. 1117 (1994) Joanna Grossman illustrates how the jury service campaign, which originated in the nineteenth century women’s rights movement, argued from principles of representativeness and citizenship – that a woman defendant had a right to a representative jury of her peers, and that all women had a right to serve on juries as a privilege of citizenship. Note, Beyond Batson: Eliminating Gender-Based Peremptory Challenges, 105 HARV. L. REV. 1920, 1924-27 (1992) also contains an account of the history of women’s jury service. For a good historical summary of stereotypes of women jurors, see Carol Weisbrod, Images of the Woman Juror, 9 HARV. WOMEN'S L.J. 59 (1986). Gretchen Ritter’s THE CONSTITUTION AS SOCIAL DESIGN (2006), Deborah Rhode’s JUSTICE AND GENDER 48-50 (1989) and Linda Kerber’s NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO BE LADIES: WOMEN AND THE OBLIGATIONS OF CITIZENSHIP (1999) also cover women’s historical exclusion from juries and successful feminist challenges to restrictive jury service laws from the nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. A. Wyoming and Washington Territory A contemporary article,which argued that jury service should follow from the grant of suffrage also discussed why the western states were quicker to grant the vote than the rest of the country. Constitutional Obligations and Woman’s Citizenship, 45 CENT. L.J. 244 (1912). Grace Raymond Hebard, The First Woman Jury, 8 J. Am. Hist. (1913) tells of first petit jury on which women served in Wyoming. Women were granted suffrage by statute in Washington Territory in 1883, after a persistent campaign over some years. T.A. Larson, The Woman Suffrage Movement in Washington, 67 PAC. NW. Q. 49 (1976). Immediately after gaining suffrage, women started serving on grand and petit juries under a statute which required that members of petit juries be electors and grand jurors be electors and householders. The grand juries with women on them returned numerous indictments against various forms of vice. In a series of criminal appeals, convicted defendants objected to the composition of grand juries which included women. The first line of attack was on the householder requirement and the first case to reach the appellate court was against Mollie Rosencrantz accused of running a brothel. Rosencrantz made the argument that married women could not be householders within the meaning of the statute. She lost that case with the court upholding women grand jurors in a strongly positive opinion about women’s rights. Rosencrantz v. Territory, 2 WASH. TERR. 267, 5 P. 305 (1884). Lelia Robinson was on the brief attacking women’s right to serve on grand juries, representing Mollie Rosenkrantz. Ruefully she explained that “my business associations made it necessary.... so that while my sympathies were on one side of the question, my work was done on the other, as sometimes must happen.” Lelia J. Robinson, Letter to the Equity Club, 1887, reprinted in Virginia Drachman, Women Lawyers and the Origins of Professional Identity in America 66 (1993). Robinson was maintaining the ideal of law practice in raising all a client’s valid points even if they conflicted with the attorney’s own beliefs. Women, moreover, could not succeed as lawyers if they refused to argue certain issues, especially ones like the illegal constitution of a grand jury which could be useful to many clients. Less than three years after the victory for women grand jurors, there was a change in the personnel of the Court. That and the persistent appeals of defendants challenging women grand jurors led to an effective reversal of Rosenkrantz. In Harland v. Territory, 3 WASH. TERR. 131, 13 P. 453 (1887), a judge who had vehemently dissented in Rosenkrantz wrote the majority opinion holding that the underlying statute giving women suffrage was unconstitutionally drafted, and thus women did not meet the elector requirement for grand jury service. Lelia Robinson wrote her article on Women Jurors before Harland was decided. 1 CHI. L. TIMES 22, 33 (case was reported pending). It would have been interesting to see her comment on the use of her own case in Massachusetts refusing her admission to the bar for the proposition that sweeping change must be made by explicit legislation. The court also cited from Myra Bradwell’s Supreme Court case for this view. 3 WASH. TERR. 131, 140-42 (1887).The next term of a legislature elected with women voting passed a new woman suffrage statute. But in a case widely believed to be set up and financed by the liquor interests, the wife of a saloon-keeper sued officials she said refused her vote, and the new suffrage statute was also found unconstitutional. Bloomer v. Todd, 3 WASH. TERR. 599, 19 P. 135 (1888). The next year, a constitutional convention composed of men chosen without woman suffrage, decided that Washington would enter statehood with a constitution that limited the vote to men. The whole legal story is told very clearly in Aaron H Caplan, The History of Women's Jury Service in Washington, 59 WASH. ST. BAR NEWS March 2005 (a Loyola Law School Legal Studies Paper, No. 2008-22) (abstract available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1184048) (visited July 28, 2008).

Women as Public Lecturers

On the emergence of popular lecturing as a public event in the 1840s, and lecturing as “an act in the construction of a professional or intellectual career,” see Donald M Scott, The Popular Lecture and the Creation of a Public in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America, 66 J. AM. HIST. 791, 793 (1980). See also Scott, The Profession That Vanished: Public Lecturing in Mid-Nineteenth Century America, in PROFESSIONS AND PROFESSIONAL IDEOLOGY IN AMERICA (Gerald Gerson ed., 1983) (explaining the the rise and decline of lecturing as a profession). Scott tells how the new profession of lecturer gave rise to another occupation, Lyceum manager, a person who would book speakers into towns large enough to support a season, and help to make travel and other arrangements. J. MATTHEW GALLMAN, AMERICA’S JOAN OF ARC: THE LIFE OF ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON: THE STORY OF A REMARKABLE WOMAN (2006) describes the post-war rise of the Lyceums, and of James Redpath, the founder of the Lyceum movement at 66. Redpath was Dickinson’s impresario; also on his client list were Mark Twin, Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, and many other well-known figures See also CHARLES F. HORNER, THE LIFE OF JAMES REDPATH AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN LYCEUM (1926). A modern recounting of Redpath’s varied activities, ranging from colonizing in Haiti to supporting John Brown, to his much more successful Lyceum bureau is JOHN MCKIVIGAN, FORGOTTEN FIREBRAND: JAMES REDPATH AND THE MAKING OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA (2008). Major J.B. POND, ECCENTRICITIES OF GENIUS: MEMORIES OF FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN OF THE PLATFORM AND STAGE (1900) is a delightful contemporary look at public lecturing. He has a separate section on “women lecturers and singers”, which includes only Susan Anthony, Anna Dickinson, Lucy Stone, Mary Livermore and Julia Ward Howe as lecturers.

On her initial lecturing tour in 1885, recounted in Chapter Two, Foltz had an agent to precede her, rent halls, alert the newspapers and organize sponsors. Frank Stechan was a theater manager in San Francisco who hoped ultimately to go into the “Lyceum” business, booking a stable of speakers into places large enough to have a lecture season. She and Stechan parted ways in Chicago, however, and Foltz signed up with the Slayton Lyceum Bureau, Belva Lockwood’s agent. Abigail Duniway reported these developments and added that Stechan had mishandled Foltz’s Portland lectures. Letter from Foltz to Duniway, N.Northwest , Feb. 1886. Henry Slayton was a lawyer, a lieutenant in a black regiment in the civil war, and an educator. His Lyceum was widely thought to be the first and best in the west. CHICAGO AND ITS DISTINGUISHED CITIZENS, (David Ward Wood, ed), (1881). He had many distinguished clients including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony.

On women in the lecture field generally, see KARLYN KOHRS CAMPBELL, 1 MAN CANNOT SPEAK FOR HER: A CRITICAL STUDY OF EARLY FEMINIST RHETORIC (1989); WOMEN PUBLIC SPEAKERS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1800-1925: A BIOCRITICAL SOURCEBOOK (Karlyn Kohrs Campbell ed., 1993); NAN JOHNSON, GENDER AND RHETORICAL SPACE IN AMERICAN LIFE 1866-1910 (2002).

Women sought the right to speak publicly as part of the movement that started at Seneca Falls before the War. Women lecturers often got their start, as Laura Gordon had, as Spiritualist trance speakers, giving voice to deceased figures. They came into their own as speakers on abolition such as Anna Dickinson, the Grimke sisters, Lucy Stone and Susan Anthony. To their orations against slavery, many of the women lecturers added their own oppression.

By the mid -80’s when Clara Foltz went on the first of her nationwide tours, there women on the platform, though the fact that it was a woman doing the speaking was still a point of comment. Male and female nineteenth century lecturers divided roughly into those that spoke mainly on a “cause” and those who focused more on entertainment or general education. Clara Foltz, like many others, combined both modes and of course merely being a woman on the platform was still in this period a statement about rights. Like all the lecturers on the circuit, Foltz hoped to make money as well as converts in her lecturing.

The career of Anna Dickinson, (described in Chapter 2) showed the financial possibilities of the lecture circuit. Dubbed “The Joan of Arc of the Unionist Cause,” she had been a major abolitionist speaker before and during the War. Afterwards, Dickinson became a celebrity on the Lyceum circuit (as well as a paid political orator) where she spoke on a variety of subjects, including women’s and freedmen’s rights. For awhile, she averaged 150 lectures, and as much as $20,000 (about $330,000 in modern times) a season. GALLMAN, ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON, supra at 66, and passim. See also JAMES HARVEY YOUNG, NOTABLE AMERICAN WOMEN (Anna Dickinson entry) (1980). Gallman described the 1888 campaign, Dickinson’s last on the political oratory circuit. She ended up suing the Republican Party for failing to pay her according to her contract. Id at 173-177. See also GIRAUD CHESTER, EMBATTLED MAIDEN: THE LIFE OF ANNA DICKINSON (1951).

Vivid accounts of lecturing in the nineteenth century are WARREN CHASE, FORTY YEARS ON THE SPIRITUAL ROSTRUM (1888) and MARY LIVERMORE, THE STORY OF MY LIFE (1897). (Foltz knew both these lecturers; Chase lived in San Jose in 1879-1880 and Mary Livermore lectured there and was entertained by Sarah Knox Goodrich, Struggles, May, 1916.) Both Chase and Livermore tell funny and harrowing stories of their travel experiences and relate that they stayed mostly in private homes rather than hotels. JILL NORGREN, BELVA LOCKWOOD, at 143-54, describes Lockwood’s platform experience over the eight years she took it up after the 1884 Presidential campaign, citing both Frances Willard and Elizabeth Stanton on the difficulties of travel and making arrangements. LORI D. GINZBURG, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON (2009) at 142-144 tells of the substantial sums Stanton was able to make as a lecturer in the early 1870s.

Perhaps the best known public orator in the late nineteenth century was Robert Ingersoll, (Marilla Ricker’s mentor; see On-line Bibliographic Note: Women Lawyers History). Despite the fact that he was a free-thinker in religion, indeed the spiritual leader of the movement, Ingersoll drew huge audiences. He spoke on the clash of religion and science as his main subject, but also talked about women’s rights, civil rights for freedmen, and literary and historical subjects. In the days before radio and moving pictures he was said to have been heard and seen by more Americans than any other man in America. See generally, Frank Smith, ROBERT G. INGERSOLL: A LIFE.

Perhaps the woman lecturer most on a par with Ingersoll for drawing large audiences was Kate Field. GARY SCHARNHORST, KATE FIELD: THE MANY LIVES OF A NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN JOURNALIST (2008) is a full and readable biography of Field. Field’s San Diego visit, in which she and Foltz spent time together (see chapter 2) is described at 189-194, but does not mention Foltz. See David Baldwin, Kate Field Entry in Notable American Women. For a vivid contemporary account of Field, LILIAN WHITING, KATE FIELD: A RECORD (1899).

San Diego in the Real Estate Boom

Richard F. Pourade, The History of San Diego: The Glory Years 242 (1964). Carey McWilliams, Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946). A very vivid contemporary description is THEODORE VAN DYKE, MILLIONAIRES OF A DAY: AN INSIDE HISTORY OF THE GREAT SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA "BOOM" (1890). Van Dyke lived through the boom to become its Boswell. He said there had “never been its like on earth.” Perhaps there were “times of wilder excitement, when property has changed hands oftener in 24 hours and brought higher prices. But this boom lasted nearly two years, and embraced a vast area.” at 1. ELIZABETH MACPHAIL, THE STORY OF NEW SAN DIEGO AND ITS FOUNDER, ALONZO E. HORTON 89 (1969) shows pictures of the hotel at Ocean beach at the time Foltz as a real estate agent took a party there, as related in the text. WILLIAM E. SMYTHE, 11 HISTORY OF SAN DIEGO, 1542-1908, at 413-34 (1908) (and especially chap. 2 “Phenomena of the Great Boom”); Larry Booth, Roger Olmstead, & Richard Pourade, Portrait of a Boom Town: San Diego in the 1880’s (1977) (pamphlet published by the San Diego Historical Society, taken from an article in the California Historical Quarterly, December 1971 has many interesting photographs, of the boom and the bust). GLENN S. DUMKE, THE BOOM OF THE EIGHTIES IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (1944) is particularly good on describing the rail war that started the 80’s boom. THEODORE FULLER, SAN DIEGO ORIGINALS: PROFILES OF THE MOVERS AND SHAKERS OF CALIFORNIA'S FIRST COMMUNITY (1988). 145-46 (mentions Foltz as head of the Bellamy Nationalist club. Hoyt, Marketing a Booming City in 1887: San Diego in the Chicago Press, 45 J. San Diego Hist., Spring 1999 (has excellent pictures, based on a long anonymous article in the Chicago Inter-Ocean about the city and its prospects). LELAND G. STANFORD, TRACKS ON THE TRAIL (1963) has much of the boom “lore,” Clara Foltz mentioned at page 37. On the Ensenada and Mrs. Burton, WILLIAM WILCOX ROBINSON, LAND IN CALIFORNIA (1979) explains the complications of Spanish titles in Mexico and California. Subsequent history of International Company and sympathetic account of Burton claim is in AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 391-407 (1890). MARIA AMPARO RUIZ, THE SQUATTER AND THE DON (1885) (Rosaura Sanchez and Beatrice Pita, eds.,) (1997) (includes biography of Burton and starting at p. 15 an account of her litigation over the Ensenada).

Nineteenth Century Newspaper Publishing

The two basic works I relied most on are: FRANK LUTHER MOTT, AMERICAN JOURNALISM: A HISTORY OF NEWSPAPERS IN THE UNITED STATES THROUGH 260 YEARS, 1690 TO 1950 495-511 (1950); ROBERT F. KAROLEVITZ, NEWSPAPERING IN THE OLD WEST, (1965), (San Diego Bee building pictured at 56). A good account of the economics of publishing a paper is found in BARBARA CLOUD, THE BUSINESS OF NEWSPAPERS ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER (1992) and JOHN TEBBEL, THE COMPACT HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER (1963). Popular treatment of the wide-open journalism of the west is in JOHN BRUCE, GAUDY CENTURY 1848-1948: SAN FRANCISCO’S ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF ROBUST JOURNALISM (1948); FRANKLIN WALKER, SAN FRANCISCO’S LITERARY FRONTIER (1939) (dealing mainly with magazines, but offers a good picture of the newspaper scene as well in 1860’s-1880’s). EDWIN EMERY & MICHAEL EMERY, THE PRESS AND AMERICA: AN INTERPRETIVE HISTORY OF THE MASS MEDIA 291 (4th ed., 1954).

Biographies and autobiographies: EVELYN WELLS, FREMONT OLDER (1936); FREMONT OLDER, MY OWN STORY (1919); WELLS DRURY, AN EDITOR ON THE COMSTOCK LODE (1936) (published posthumously) (Drury knew Clara Foltz from Oregon days and recommended her for a Notaryship in 1891 as detailed in Chapter Three of WOMAN LAWYER). FRANK ALEAMON LEACH RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEWSPAPERMAN A RECORD OF LIFE AND EVENTS IN CALIFORNIA (1917). He published the Vallejo Evening Chronicle, 1867-1886; and the Oakland Enquirer, 1886-1898. He retired from journalism to become superintendent of the San Francisco Mint, 1897-1907 and performed heroic service saving the building in the 1906 earthquake and fire. Leach paints an excellent picture of California politics in this period. JAMES J. AYERS, GOLD AND SUNSHINE (1922) (published posthumously) is interesting not only on the newspaper business in California (he published the L.A.Express in Los Angeles) but also on the events of 1878-79. In the preface, he wrote that “Each life helps to make up the sum of all history, and there is none so obscure or isolated but that it would, if properly written, throw a ray of light upon some latent event of interest to historians, at iv. See chapter one, and Babcock, Constitution-Maker for more on Ayers and his role in the passage of the employment clause at nn 19, 23-24, 98-99, 158-165.

On women in Western journalism and publishing SHERILYN COX BENNION, EQUAL TO THE OCCASION: WOMEN EDITORS OF THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY WEST (1990). In Women Editors of California 1854-1900, 28 Pac.Hist. 31 (1984) Bennion found a total of 110 women “known to have been active as editors before 1900” id at 32. She described Laura Gordon’s journalistic career, at 36-37 but missed Foltz’s brief editorship of the San Diego Bee. ROGER LEVENSON, WOMEN IN PRINTING: NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, 1857-1890 (1994) Appendix A, pp. 179-238 introduces many extraordinary women involved in both printing, publishing and editing. Ann M. Breedlove, Inspired and Possessed, CALIF. HIST. (Spring, 2001) describes the women editors and their papers,. See also Anne M. Breedlove, “Inspired and Possessed:” San Francisco Women Newspaper Publishers, 80 CAL. HIST., (2001). noting that between 1854 and 1893, ten newspapers in Northern California had fourteen different women publishers or editors, though only four stayed in business longer than two years. On the history of women in journalism more generally, see PATRICIA BRADLEY, WOMEN AND THE PRESS: THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY (2005). RUTH MONYNIHAN, REBEL FOR RIGHTS: ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY (1985) has many good passages on the effort involved in putting out a weekly newspaper.

Clara Foltz knew many people in publishing, including her brother Charles, with whom she was close, and who was in the newspaper business in Northern California for most of his career. As discussed in chapter 2, Foltz knew Duniway in Oregon and was a correspondent for the New Northwest for a few years after she moved to California. Laura Gordon was publishing the Oakland Daily Democrat when Foltz first met her. Later, her friend, Marietta Stow, (see chapter two) published a monthly, The Women’s Herald of Industry. Many women’s publications were devoted to causes, such as temperance and suffrage. A VOICE OF THEIR OWN: THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE PRESS, 1840-1910 (1991). Martha M. Solomon, ed. See especially, the chapter by E. Claire Jerry, Clara Bewick Colby and the Woman’s Tribune 1883-1909: The Free Lance Editor as Movement Leader at 110. Colby was editor of the Tribune from 1883-1909. For more on Colby, see On-Line Bibliographic Note: Friends and Allies WLH Website.

On lawyers and publishing, GORDON MORRIS BAKKEN, PRACTICING LAW IN FRONTIER CALIFORNIA (1991) relates that many attorneys doubled as journalists to meet the overhead on their practice. Lawyers also supplemented their income with stock-brokering and other business as well as holding public office.

San Diego Bee

A Bee Sampler

To give an idea of what Foltz published as editor of the Bee, here is a sampler drawn from the Bee in the last ten days of May, 1887, several weeks after she assumed the editorship.

The Boom

Seven to nine columns a day in advertisements alone were taken up by incredible ocean views, proximity to the post-office or “permanently located” train station, the best people, rich soil, and pure water. The most imaginative ad was two-columns for Ocean Beach, proclaiming in bold type One of the Finest Hotels in the State, and much smaller and lighter beneath it “Will soon be erected” and so it went for An Electric Street Railway and The Bay Shore Boulevard. The only thing actually in place was the Mussel Beds, “one of the most interesting objects for tourists and the old timer to view.” The boom also supplied news about all the “bustle push, go.” Every day, an assistant editor walked the streets, recording new building, perusing the hotel guest registers for the arrival of “large capitalists” and “prominent businessmen,” and noting the latest vessels at the wharf (barks, brigantines, sloops, steamers and yachts). In late May, the roving reporter scooped the other papers with the unexpected arrival early one morning of Senator Leland Stanford and other “prominent officials” in their special railway cars. San Diegans were hoping for a direct rail line from San Francisco, but Stanford promised nothing, saying only that he was “astonished” at the progress of the town since his last visit five years earlier. Editor Foltz did some elevated writing on the theme of San Diego the Beautiful: “The Flowers of the City are to the vegetable world what angels are to mortal man . . . God’s jewels to the rich and poor alike and here they bud and blossom as nowhere else on earth. She also editorialized on San Diego the Great: “Not even the gold excitement of 1849 and the succeeding ten years revealed more matchless enterprise to the world. . . . We are laying the foundations of the divinest paradise the earth has ever known. “

Outside News

Paeans to San Diego plus real estate and other advertisements could fill as much as two pages, yet that left at least fourteen columns. The other standard item, consuming as much as four columns on the front page was the national and international news, delivered by telegraph from various agencies. Foltz bought her news from the United Press, and the recently opened Mackay-Bennett Commercial Cable Company. A rival paper had the exclusive use of the best and oldest service, the Associated Press. Because the services sent out somewhat different raw news items, and because the individual editors did their own selection and headlining, the world outside San Diego might look quite different depending on the paper read. Both foreign and national dispatches were heavy on crime news — so much so that Foltz editorialized on “the sensational insanity of modern journalism.” She complained that “News are caught and transmitted from every section to every section with the rapidity of thought. All that is cruel, strange, abortive, unnatural, or fearful and all that is evil, murderous and fiendish is placed in print.”

Local Excitement

Boomtide San Diego was like a gold-mining camp, as an old-timer darkly observed. A “population imbued with excitement and far from conventional trammels” tended toward “theft, murder, incendiarism, carousals, fights, highway robbery and licentiousness.” All the sensation created a dilemma for Editor Foltz because crime sold papers while its absence sold San Diego to potential investors. She resolved the tension by constantly claiming crime was under control while reporting hair-raising stories practically every day. At the end of May, there was A Serious Stabbing Affray on the Flume Line. The flume was a civic project to bring water to the town’s brackish wells from a distant lake. Bad feelings arose between the day and night shifts and during the changeover there was “A lively scuffle . . . leaving one man too dangerously wounded to be brought to the city.” Another unsettling event in May was a fire at 8 p.m. right next door to the Bee’s wood frame building. Despite the heat, Foltz and her staff got the paper out the following morning, with a complete story on the excitement and an editorial entitled Our Gallant Fire Boys. One of Clara Foltz’s first public acts years ago had been to agitate for a well-equipped professional fire company in San Jose, (see chapter one). In San Diego, she noted with satisfaction that the “fire last evening proved beyond all doubt that our fire department is in excellent order.”

Regular Items

News sources that Foltz could depend on were Sunday’s sermons, (an expandable item) and the Monday night meetings of Our City Dads (hot issues of permits and licensing). The courthouse was always good for a story. Late May saw Babcock and Story, (developers of the hotel Coronado) charged with extending their wharf too far into the Bay. Foltz was exasperated at the conflicting testimony from engineers and sea captains on both sides: “The cause still winds and drags its tedious coils along. May the truth win -- whatever it is” (Ultimately the judge imposed a nominal fine on Babcock and Story.) San Diegans were avid joiners and club activities provided excellent filler for Foltz’s columns. A Religious and Philosophical society formed with “many of the most intelligent, wealthy and cultured families” conducting a “candid inquiry after truth.” The Woman’s History Club met in May to discuss Machiavelli. Eighty men born in California started a new chapter of the Native Sons of the Golden West, and saluted the town’s publications (three newspapers and a monthly magazine) in their inaugural procession, ending with a banquet at the Horton House. Entertainment and sport could take a column or two, especially as the weekend approached: sculling and shooting matches; the natatorium; horseback wrestling (opponents try to unseat each other — for the “glory and the gate receipts”); a regular ocean fishing expedition. Leach’s Opera House was the only theater in town but it was regularly lit. In late May, the arrival of Henry Crindle, “the renowned medium” from New York, promised “manifestations of a startling nature.” But, the Bee reported that ”the séance was cut short by cries of `too thin’ and `rats’ from several doubting Thomases in the audience”, leaving “the truth of the medium’s tests” unsettled. Walter Leach, the owner of the Opera House, was an attorney who converted a building into a theater seating 800 people. When Leach died in 1888 (thrown from a horse), Jack Dodge took over and converted it to D. Street theater. ELIZABETH C. MACPHAIL, THE STORY OF NEW SAN DIEGO AND ITS FOUNDER, ALONZO E. HORTON 76-77 (1969). Editor Foltz supplied meta-stories by critiquing the three other San Diego papers for old news, stolen ideas (from her), infelicities in phrasing, and errors in print. On the other hand, she was sympathetic to the new young editor of the San Francisco Examiner, William Randolph Hearst, when he was taken in by a hoax featuring a doctor murderer who sold body parts. Though a United Press dispatch said:” All San Francisco is in a spasm of merriment over the … extravagant sensational publication,” Foltz wrote “like all things of vaulting ambition, [this `magnificent newspaper’] sometimes overleaps itself. Everyone makes mistakes.”

Civic Events

From the beginning these were a Bee specialty, partly because Foltz was often at the center of such occasions. At the annual Memorial Day ceremonies, she delivered an original poem by J.D. Steel, Bee city editor. It went like this for fifty stanzas: No more our glorious banner waves Above the clanking chains of slaves . . May all war’s scars at length be healed And never more on blood-stained field Columbia’s sons to discord yield.” For thanks to these our fallen braves.

Society and Fashion

In San Diego, society was a fluid mix of the newly rich and newly arrived, “all classes are alike full of geniality and cordial feelings,” Foltz wrote, opining that the friendly social scene was a result of the climate and the boom. From the first, the Bee covered social events and fashion developments in greater detail than any rival paper. Foltz wanted to attract women readers and knew they were starved for this kind of story. The mainstay of social reporting was, of course, the weddings. For example, a young real estate man, resident for a year, married another newcomer, whose “pleasant ways, sweet disposition and culture have won her many friends.” The ceremony was in a “spacious” tent on Coronado Beach: “A brilliant event . . . two-hundred present . . . white roses and orange blossoms . . . Presents were few but costly.” BEE, June 5, 1887. Foltz enlisted her friend Frona Wait (see On-Line Bibliographic Note: San Francisco Social Life and Clara Foltz’s Circle for more on Frona Wait) to become the San Francisco correspondent on such matters as “Feminine Costumes at the Metropolis.” Tea-gowns were “the rage” for the Fall, Waite reported, using a specialized vocabulary to describe the garment: “A dress with a Fedora front of lace or surrah of contrasting color, with an oxidized silver girdle from which dangles a vinaigrette… ‘The Bernhardt’ had popularized the loose fit, ‘indefinite in outline.’” Bee, Oct. 3, 1887 (Fashion and Fancy, by Frona Wait). Clara Foltz undoubtedly had such a garment but San Diego, with its unpaved streets and lack of sidewalks, was a tough town for tea gowns.

Last Days at the Bee

On July 31, 1887, in the midst of the press war over the disputed claims to Mexican land, Foltz editorialized in the Bee: “If a person should chance to embark in a business he finds is not suited to him, he had best give it up at once.” Yet, she continued “whims and prejudices” must not be confused with incompatibility. At the end of a short paragraph, she resolved that “the surest way to avoid this mistake is to always make the best of surrounding circumstances and not fret.”

In August and September, there were further hints that she would not last much longer as editor of the Bee. The defection of one of her chief assistants to the San Diego Sun was a major blow. Cothran was an old friend from San Jose, a lawyer, one of the group that gathered around the coffee shop near the Montgomery Block, and one of the young people that Madge Morris and Harr Wagner had recruited to San Diego. He had come on the Bee after it replaced the little sheet he had been editing, the Stingaree. Most important, Cothran was a mainstay for filling the columns in every issue of the Bee. His contribution to the press war had been a satire in many scenes and issues called The Chestnut (the IC’s name for Mrs. Burton’s title). The play featured such characters as Queen Bee (Foltz), Sellout (the Union editor), Gasbag (Major Sisson of the International Company of Mexico) and Fides Achates (Harr Wagner).

Cothran lampooned everything -- the melodramatic threats to kill the Bee and drive Foltz out of town, the IC’s claim to be a corporation with a soul -- and even his boss’s prose. Here is Queen Bee “soliloquizing” on the Ensenada beach: “How utterly beautiful this bay! Soft it seems unto the weary brain as a blue-eyed beauty’s tender glance of love. These tiny, many-colored shells, by gentle wavelets laid beside my feet, recall one universal language of the world, the unsyllabled, silent language, thinking God and uttering eternity!” Cothran was parodying Foltz’s tendency to excess when trying for literary effect.

As related in Chapter 2, by mid-November, Foltz had concluded her editorship of the Bee. On March 30, 1888, a year after the Bee was founded, the new editors celebrated its history, noting that it had been newly incorporated in November 1887 by [William?] Hutton, Will Gould, Thomas McCord, Harry Howard, and Thomas Fitch. The story also noted that under Foltz’s editorship, “its matter assumed an exceedingly spicy and sensational character; and whatever may be said of the wisdom of this policy, it certainly attracted no little attention…throughout the state.” WILLIAM E. SMYTHE, HISTORY OF SAN DIEGO, 1542-1908, at 493 (1907) (in the chapter, Later Journalism and Literature, briefly describes “The Short-Lived Bee” and says it was a “live paper, while it lasted” and that it was absorbed by the Union in Dec. 1888).

Bellamy Nationalism

Bellamy Nationalism has been much studied. See the annotated bibliography by NANCY SNELL GRIFFITH, LOOKING BACKWARD, 1988-1888: ESSAYS ON EDWARD BELLAMY 210 (Daphne Patai ed., 1988). Two biographies of Edward Bellamy describe the success of the book and the wide variety of reforms embraced by the movement that grew out of it. ARTHUR E. MORGAN, EDWARD BELLAMY 264 (1944) and SYLVIA E. BOWMAN, THE YEAR 2000: A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWARD BELLAMY (1958). Bowman also wrote EDWARD BELLAMY ABROAD: AN AMERICAN PROPHET’S INFLUENCE (1962) (reporting a significant following in twenty-nine countries). ARTHUR LIPOW, AUTHORITARIAN SOCIALISM IN THE UNITED STATES: EDWARD BELLAMY AND THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT (1982) is an important work which is more critical than celebratory of the movement; he emphasizes the radical collectivism of many Nationalistic reforms, including judicial system reforms and public defense. EVERETT W. MCNAIR, EDWARD BELLAMY AND THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT 217-20 (1957) is especially useful because of his detailed quotation of contemporary newspapers. See also, THEODORE W. FULLER, SAN DIEGO ORIGINALS: PROFILES OF THE MOVERS AND SHAKERS OF CALIFORNIA’S FIRST COMMUNITY 145-46 (1987) (noting that Foltz presided over the local Nationalist Club described as “a short-lived movement to socialize basic industry”).

JOHN L. THOMAS, ALTERNATIVE AMERICA: HENRY GEORGE, EDWARD BELLAMY, HENRY DEMAREST LLOYD AND THE ADVERSARY TRADITION (1983) places Bellamy’s life and work in its full historical context, rooted in Protestant millennialism and Jacksonian-era ideas about the virtues of those who perform actual work. HOWARD H. QUINT, THE FORGING OF AMERICAN SOCIALISM 72-103 (1953) (noting the relationship of Nationalism to later socialistic aims; see especially the chapter entitled Bellamy Makes Socialism Respectable [BB: not sure whether to put chapter titles in quotes or to italicize); F.I. Vassault, Nationalism in California, 15 OVERLAND MONTHLY 660 (June 1890). John Hope Franklin, Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement, 11 NEW ENG. Q. 739, 762 (1938) discusses Bellamy’s approval of state publication of school texts and regulation of grain elevators as steps to nationalism. Elizabeth Sadler, One Book’s Influence, Edward Bellamy’s “Looking Backward”, 17 NEW ENG. Q. 530 (1944) sums the story of the contemporary reception of the book around the time of Morgan’s biography, though it is not a review.

On where Nationalism fits in the larger nineteenth-century political scene, see ROBERT WEIBE, THE SEARCH FOR ORDER, 1877-1920 (1967) and ROBERT C. MCMATH JR., AMERICAN POPULISM: A SOCIAL HISTORY (1993). Contemporary critics criticized Nationalism for its failure to focus on a single set of reforms. See e.g. NICHOLAS PAINE GILMAN, SOCIALISM AND THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 195 (1900) (noting that Bellamyism was little more than an “invitation to the sentimentalists to come to the front and take charge…”); Francis Walker, Mr. Bellamy and the New Nationalist Party, 65 ATLANTIC MONTHLY 248 (1890) (an economist disapproving Bellamy’s proposed elimination of competition).

The size of the movement is unclear partly because it was organized in local clubs. In 1890, one estimate was 127 clubs in 27 states. Willard, News of the Movement, 7 CAL. NATIONALIST 2, (June 1890), quoted in ARTHUR E. MORGAN, EDWARD BELLAMY 264 (1944). Another estimate put the number of clubs at 165. 1 CAL. NATIONALIST 16 (May 24, 1890). By most accounts, Nationalism failed because its followers were too diverse to form a party or fix a platform. Yet the movement had a significant afterlife, especially in California, where the People’s Party took up Nationalism’s various causes, and then itself melded smoothly into twentieth-century Progressivism; for more on this see On-Line Bibliographic Note: Progressivism, Suffrage and Public Defense, at WLH Website.

On women’s involvement in Bellamy Nationalism, especially that of the Socialist women, see MARI JO BUHLE, WOMEN AND AMERICAN SOCIALISM 1870-1920, at 77-81 (1981); see also, Franklin Rosemont, Bellamy’s Radicalism Reclaimed, in LOOKING BACKWARD 1988-1888, at 173-74 (Daphne Patai ed., 1988) (mentioning involvement of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Caroline Severance, and Mary Livermore); William Leach, Looking Forward Together: Feminists and Edward Bellamy, 2 DEMOCRACY 120, 122, 129, & 133-34 (1982) (listing a number of feminists involved in Nationalism); BARBARA LESLIE EPSTEIN, THE POLITICS OF DOMESTICITY 142-43 (1981) explains Frances Willard’s involvement with Bellamy Nationalism and her efforts to bring the WCTU into the socialist camp. On Clara Foltz’s activism, see ARTHUR E. MORGAN, EDWARD BELLAMY 267 (1944) (relating that the San Diego Nationalist club included “‘two millionaires and that celebrated lady lawyer, Mrs. Clara Foltz,’” and that Nationalism was making “‘a great impression on the newspapers and on current thought…’”); THEODORE W. FULLER, SAN DIEGO ORIGINALS: PROFILES OF THE MOVERS AND SHAKERS OF CALIFORNIA’S FIRST COMMUNITY 145-46 (1987) (noting that Foltz presided over the local Nationalist Club described as “a short-lived movement to socialize basic industry”); THE RUMBLE OF CALIFORNIA POLITICS, 1848-1970, at 100-01 (Royce D. DelMatier, Clarence F. McIntosh, & Earl G. Waters eds., 1970) (Foltz’s part in Nationalism) [hereafter, RUMBLE]. For Foltz’s ideas about parole, see Chapter Three and the On-Line Bibliographic Note: Late Nineteenth Century Politics (Foltz as Reform Lobbyist), at WLH Website, which explain how her ideas were connected to her Bellameyite beliefs in the malleability of the human character. Nationalism probably also contributed to her concept that imprisonment was for the purpose of rehabilitation and should end as soon as that occurred. Chapter Seven shows in detail the connection of her public defender proposal with Nationalism Bellamy’s idea of public defense as an interim reform on the way to Utopia. For the connection of Bellamy Nationalism with Theosophy, see On-Line Bibliographic Note: The Woman’s National Liberal Union Convention, at WLH Website.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Gilman’s major non-fiction work, WOMEN AND ECONOMICS (1898) was published under the name of her first husband, Stetson, whom she had earlier divorced. She remarried in 1900 to George Houghton Gilman and continued to write books, and from 1909-1916, she published a feminist magazine, The Forerunner, in which she serialized her novel, HERLAND, about an all-woman utopia. KARL DEGLER, NOTABLE AMERICAN WOMEN (Gilman entry) is the best short summary of her life and thought. PHILIP ETHINGTON, THE PUBLIC CITY, supra, has a section on Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Political Mobilization of Women at pages 355-63 that describes her political organizing in San Francisco in the 1890’s. CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN: A NONFICTION READER (Larry Ceplair ed., 1991) is an excellent account of her life and thought, along with well-chosen excerpts from her writings. Other important works on Gilman include: ANN J. LANE, TO HERLAND AND BEYOND (1990); MARY A. HILL, CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN: THE MAKING OF A RADICAL FEMINIST 1860-1896 (1980); Marion K. Towne, Charlotte Gilman in California, 28 PAC. HISTORIAN 5 (1984); GARY SCHARNHORST, CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN: A BIBLIOGRAPHY (1985).

The Woman’s National Liberal Union Convention

Main sources are Matilda Joslyn Gage, WOMEN’S NATIONAL LIBERAL UNION REPORT OF THE CONVENTION FOR ORGANIZATION (1890) [hereafter GAGE REPORT] and The Liberal Thinker in Syracuse, N.Y. (Jan. 1890), and the newsletter-magazine describing the convention and attendance. In addition to Foltz, The Call to the convention is signed by three other women lawyers: Laura Gordon, Marilla Ricker, and Lelia Robinson. Also of interest, Mary V. White, Secretary of the San Diego Bellamy Nationalist club wrote that though Foltz was new to free thought, she would prove to be “a powerhouse.”

Matilda Gage, Woman’s National Liberal Union, FREETHINKERS’ MAG., 262-65 (May 1890), summed up the accomplishments and purposes of the convention. Other accounts of the Gage convention, and the aftermath are in the biographies and memoirs of some of the participants: OLYMPIA BROWN, ACQUAINTANCES: OLD AND NEW AMONG REFORMERS (1911); CHARLOTTE COTE, OLYMPIA BROWN: THE BATTLE FOR EQUALITY 131 (1988); KATHLEEN BARRY, SUSAN B. ANTHONY: A BIOGRAPHY OF A SINGULAR FEMINIST 293-99 (1988); JILL NORGREN, BELVA LOCKWOOD 179-81 (2007).

Matilda Gage

For contemporary sources, see: MATILDA GAGE, WOMAN, CHURCH AND STATE (Sally Roesch Wagner ed., 2002) (1893); A WOMAN OF THE CENTURY (1893) (Frances E. Willard & Mary A. Livermore eds., 1967) [hereafter WOMAN OF THE CENTURY]; Clara Colby, Matilda Joslyn Gage, WOMAN’S TRIB., Mar. 28, 1888.

Modern: There are two published biographies, both sympathetic to Gage, and critical of her treatment by Anthony and other suffrage leaders. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER, SHE WHO HOLDS UP THE SKY (1998) and LEILA R. BRAMMER, EXCLUDED FROM SUFFRAGE HISTORY: MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN FEMINIST (2000).

The Gage chapter in WOMEN WITHOUT SUPERSTITION, 211-27 (Annie Laurie Gaylor ed., 1997) is also very informative. Two unpublished Ph.D. dissertation are useful on Gage: Lucia Patrick, Religion and Revolution in the Thought of Matilda Joslyn Gage, 1826-1898 (1996); Sandra Brooke Lee, “More Than a Suffragist:” Matilda Joslyn Gage and the Marginalization of Radicalism in the Woman Suffrage Movement in America (1989). Gage’s convention was a provocation especially to Susan Anthony. She lashed out against the proposed liberal union as “ridiculous, absurd, sectarian, bigoted and too horrible for anything,” and forbade her followers from attending the rival convention. Letter, Susan Anthony to Eliza Wright Osbourne, Feb. 5, and Mar. 5, 1890 (Garrison Papers, on file with the Sophia Smith Library, Smith College, cited in SALLY ROESCH WAGNER, SHE WHO HOLDS THE SKY (1998)); IDA HUSTED HARPER, 2 LIFE AND WORK OF SUSAN B. ANTHONY 659 (1969).

Theosophy and Madame Blavatsky

WOMAN OF THE CENTURY, supra (Blavatsky entry). There are many full-length biographies of Blavatsky, ranging from true-believer accounts to attacks to scholarly examinations. For a balanced look see SYLVIA CRANSTON, H. P. B. THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE & INFLUENCE OF HELENA BLAVATSKY (1993); WARREN SYLVESTER SMITH, THE LONDON HERETICS 1870-1914, at 140-60 (1967) (“magnetism of the fifty-three year-old prophetess had nothing to do with attractiveness in the usual sense... habitually untidy. She smoked constantly cigarettes which she kept rolling herself from a mixture that probably included hashish… Seldom did a reporter fail to mention the hypnotic power of her azure eyes”); BRUCE F. CAMPBELL, ANCIENT WISDOM REVIVED: A HISTORY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT (1980); ANONYMOUS, THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT 1875-1890 (1951) (written by a believer and relating details about personalities and internecine struggles).

Books on Nationalism include studies of Theosophy and its connections. See especially, ARTHUR LIPOW, AUTHORITARIAN SOCIALISM: EDWARD BELLAMY AND THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT 225-39 (1982) (full account of the doctrinal connections between Theosophy and Nationalism); MARY JO BUHLE, WOMEN AND AMERICAN SOCIALISM, 1870-1920, at 60-66, 78 (1981) (on the WCTU and suffrage); see also ARTHUR MORGAN, EDWARD BELLAMY 260-75 (1944); SYLVIA BOWMAN, EDWARD BELLAMY ABROAD 385-99 (1962); ANN BRAUDE, RADICAL SPIRITS 177-89 (2001) is especially good on the connection of theosophy with suffrage and spiritualism. For more on Besant, see ROGER MANVELL, THE TRIAL OF ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLOUGH (1976); ARTHUR NETHERCOT, THE FIRST FIVE LIVES OF ANNIE BESANT (1960). For Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s impressions of Besant and disappointment at her conversion to Theosophy, see ELIZABETH CADY STANTON AS REVEALED IN HER LETTERS, DIARY AND REMINISCENCES (Theodore Stanton & Harriot Stanton Blatch eds., 1912). There are several related On-Line Bibliographic Notes: Bellamy Nationalism; The Women’s Movement, Free Love and Spiritualism, at WLH Website.

Notable Attendants

William Aldrich and Josephine Caples

William Farrington Aldrich (1853-1925) won a seat in the House of Representatives as a Republican from Alabama three times, each time by contesting the award of the election to his opponent. He served from 1896-1900. See BIOGRAPHICAL DIRECTORY OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS 519 (1989) (giving a brief history of Aldrich); SHELDON HACKNEY, POPULISM TO PROGRESSIVISM IN ALABAMA 67 (1969) (providing an account of the arcane politics of Alabama in this period and generally of the relationship of 19th and 20th century reform and mentioning Aldrich as a Republican “endorsed by the Populists”); TWENTIETH CENTURY BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF NOTABLE AMERICANS (Rossiter Johnson ed., 1904) (giving a brief overview of Aldrich’s life).

For the local lore about Aldrich and his Alabama Utopia, see HENRY EMFINGER, MY HOME TOWN: ALDRICH ALABAMA (1959). A similar account of the town is in the Aldrich entry, THE NATIONAL CYCLOPAEDIA OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 65-66 (1897). Published before his Congressional service, this article lists his occupation as “philanthropist” and says: “With his tenderhearted and sympathetic wife, he was the originator and first to advocate the creation of a new office in the courts, that of public defender, to have all the privileges and be clothed with the same rights before the grand jury and the court [as the public prosecutor], his duty being the defense of the poor and unfortunate who have no means of employing the best legal talent.”

Josephine Cables Aldrich entry follows his in the NATIONAL CYCLOPAEDIA, supra at 66, mentioning her support of the public defender, and officership in the Woman’s National Liberal Union. WOMAN OF THE CENTURY, at 16, also mentions her interest in public defense through her husband.

Elliott and Emily Coues

Professor Elliott Coues was a well-known naturalist, Theosophist (who in 1890 had recently broken with Madame Blavatsky), and freethinker. PAUL RUSSELL CUTRIGHT, MICHAEL J. BRODHEAD, ELLIOT COUES: NATURALIST AND FRONTIER HISTORIAN (2001). His wife, Emily, was a wealthy woman as well as a serious Spiritualist and Theosophist. WOMAN OF THE CENTURY (Coues entry). The couple was active at the Convention, serving with Foltz on the Resolutions committee, and accepting election as officers of the Liberal Union.

Charlotte Smith

Charlotte Smith was an organizer of women government workers, one of the first women in the Knights of Labor, and editor of Working Women. She was a well-known reformer in the late nineteenth century but has been largely forgotten until recently. AUTUMN STANLEY, RAISING MORE HELL AND FEWER DAHLIAS: THE PUBLIC LIFE OF CHARLOTTE SMITH, 1840-1917 (2009); see also, PHILIP S. FONER, WOMEN AND THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT 189, 214-15 (1979) on Smith’s contributions. Olympia Brown, The Two Conventions, WISC. CITIZEN (Mar. 1890), wrote that there was “no more stirring, sensible or eloquent” speech at either of the two suffrage conventions than Smith’s. “For years,” Smith said, “I have been a spectator of the Woman Suffrage Movement, and I ask—what have you done for the wage woman?” A rousing orator, Smith called out her statistics for the Nation’s Capitol: 500 churches, 125 houses of assignation, 2000 saloons, millions spent on public monuments to men—and with each statistic, the refrain: “yet not one place of refuge, not one resting place, for working women.” Smith disagreed that most men were ready to give women suffrage and blasted the “weak, effeminate [sic] little-brained men that fear women’s competition.” On the other hand, she agreed with Foltz that the suffrage movement had failed due largely to narrow self-concern. GAGE REPORT, at 80-81.

Reaction to Foltz’s Remarks

Several months of letters in the Woman’s Tribune responded to Foltz’s suffrage remarks. See e.g., Frances Ellen Burr, An Attack on the Woman Suffragists, WOMEN’S TRIB., Mar. 15, 1890, at 85; Reply to Clara Foltz, WOMEN’S TRIB., May 3, 1890. Amalie Janssen Pfund, A Remonstrance from California, WOMEN’S TRIB., Apr. 12, 1890 was signed “A Farmer’s Wife.” She wrote of the actual conditions of women’s daily work on a farm and concluded bitterly: “By nightfall she has become nervous, irritable and peevish. What chance has she for cultivating lofty and noble thoughts and aspirations?” In Mrs Foltz Replies to Critics, WOMAN’S TRIB., May 10, 1890, at 146, Foltz was largely unrepentant and continued to claim that men “are ready and willing to grant suffrage,” and that the only real impediment is “the vast majority of women who do not care a single fig for the privilege of voting.” She closed by renewing her own commitment to the cause, and adding that “the personal aggrandizement of a few individuals is not the cause itself.”

Late Nineteenth Century Politics

A. General Sources: Populism; Coxey’s Army; Women’s Political Participation, Haymarket; Pullman Strike; California and the 1894 Election

A huge literature exists on this period. ROBERT WEIBE, THE SEARCH FOR ORDER: 1877-1920 (1967) remains the classic text, and for the immediate post-war period, ERIC FONER, RECONSTRUCTION: AMERICA'S UNFINISHED REVOLUTION, 1863-1877 (1988) is indispensable. SEAN DENNIS CASHMAN, AMERICA IN THE GILDED AGE: FROM THE DEATH OF LINCOLN TO THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1984) is a bold sweeping overview. As is NELL PAINTER, STANDING AT ARMAGEDDON: THE UNITED STATES 1877-1917 (1987) and MORTON KELLER, AFFAIRS OF STATE: PUBLIC LIFE IN LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA (1977). JACKSON LEARS, REBIRTH OF A NATION: THE MAKING OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877-1920 (2009) brings together an array of characters to support his thesis that this period was one in which all kinds of people sought “regeneration,” variously defined. The book offers a fresh and sympathetic look at many of the late nineteenth century reformers and cultural figures.

On the turbulent political climate of the 1890s generally: GEORGE BROWN TINDELL, GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (1984) is an excellent basic history. On Coxey’s Army and the Pullman Strike, see CARLTON BEALS, THE GREAT REVOLT AND ITS LEADERS: THE HISTORY OF POPULAR AMERICAN UPRISINGS IN THE 1890’S (1968); THE PULLMAN STRIKE (Leon Stein ed., 1969); CARLOS A. SCHWANTES, COXEY’S ARMY: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY, 130-32 (1985); NELL IRVIN PAINTER, STANDING AT ARMAGEDDEN: THE UNITED STATES—1877-1919, at 117-26 (1987). See the Anna Smith section of this Note for more on her leadership of an Oakland California division of the Army. The Haymarket tragedy (also known as the “affair” the “massacre”, the “riot” or simply “Haymarket”) is covered in all American histories of the period. Still, the best single work is PAUL AVRICH, THE HAYMARKET TRAGEDY (1984); see also RICHARD SCHNEIROV, LABOR AND URBAN POLITICS: CLASS CONFLICT AND THE ORIGINS OF MODERN LIBERALISM IN CHICAGO, 1864–97 (1998).

For more on California in the last decades of the nineteenth century, RUMBLE, supra, is excellent, especially on Bellamy Nationalism and Populism at 99-122. Other essential works are R. HAL WILLIAMS, THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND CALIFORNIA POLITICS 1880-1896 (1973) [hereafter WILLIAMS, DEMOCRATIC PARTY] and WILLIAM A. BULLOUGH, THE BLIND BOSS AND HIS CITY: CHRISTOPHER AUGUSTINE BUCKLEY AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY SAN FRANCISCO (1979) [hereafter, BULLOUGH, BLIND BOSS] (dealing with Buckley’s creation of a Democratic machine). Bullough is one of the few historians to note women’s participation in the politics of the day, albeit without much explanation. For example, the “Democratic party made overtures to increasingly important organizations of women who, although they could not vote, exerted substantial influence upon those who could.” BULLOUGH, BLIND BOSS, at 177. Bullough is especially insightful on the election of 1890. BULLOUGH, BLIND BOSS, at 208-30. See also, William A. Bullough, Hannibal Versus the Blind Boss: The "Junta," Chris Buckley, and Democratic Reform Politics in San Francisco, 46 PAC. HIST. REV. 181 (1977). Other good sources on the early 1890’s include: SPENCER C. OLIN, CALIFORNIA POLITICS 1846-1920, at 40-50 (1981); A.A. GRAY, HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA, at 502-05 (1934). BRETT MELENDY & BENJAMIN F. GILBERT, THE GOVERNORS OF CALIFORNIA: PETER H. BURNETT TO EDMUND G. BROWN (1965) has a good account of the various measures that were important in the post civil war administrations. WILLIAM ISSEL & ROBERT W. CHERNY, SAN FRANCISCO, 1865-1932: POLITICS, POWER, AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT (1986) (offering a systematic overview of sources of political power that covers local political struggles, the rise of the labor movement, and interethnic politics); William Issel, Citizens Outside Government: Business and Urban Policy in San Francisco and Los Angeles, 1890-1932, 58 PAC. HIST. REV., 117, 117-46 (May 1988); Paul Kleppner, Politics Without Parties: The Western States, 1900-1984, in THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WEST: HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS (Gerald D. Nash & Richard W. Etulian eds., 1989) (essays on the various groups and forces that shaped the modern society); Kleppner, Voters and Parties in the Western States, 1876-1900, 14 W. HIST. Q., 49, 49-68 (Jan. 1983); CHESTER MCARTHUR DESTLER, WESTERN RADICALISM, 1865-1901, at 1-31 (1963); Ralph E. Shaffer, Radicalism in California, 1896-1929 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley). On California sympathy to railroad strikers, including sympathy among farmers, see WILLIAMS, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, at 195-96 (citing S.F. CHRON., June 30, 1894). Among the supporters of the railroad strikes, the article mentioned: “the farmers whose fruit was rotting on the ground, business men whose prosperity was imperiled, professional men, manufacturers who were threatened with ruin, hosts of persons who ordinarily have no direct relations with ‘organized labor.’ Men such as these with few exceptions, felt a profound sympathy with these strikers, and hoped that they might win.” Another commentator wrote that all classes accepted their losses equably “as long as the railroads suffer quite as much or more.” Nation, July 12, 1894, quoted in PULLMAN STRIKE, supra, at 249.

On Populism, RICHARD HOFSTADTER, THE AGE OF REFORM: FROM BRYAN TO F.D.R. (1955) is still the best starting place. Another older source, still fruitful, is JOHN D. HICKS, THE POPULIST REVOLT: A HISTORY OF THE FARMERS’ ALLIANCE AND THE PEOPLE’S PARTY (1931). But for understanding the complex and disorganized Populist movement, a recent book is extremely helpful. CHARLES POSTEL, THE POPULIST VISION (2008) brings many more women into the story (including Mary Elizabeth Lease and Marian Todd) and shows how the Populists brought together the Farmer’s Alliance and Urban reformers. Other sources I used were ROBERT C MCMATH, AMERICAN POPULISM: A SOCIAL HISTORY, 1877-1898 (1993); LAWRENCE GOODWYN, THE POPULIST MOMENT (1978); MICHAEL KAZIN, THE POPULIST PERSUASION: AN AMERICAN HISTORY (1998); O. GENE CLANTON, POPULISM: THE HUMANE PREFERENCE IN AMERICA 1890-1900 (1990); WILLIAM ALFRED PEFFER, POPULISM: ITS RISE AND FALL (1991).

On Populism in California in particular, see Donald E. Waters, The Feud Between California Populist T.V. Cator and Democrats James Maguire and James Barry, 27 PAC. HIST. REV. 281 (Aug. 1958); Tom G. Hall, California Populism at the Grass-Roots: The Case of Tulare County, 1892, 69 S. CAL. Q., 193 (1967); The People’s Party in California, WOMAN’S TRIB., Dec. 5, 1891, at 320 (personal account by a suffragist of her acceptance from the Populists).

On the relationship of Populists and Bellamy Nationalists, see On-Line Bibliographic Note: Bellamy Nationalism, at WLH Website. Especially good on the overlap is ARTHUR LIPOW, AUTHORITARIAN SOCIALISM IN AMERICA, EDWARD BELLAMY AND THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT16-25, passim (1982). On the bridge between labor and other reformers which the Populists provided in the election of 1894, see Alexander Saxton, San Francisco Labor and the Populist and Progressive Insurgencies, 34 PAC. HIST. REV. 421 (1965). Two years earlier, in 1892, the Populist platform declared that all workers “rural and civic” shared common enemies and interests. Id. at 425.

The last few decades have seen a surge of interest in women’s participation in regular party politics, including the period before they had suffrage. REBECCA EDWARDS, ANGELS IN THE MACHINERY: GENDER IN AMERICAN PARTY POLITICS FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (1997); JO FREEMAN, WE WILL BE HEARD: WOMEN’S STRUGGLES FOR POLITICAL POWER IN THE UNITED STATES (2008); A ROOM AT A TIME: HOW WOMEN ENTERED PARTY POLITICS (2000); WE HAVE COME TO STAY: AMERICAN WOMEN AND POLITICAL PARTIES, 1880-1960 (Melanie Gustafson, Kristie Miller, & Elisabeth I. Perry, eds. 1999); MELANIE GUSTAFSON, WOMEN AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 1854-1924 (2001); ROBERT J. DINKEN, BEFORE EQUAL SUFFRAGE, WOMEN IN PARTISAN POLITICS FROM COLONIAL TIMES TO 1920 (1995); see also ALANA S. JEYDEL, POLITICAL WOMEN: THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT, POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS, THE BATTLE FOR WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE AND THE ERA (2004).

1894 Election in California WINFIELD J. DAVIS, POLITICAL CONVENTIONS IN CALIFORNIA 1849-1892 (1893). S.F. CALL, Feb. 7, 1895, describes the Republican platform endorsement of suffrage. Grove Johnson submitted the platform as a whole without opportunity for consideration of its individual parts. For more on the election, GULLETT, BECOMING CITIZENS at 82-83; 4 HWS, at 78-82; WILLIAMS, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, at 201-02; Alexander Saxton, San Francisco Labor and the Populist and Progressive Insurgencies, PAC. HIST. REV. 34 (Nov. 1965). MICHAEL PAUL ROGIN, JOHN L. SHOVER, POLITICAL CHANGE IN CALIFORNIA: CRITICAL ELECTIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, 1890-1966, at 16-20 (1969) describes the connection between labor and farm interests. It also explains that anti-Catholic racism—in form of American Protective Association—appealed to farmers, and cut into the Populist vote. Though the Populist candidates were largely unsuccessful, the party provided the balance of power in every single electoral unit. RUMBLE, at 99-122. Eric Falk Petersen, The End of an Era; California’s Gubernatorial Election of 1894, 38 PAC. HIST. REV. 141 (May 1969) (description of parties and personalities; Budd, the Democrat won the Governorship while Republicans swept the rest of the offices and won large legislative majorities.)

B. Foltz as Reform Lobbyist in the 1890s

Parole legislation: Standard contemporary sources credited Foltz as the author of the parole system in California. See e.g., Bench and Bar of San Francisco and California 109 (1926) (in the Clara Shortridge Foltz entry, describes how she “pioneered the movement [for a system of parole]… Her effort was unsuccessful, but subsequently at the instance of Col Sonntag, then a member of the board of State Prison Directors, the legislation was adopted.” At the time she was appointed to the State Board of Charities and Corrections, (see Chapter Four) it was widely reported that Foltz was responsible for the parole system. S.F. CALL, Mar. 13, 1910. Unsolicited Honors Worthily Bestowed, TIDINGS, Feb. 18, 1910, at 13 (parole system an example of “her great concern for the welfare of prisoners”). Sheldon L. Messinger, John E. Berecochea, David Rauma & Richard A. Berk, The Foundations of Parole in California, 19 L. SOC. REV. 69 (1985) tells the story of the parole legislation, starting with the 1887 bill described in the text. In its gripping description of the parole development, the article does not mention Clara Foltz, but says, at page 83, that the origins of the 1891 bill (the one she authored) were unknown. The article builds on an earlier detailed account of the 1887, 1891, and 1893 bills. John Edward Berecochea, Origins and Early Development of Parole in California (1982) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California) (missed Foltz’s role, but see pages 81-83 for an account of the 1891 Foltz bill, which puzzles over where it came from). Nestor A. Young of San Diego introduced Foltz’s bill in the Assembly, where it was reported out from committee with an adverse recommendation. The excessive sentencing and various scandals that plagued California prisons in the late nineteenth century are well described in these two connected sources. See also SHELLEY BOOKSPAN, A GERM OF GOODNESS: THE CALIFORNIA STATE PRISON SYSTEM, 1851-1944. (1991). A contemporary view is in the Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry into the General Administration of the State Prisons of California, App. J. 25th Sess. Ca. Legislature, (vol.vi) (1883), a stunning depiction of prison conditions. Parole as originally proposed had a number of purposes—to prevent possible corruption in the pardon reviews, to improve the consistency of sentences, to reduce excessive and unfair sentences, and to reward rehabilitation. Parole proposals were connected to indeterminate sentencing (another cause of penal reformers) and fast became part of the plea bargaining system as well. For an excellent historical overview, see Kara Dansky, Understanding California Sentencing, 43 U.S.F. L. REV. 45, 56-59 (2008).

By 1900, twenty states had some form of prisoner parole. Edward Lindsey, Historical Sketch of the Indeterminate Sentence and Parole System, 16 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 9, 40 (1925). GEORGE FISHER, PLEA BARGAINING’S TRIUMPH, A HISTORY OF PLEA BARGAINING IN AMERICA 122-129 (2003). In a critical review of DAVID J. ROTHMAN, CONSCIENCE AND CONVENIENCE: THE ASYLUM AND ITS ALTERNATIVES IN PROGRESSIVE AMERICA (1980), Professor Guyora Binder argues that it deals inadequately with the complex motivations of the progressive reformers who took up parole so enthusiastically. Penal Reform and Progressive Ideology, 9 REV. AM. HIST. 224 (1981).

Women’s Rights Measures: A bill to relieve the disabilities of married women and enable them to be executors (“executrixes”) and administrators of estates, and guardians of children passed without much opposition in 1891. Introduced by Senator Albert W. Crandall, a Republican, it bears Foltz’s mark in the simplicity of the drafting. She claimed authorship though nothing on the record shows her hand in it. Cal. Stat., ch. 123, s. 1352 at 136 (passed March 19, 1891).

In the same 1891 session, a bill limited the husband’s absolute control over the property acquired during marriage. Like Foltz’s parole bill, it was introduced in the Senate by Frank McGowan. Charlotte K. Goldberg, A Cauldron of Anger: The Spreckels Family and Reform of California Community Property Law, 12 W. LEGAL HIST. 241, 244-45 (1999) explains more about the statute, and its ultimate fate in the courts (where it was largely dismantled). Though Foltz and Gordon are not mentioned in the news stories or record of this bill, it certainly fits into their usual legislative agenda. The bill was introduced in an earlier session by Stephen White, another Foltz friend. Goldberg, A Cauldron of Anger, supra, at 245.

The Notary Bill was a great achievement and was related to both Foltz’s interest in women’s rights and in penal reform. From the first, women lawyers sought to be Notaries. For instance, Myra Bradwell tried unsuccessfully to gain the office in 1869 at the same time she was trying to be a lawyer. The Governor Refused, 2 CHI. LEGAL NEWS 109 (YEAR). On Marilla Ricker and the connection of the notary office to criminal law practice, see JILL NORGREN, BELVA LOCKWOOD, at 91-92; On-Line Bibliographic Note: Women Lawyers History and Individual Biographies (Marilla Ricker), at WLH Website. The connection of the Notary job to penal reform is also seen in the fact that Addie Ballou, a prison reformer, joined Foltz and Gordon in lobbying for the bill in California. REDA DAVIS, CALIFORNIA WOMEN 139 (1968).

C. Mary Elizabeth Lease (also known as Mary Ellen)

RICHARD STILLER, QUEEN OF POPULISTS: THE STORY OF MARY ELIZABETH LEASE (1970). Kathryn Price, Mary Elizabeth Lease: Lawyer, Politician and Hellraiser (1997), at WLH website. For an interesting insight from Lease’s contemporaries, see A. L. Livermore, Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Foremost Woman Politician of the Times, METROPOLITAN MAG., Nov. 1896, at 263-66. See also Edward T. James, Notes and Documents: More Corn, Less Hell? A Knights Of Labor Glimpse Of Mary Elizabeth Lease, 16 LABOR HIST. 408 (1975). Discussions of Lease’s oratorical style can be found in Susan Estelle Kelso, Less Corn and More Hell in Performance, 8 PLAINSWOMAN 2, 7 (1984). S.F. EXAMINER, Aug. 10, 1892, noted the “manner in which she made herself heard throughout the vast hall.” By comparison, a previous male speaker had caused a stampede to the front by his weak tones. O. Gene Clanton, Intolerant Populist? The Disaffection of Mary Elizabeth Lease, 34 KANSAS HIST. Q. 189 (1968). Finally, a good overview of Lease’s style and impact can be found in Dorothy Rose Blumberg, Mary Elizabeth Lease, Populist Orator: A Profile, 1 KANSAS HIST. 3 (Spring 1978).

D. Stephen White

White was a towering political figure in his lifetime. KEVIN STARR, INVENTING THE DREAM 69-70 (1986) portrays his personality as well as his accomplishments and he is much referenced by other historians of the period. See e.g., BULLOUGH, BLIND BOSS, supra, and WILLIAMS, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, supra. Curtis Grassman, Prologue to Progressivism: Senator Stephen M. White and the California Reform Impulse (1970) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles). Tending to hagiography but thorough on the issues: PETER THOMAS CONMY, STEPHEN MALLORY WHITE: CALIFORNIA STATESMAN (1956); EDITH DOBIE, THE POLITICAL CAREER OF STEPHEN MALLORY WHITE (1927); LEROY E. MOSHER, STEVEN M. WHITE: CALIFORNIAN, CITIZEN, LAWYER, SENATOR (1903) (a character sketch which also includes White’s principal public addresses).

E. Anna Ferry Smith

Many political histories mention Anna Smith, who was an important public woman in California for forty years, though there is no comprehensive biographical work. She spoke on the sandlots when Dennis Kearney formed the Workingmen’s Party of California. She was a major organizer for the Bellamy Nationalists, took the quick step to the Farmer’s Alliance, and easily on to the People’s Party, and then to organize in Southern California for the Socialist Labor Party. Always her main concern was for the position of working women—pressed from beneath by cheap immigrant labor (mainly the Chinese as she saw it) and blocked from above by sex prejudice. MARY JO BUHLE, WOMEN AND AMERICAN SOCIALISM, 74, 120 (1983). Ralph Shaffer, Radicalism in California, 1869-1924 (1962) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California-Berkeley); RUMBLE, supra, at 100 (describing her as “a rugged veteran fighter of the labor movement”). Other sources for this period that also mention Anna Smith: Martha Gardner, Working on White Womanhood: White Working women in the San Francisco Anti-Chinese Movement, 1877-1890, 33 J. SOC. HIST. 73 (1999); Michael Kazin, The Great Exception Revisited: Organized Labor and Politics in San Francisco and Los Angeles, 1870-1940, 55 PAC. HIST. REV. 371 (1986).

Before coming to California, Smith had been a nurse for the Union soldiers in her husband’s regiment. Though far less well known, Anna Smith was like Mother Jones, in her radical views cloaked in a guise of respectability. Mother Jones also marched in Coxey’s Army, see PHILIP S. FONER, WOMEN AND THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT 280-87 (1979). On Foltz’s relationship with Anna F. Smith, the time they were closest was probably in the Nationalist clubs in southern California in the early 90’s. EVERETT W. MACNAIR, EDWARD BELLAMY AND THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT, 1889 to 1894, at 245 (1957), says Anna Smith organized most of the rural clubs in southern California. In tribute to Smith, MacNair writes that she not only organized the clubs, but “helped in all departments. They asked her back again and again to speak . . . list of her engagements reads like a candidate in the heat of a campaign—nothing could stop her or dilute her courage and enthusiasm.” Smith and Foltz were together at the organizational meeting of the Nationalists in San Diego. MACNAIR, EDWARD BELLAMY AND THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT, at 203-04 (citing the SAN DIEGO BEACON, Aug. 10, 1889); Anna Smith, Letter, LIBERAL THINKER, Jan. 1890 (“Mrs Foltz tells me that there is a movement on foot in the East to organize against a union of God and the State. I would like to be counted in,” and she signed the convention call). See On-Line Bibliographic Note: The Woman’s National Liberal Union, at WLH Website.

Smith’s participation in Coxey’s army was well publicized and the response was quite positive. SCHWANTES, COXEY’S ARMY, supra, at 130-32, and GULLETT, BECOMING CITIZENS, at 89. At the head of 300 men, a “most fantastic body” according to the Examiner, she marched through the California countryside, to the strains of drums, bagpipes, and occasionally The Marseillaise, S.F. EXAMINER, Apr. 28, 1894. See also S.F. CHRON., Apr. 30, May 1, & May 31, 1894. Explaining how she became a commander of the Army, when most women, even if they were unemployed workers, were not allowed in the army at all, Smith explained that “I have some local reputation as a speaker and the men want me to speak for them when we get to Washington.” And she had other qualifications: “I am a San Francisco woman, a woman who has been brought up on this coast, and I’m not afraid of anything, not even hunger. I have a woman’s heart and a woman’s sympathy, and these lead me to do what I have done for these men…” SACRAMENTO RECORD-UNION, May 31, 1894.