Petaluma’s Past: Celebrating 100 years of women’s votes in California

As the year 1919 morphed into 1920, three important American issues collided.

World War I, “the war to end all wars,” had just ended, the move toward prohibition of alcohol was gaining strength across the country, and women’s demand for the vote was rapidly coming to the forefront. On Nov. 1, 1919, exactly 100 years ago this month, California ratified the proposed US 19th amendment, granting women suffrage. Though it would take nearly a year more for our entire country to follow suit, the die had been cast. Two major amendments to our US Constitution, the 18th (prohibition) and 19th (votes for women), were to occur just seven months apart in 1920, and Sonoma County was much involved in both.

In the early beginnings of the US, only property owners were allowed to vote and women were not allowed to own property.

The conception that a primary duty of government is to fight to protect what it has, and that fight could only be done by men, was another reason for women to be denied the vote. Then, of course, there was the notion that men were aggressive and, “it just wasn’t natural for nurturing females to become involved (in voting), as femininity would be sacrificed.”

Suffrage crusader Susan B. Anthony had said, “It was we the people, not we, the male citizens, but WE, the whole people, who formed the union … women, as well as men.” The suffrage movement in California had acquired wings as early as 1878, but Wyoming in 1869 was the first American State to grant women the right to vote, followed 20 years later by Colorado, Utah and Idaho.

Those were the only States to do that for yet another 22 years, when California, in 1911 (by only a 51% vote margin), came onboard via our State Proposition #4. That was eight years prior to the 19th amendment idea. The struggle had not been easy, as the San Francisco Bay Area had voted against it. But even though the Los Angeles Times had labeled the women’s suffrage movement, “A disease and political hysteria,” L.A. still voted for it. It was close, but California once again became a national leader in November of 1919, when it ratified the 19th amendment, months prior to the US doing so.

Just prior to the vote, our Petaluma Daily Courier editorialized, “The women of California are fit to be wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the men of California and yet, are held to be unfit to vote. That is an injustice!”

And, the Santa Rosa paper carefully stated, “Having arrived at maturity, of a good degree of intelligence and generally of good moral character, women should be allowed to vote!”

However, when the final tally was made, the issue in Sonoma County barely carried by a majority of 161 votes, and Petaluma had dropped the ball by against it, 356 against compared to 352 in favor - a defeat by just four votes. Our Courier editor complained, “It is humiliating to be obliged to chronicle that the City of Petaluma gave a majority of four votes against equal rights for women.”

When it was revealed that San Francisco also voted against it, our staunch editor blew his cool, saying, “Nobody expected anything decent to come out of San Franciscans, who merely sleep across the bay. They are reactionary, self-satisfied and falling behind in everything.”

By 1912, Oregon, Kansas and Arizona had joined California. Seven years later, in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson pushed Congress to pass the 19th amendment, having been heavily lobbied, behind the scenes, by his wife, Edith, and daughter, Jesse. He was similarly pressured by the Women‘s Movement that had picketed the White House and put on a 13,000 person Suffrage parade in D.C.

Women’s right to vote was finally ratified Aug. 18, 1920.

Simultaneously, many women, as well as many men, had been pushing for the prohibition of alcohol. A large women had for years been actively crusading against the perceived evils of drink and, in January of 1920, the 18th amendment to the Constitution finally banned the consumption of alcohol in the U.S.

It would take a decade to discover that that idea was a mistake, needing to be undone.

In 1919, as the state of California was affirming women’s rights to vote, Petaluma sported 42 saloons. Those establishments weren’t going away quietly, even though the Women‘s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) had been well established here for over 40 years. They erected their (still existing) water fountain monument, at the corner of Western and Main, at that time. The key word in Women‘s Christian Temperance Union was “Women,” and by 1907 all the churches of Petaluma were celebrating “Anti-Saloon League Day.” Our Petaluma Courier commented, “Some of the brightest women in the State were present.”

The Anti-Saloon League, led by Ms. Carrie Nation - plus the WCTU and Susan B. Anthony‘s Women’s Suffrage Campaign - were all together pivotal in bringing about prohibition. The campaign for the women’s vote became so irretrievably linked to the campaign to criminalize booze, it actually set the suffrage movement back by several years, while most Americans concentrated on the prohibition issue. Women’s suffrage was often referred to, back in those years, as women’s “Other Campaign.”

Neither of those campaigns was to see easy fighting.

Prior to prohibition, the making and merchandising of hard alcoholic drinks, beer and wine were the fifth largest industry in the US. Taxes on that industry made up 30% of the entire federal revenue. It’s hard to believe the feds would allow that gold mine to fold, but the Volstead Prohibition Act of 1920 did exactly that, just as The Roaring Twenties and all that jazz were kicking-in.

In the early 1900s, vineyards and wineries were mainly a California phenomenon.

In 1919, there were over 700 bonded wineries and 24,000 acres of vineyard in California. Over 1,200 of those acres, and 22 of those wineries, were right here in the Petaluma/Penngrove area.

Almost all of those wineries were forced to close by 1922.

The “Speak-Easy,” a direct result of the tough new laws, became a semi-safe (though illegal) place to get-away from the cares of the day and such establishments flourished throughout the entire US. They played a crucial role in Americans’ changes in habit, music, dress, drinking and sexual activities though the roaring twenties - for both men and women.

By 1933, when prohibition was repealed, it was estimated that there were 6,000 speakeasies in the San Francisco Bay Area alone. Our own Volpi’s, still existent on Washington Street (now a ristorante and bar), was one of our best speakeasies, and their secret alley door still exists, though it is now shut tight.

In Petaluma, Volpi’s and Andreson’s (on Western Avenue), were the first of our old-time saloons to become legalized once prohibition ended.

The Prohibition Act, what the President of France called “America’s silly little law,” was finally repealed in 1933. Women, who had only been able to legally vote for a decade or so, and who’d been so instrumental in voting prohibition in, were now legally able to vote it out in 1933 - and to hoist a discrete cocktail as a toast to the end of it.

Reports are that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt did exactly that, that fateful day, along with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the Oval Office. The California wine industry bounced back, of course, and in Sonoma County it flourished once again - with both men and women regularly enjoying a nice glass of Wine Country vino.

(Historian Skip Sommer is an honorary life member of the Petaluma History Museum and Heritage Homes. You can reach him at skipsommer@hotmail.com)