EXCERPT FROM PATH BREAKING (1914, by Abigail Scott Duniway)

Women living in the American west had very different lives from their urban, East Coast counterparts. Pioneering women's integral role in developing frontier economies led to a measure of progressivism unknown in the already settled states: for example, in 1890 Wyoming was admitted into the Union as the first state giving women the right to vote. Abigail Scott Duniway (1834–1915) was a women's rights activist and newspaper editor living in the Pacific Northwest. Her paper the New Northwest, published between 1871 and 1887, was a stalwart supporter of suffrage and other issues of human equality.

In the selection here Duniway described the forming of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association and her participation in a lecture tour with Susan B. Anthony. The two women encountered shut-outs, jeering detractors, and the wrath of the church, but also won supporters to the cause, leading Anthony to remark, "If you want any cause to prosper, just persecute it." The story of Duniway's life as an activist was published in her 1914 autobiography Path Breaking, from which this excerpt is taken.

Leah R.Shafer,
Cornell University

See also Suffrage: Woman's Suffrage .

Chapter v.

Brings Miss Anthony to Oregon.

Among the many incidents I recall, which led me into the Equal Suffrage movement and crowd upon my memory as I write, was one which calls for special mention, and ought not to be omitted here. I had grown dispirited over an accumulation of petty annoyances in the store, when a woman entered suddenly, and throwing back a heavy green berage veil, said. "Mrs. Duniway, I want you to go with me to the court house!" I replied rather curtly, I fear: "The court house is a place for men." The visitor, whose eyes were red with weeping, explained that the county court had refused to accept the terms of her annual settlement, as administratrix of her husband's estate. But her lawyer had told her to get some merchant to accompany her to the court house, to bear testimony to the manner of settling her accounts. "Can't you get some man to go with you?" I asked, with growing sympathy. "I have asked several, but they all say they are too busy," was her tearful response. A sudden impulse seized me, and, calling one of the girls from the work room to wait upon customers, I started with the widow to the court house, feeling half ashamed, as I walked the street, to meet any one who might guess my errand. The woman kept up a running conversation as we proceeded, her words often interrupted by sobs. "Only think!" she cried, in a broken voice, "my husband—if he had lived and I had died—could have spent every dollar we had earned in twenty years of married life, and nobody would have cared what became of my children. I wasn't supposed to have any children. My girls and I have sold butter, eggs, poultry, cord wood, vegetables, grain and hay—almost enough to pay taxes and meet all of our bills, but after I've earned the means to pay expenses I can't even buy a pair of shoestrings without being lectured by the court for my extravagance!" By this time I was so deeply interested that I shouldn't have cared if all the world knew I was going to the court house. I felt a good deal as the man must have felt "who whipped another man for saying his sister was cross-eyed."

When arraigned for misconduct before the court he said: "Your Honor, my sister isn't cross-eyed. I haven't any sister. It was the principle of the thing that stirred me up!"

The court had adjourned for recess as I entered the room and I felt much relieved, as I knew the officers and didn't feel afraid to meet them when off duty. The urbane judge, who was still occupying his revolving chair, leaned back and listened to my story. When I had finished, he put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest and said, with a patronizing air: "Of course, Mrs. Duniway, as you are a lady, you are not expected to understand the intricacies of the law." "But we are expected to know enough to foot the bills, though," I retorted with more force than elegance. The widow's lawyer beckoned us to him and said, with a merry twinkle in his eye. "I guess there won't be any more trouble with the county court or the commissioners this year." As we were returning to the store the widow said: "I have to pay that lawyer enough every year to meet all my taxes, if I wasn't compelled to administer on my husband's estate."

In relating this incident to my husband at night, I added: "One-half of the women are dolls, the rest of them are drudges, and we're all fools!" He placed his hand on my head, as I sat on the floor beside his couch, and said: "Don't you know it will never be any better for women until they have the right to vote?" "What good would that do?" I asked, as a new light began to break across my mental vision. "Can't you see," he said earnestly, "that women do half of the work of the world? And don't you know that if women were voters there would soon be lawmakers among them? And don't you see that, as women do half the work of the world, besides bearing all the children, they ought to control fully half of the pay?" The light permeated my very marrow bones, filling me with such hope, courage and determination as no obstacle could conquer and nothing but death could overcome.

Early in the month of November, in the year 1870, shortly after many such practical experiences as related above, which led me to determine to remove from Albany to Portland, to begin the publication of my weekly newspaper, "The New Northwest," I met one day at the home of my estimable neighbor, the late Mrs. Martha J. Foster, and our mutual friend, Mrs. Martha A. Dalton, of Portland, to whom I announced my intention. My friends heartily agreed with my idea as to Equal Rights for Women, but expressed their doubts as to the financial success of the proposed newspaper enterprise. After much discussion and finding my determination to begin the work unshaken, the three of us met at my home and decided to form the nucleus of a State Equal Suffrage Association.

A little local Equal Suffrage Society had previously been organized in Salem, with Colonel C. A. Reed as president and Judge G. W. Lawson as secretary. I at once communicated with these gentlemen, stating our purpose, and, as I was going to San Francisco on business in the approaching holidays, I was favored by them with credentials as a delegate to the California Woman Suffrage convention, to meet in Sacramento the following Spring. No record of our preliminary meeting to form the State Society of Oregon Suffragists was preserved of which Mrs. Dalton or myself had knowledge. The minutes were left with Mrs. Foster, who, like Colonel Reed and Judge Lawson, long ago passed to the higher life. But I promised Mrs. Dalton, who visited me at this writing, in October, 1913, and has since passed away, to make special mention of that initial meeting in these pages, little dreaming that ere this history should see the light; she would have preceded me to the unseen world, leaving me the sole survivor of our compact of 1870.

Mrs. Dalton became one of the charter members of the State Equal Suffrage Association at the time of its permanent organization in Portland, in 1873, and continued a member of its executive committee up to the time of her death. While she was not a public speaker, and was not given to writing essays, she was always ready to attend to any kind of detail work, such as other and less enterprising women might easily be tempted to shirk. Her occupation, as a successful music teacher, afforded her extensive acquaintance among the leading people of Portland, many of whom confided their family or personal grievances to her, to whom she was always a sympathetic friend. As I pause to drop a sympathetic tear to her memory as I add this paragraph, I feel comforted, because I know that in the course of nature I, too, shall join the great majority in the rapidly approaching bye and bye.

The first number of "The New Northwest" was issued on the 5th of May, 1871. As I look backward over the receded years, and recall the incidents of this venture, in the management of which I had had no previous training, I cannot but wonder at my own audacity, which can be compared to the spirit of adventure which led the early pioneers to cross, or try to cross, the unknown plains, with helpless families in covered wagons, drawn by teams of oxen. It is true that I did not encounter the diseases and deaths of the desert, in making that venture, nor meet attacks from wild beasts and wilder savages, but I did encounter ridicule, ostracism and financial obstacles, over which I fain would draw the veil of forgetfulness. While I did not regret meeting insults and misrepresentation on my own account, I did suffer deeply because of my budding family, who naturally resented the slander and downright abuse I suffered from ambitious editors, to all of whose attacks I replied in my own paper, in such a way as to bring to my defense the wiser comments of successful men, among whom I number many of our most prominent citizens of today; while among my detractors, I cannot recall a single one who has placed on record a single important deed redounding to his public or private credit.

Of the many men and women, who have honestly differed from me in the past, I have no word of censure. To my good brother, the late Mr. Harvey W. Scott, three years my junior, editor of the "Oregonian," then a rising journalist, universally honored in his later years, I owe a debt of lasting gratitude, for much assistance, editorial and otherwise, during the stormy years of my early efforts to secure a footing in my inexperienced attempts at journalism. It was through his influence and that of his honored partner, Mr. H. L. Pittock, that I was favored often with railway transportation across the Continent; and, although my brother did not editorially espouse my mission, as I believe he would have done if I had not been his sister, he many a time gladdened my heart by copying incidents of woman's hardships from my "New Northwest" into his own columns, thus indirectly championing, or at least commending, my initial efforts to secure Equal Rights for women.

To my faithful, invalid husband, the late Mr. Ben C. Duniway, but for whose sterling character as a man I could not have left our growing family in the home while I was away, struggling for a livelihood and the support of my newspaper, nor could I have reached the broader field, which now crowns my life with the success for which I toiled in my early itinerancy, I owe undying gratitude.

To the 61,265 affirmative votes cast for the Equal Suffrage Amendment, at the November election of 1912, and the more than an equal number of women; who rejoice with me over the culmination of my life's endeavors, I turn with words and thoughts of love and thankfulness. Many will live to see the beneficent results of their patriotism and foresight, long after I shall have joined the silent majority. Others may see their cherished ambitions fade, and will lay their failure to their discovery that all women cannot be made to vote or think according to their dictation, any more than all men can be so made, or led or driven.

First and foremost, among my many Eastern coworkers, who had come to San Francisco on a lecture tour with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the spring of 1871 (shortly after I had launched my newspaper), I am proud to mention Susan B. Anthony. This wonderful woman had up to that time been an object of almost universal ridicule, being caricatured as a "cross, cranky old maid," an avowed "man-hater" and a "dangerous agitator." I was seriously disappointed when Miss Anthony came alone, by steamer, to Oregon, as I had arranged for, and hoped much from, a visit by Mrs. Stanton as an offset to the caricatures that Miss Anthony's visit had previously occasioned elsewhere. Messrs. Mitchell and Dolph, prominent young attorneys of Portland—both afterwards United States Senators—had obligingly provided me with steamer passes for both ladies; but when Miss Anthony came alone, and I called upon her at her hotel in the early morning, after her arrival at midnight, I was delighted to find her a most womanly woman, gentle voiced, logical, full of business, and so fertile in expedients as to disarm all apprehension as to the financial results of her visit. She decided, at once, that I must become her business manager during her sojourn of two months or more, in Oregon and Washington; that I must preside, and make introductory speeches at all of her meetings, advertise her thoroughly through "The New Northwest," and print and circulate numerous "dodgers" in her behalf, securing meanwhile such favorable recognition from the general press as I could obtain in our wanderings.

How vividly I recall my first experience before a Portland audience! No church was open to us anywhere, and the old Orofino Theatre was our only refuge. I went in fear and trembling before a cold, curious and critical crowd, half bent with weariness resulting from long, continuous mental and physical overwork, and said in a faltering voice, "The movement that arose in the East nearly twenty years ago, to demand Equal Rights for Women, and appeared, at first, as a shadow not larger than a woman's hand, has grown and spread from the Atlantic Coast, till it pauses tonight in farthest Oregon, almost in hearing of the Pacific Ocean. Keeping ahead of that shadow is the illustrious visitor, who illuminates it wherever she goes with the freedom spirit of her devotion. This distinguished visitor is my world renowned coadjutor, Susan B. Anthony of Everywhere, who will now address you."

Nobody was more astonished over the effect of that little impromptu speech than myself, and from that time to this I have never been without more invitations to lecture than I could fill. Miss Anthony spoke as one inspired, and many who came to scoff remained to praise. Her assistance in increasing the circulation of "The New Northwest" was wonderful. The newspapers were filled with generous words of approval of ourselves and of our work, wherever we went, and "The New Northwest" gave Miss Anthony many whole pages of free advertisement for many weeks.

From Portland we went to Salem, Albany and other Willamette Valley towns, meeting success everywhere. Returning, we visited Olympia and addressed the Territorial Legislature of Washington, which was then in session, and were accorded a most gracious hearing. We had had similar success in Seattle and Port Townsend, but were ordered from the home of a Port Gamble citizen, whose wife had invited us to the house in the absence of her husband, who, returning unexpectedly, treated us as tramps. I wanted to stay it out and conquer the head of the family with a little womanly tact, but Miss Anthony hurried me off with her to the hotel. We spoke in the evening to a crowded house, making no allusion to the incident, which had spread through the milling town like wild fire.

We continued finding friends wherever we went, and remained long enough in Seattle to organize a Woman Suffrage Association with a staff of influential officers. No official record of this organization is obtainable, but I copy from the editorial correspondence of "The New Northwest" the names of H. L. Yesler, Mayor of Seattle; Mrs. Yesler, Reverend and Mrs. John F. Damon, Mrs. Mary Olney Brown, Reverend and Mrs. Daniel Bagley and Mr. and Mrs. Amos Brown. A Suffrage Society was also formed in Olympia, under the leadership of Mrs. A. H. H. Stuart, Mrs. C. P. Hale, Hon. Elwood Evans, Mrs. Clara E. Sylvester and Mr. J. M. Murphy, editor of "The Washington Standard."

When we returned to Portland, the winter rains were deluging the earth. The stage carrying us from Olympia to the Columbia River at Kalama, led us through the blackness of darkness in the night time, giving Miss Anthony a taste of pioneering under difficulties that remained with her as a memory to her dying day.

We had previously visited Walla Walla, enjoying the hospitality of Captain J. C. Ainsworth's Company of Columbia River Steamers, and stopping at The Dalles, where my personal friends, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wilson and Mrs. C. C. Donnell, secured the Congregational Church for our meeting, much to the disgust of the pastor, to whom our supposed-to-be-inferior sex was his only audible objection.

The steamer stopped for an hour at Umatilla, where Miss Anthony happened to meet the son of an old lady friend of Rochester, New York, an humble bar keeper of the village, whose only way to exhibit his hospitality was to offer her a drink of white wine of which she politely took a sip and gave him back the glass with a gentle "Thank you." The news of this trivial incident preceded us to Walla Walla, and was made the excuse by the preachers for denying us the use of any pulpit in the little city; and we were compelled to speak in a little room in the rear of a saloon, the Pixley Sisters having previously engaged the only theatre. The next Sunday, the preachers who had closed the churches against us, solemnly denounced the Equal Suffrage Movement, giving as one of their reasons therefor, the fact that we had lectured in the dance hall, but failing to tell the other side of the story.

No suffrage organization was effected in Walla Walla, but the interest our visit created was much enhanced by the prohibitory action of the clergy. Many influential families entertained us in their homes. "If you want any cause to prosper, just persecute it," said Miss Anthony—and she was right.

When the Annual State Fair of Oregon convened at Salem, Miss Anthony camped with my family on the grounds, her first experience at camping out. There was no assembly hall at that time on the Fair Grounds, and we held an open-air meeting in the shade of the pavilion, where the shrieking of whistles and blare of drums and brass instruments, combined with the spieling of sideshow promoters, compelled us to speak with a screeching accent, but brought us much commendation from a large and intelligent audience, and secured us many subscriptions to "The New Northwest."

The autumn rains were in their glory in Portland before Miss Anthony finally left us, going by stage to Sacramento, and lecturing at stopover stations along the way. She informed me regularly of the incidents of her journey by letter, and I particularly recall her favorable mention of Dr. Barthenia Owens, of Roseburg (now Dr. Owens-Adair), who arranged a successful meeting for her at the Douglas County Court House and entertained her in her home. The Doctor is now a retired physician, and like Dr. Mary A. Thompson, of Portland, the original, though only "irregular" path-breaker for women practitioners, is honored now by the medical profession, which formerly denounced and ridiculed all such women as "freaks."

SOURCE: Duniway, Abigail Scott. Path Breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in the Pacific Coast States. Portland, Oreg.: James, Kerns & Abbott, 1914.