Room Three

John Bunyan Sanford
California Senator from 1902-1906 and 1910-1914

"Man can attend to all the affairs of a governmental nature. But in order that our country shall endure we must look to the home side of life. The home is the place for woman. God knows she has enough to do there in bringing up the little ones in the way they should go. If she does that duty well and trains up the modest daughter with gentle influences and makes the young boy regardful of the respect that is due his sister and his playmates' sisters all will be well with this republic of ours."
— "Against Woman Suffrage" by John Bunyan Sanford

George S. Patton
Los Angeles district attorney from 1886-1887 and first mayor of San Marino

"The right of suffrage is the right to make laws. The right to make laws carries with it the tremendous duty and responsibility of being called upon to enforce those laws vi et armis. Men who make the laws are burdened with corresponding responsibilities ... They are heavy burdens upon the male sex, burdens which go with the responsibility of law making. No woman can fairly ask for the ballot and for the right to make laws without insisting that in these respects she stands upon an equal plane with men. But does she? It is absurd to say that she does or can."
— "Why women should not be given the vote" by George S. Patton

Anson Blake
1891 graduate of the University of California and the Chairman of the University YMCA

"Enclosed please find a check for $50 to be used in opposition to the Woman’s Suffrage Amendment."
— Letter to Anson Blake from Charles W. Merrill (October 4, 1911)

Horace Bushnell
Prominent figure in the establishment of the College of California, predecessor to the University of California

"Women having once gotten the polls will have them to the end, and if we precipitate our American society down this abyss, and make a final wreck of our public virtue in it, that is the end of our new-born, more beneficent civilization."
— "Women's suffrage: the reform against nature" by Horace Bushnell

John Irish
Naval Officer of Customs of San Francisco, California

"Women don't elevate politics. Politics degrades women. Look what it did for the women of Utah. A woman, a member of the legislature — I SAID A MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE — championed the cause of a candidate, went out to make his fight, became his mistress and FIN-ally SHOT him!"
— The Bulletin (September 9, 1911)

Adeline Knapp
California Bay Area literary figure as well as a newspaper editor and publisher

"It is certain that good men and women desire the good of this land which it is ours to live for or to die for. It may be questioned, however, whether there is not as true patriotism in the quiet conservation of the inner things of the home and of society which are permanently in women's hands, as the insistence upon rights so-called which are not yet successfully demonstrated to be human rights in the sense which is claimed for them."
— "The problem of woman suffrage" by Adeline Knapp

Emily Louise Goddard
President of the Northern California Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage

"First of all, for the oldest and shortest of reasons: Because man is man, and woman is woman. Nature has made their function different, and no constitutional amendment can make them the same."
— "Some reasons why we oppose votes for women" by the Northern California Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage

Amey Webb Wheeler
Honorary vice-president of the Northern California Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, and the wife of Benjamin Ide Wheeler, the eighth President of the University of California

"We do, therefore, respectfully protest against the proposed Amendment to establish 'woman suffrage' in our state. We believe that political equality will deprive us of special privileges hitherto accorded to us by law."
— "Some reasons why we oppose votes for women" by the Northern California Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage