1911 California Proposition 4
[1] It was adopted by the California State Legislature and approved by voters in a referendum held as part of a special election on October 10, 1911.[4] Election evening results appeared to indicate that Proposition 4 would be defeated as there was strong opposition from the San Francisco Bay Area.[5] However, late returns from the agricultural and rural parts of the state overcame majority opposition from Bay Area cities such as San Francisco and Oakland.By their inferior physical strength they are unable to compete on an equal basis in any line of endeavor where ability is determined by sheer bodily prowess.It will not result in wiser laws or better government.”[10] A Los Angeles Times editorial dated September 22, 1911, stated that: “The working man - whether he be a Republican, a Democrat or a Socialist - who walks along Broadway or Spring Street on Saturday afternoon and sees thousands of fashionably-attired girls and women of mature age parading in autos and making woman-suffrage speeches says to himself, ‘Are these butterflies to be entrusted with the task of making laws for me?’” The editorial also stated that “[t]he Times opposes woman suffrage because it does not believe in either the justice or the expediency of burdening the women of California with the duty of voting.”[11] In a Los Angeles Times opinion piece dated October 1, 1911, Democratic State Senator J.B. Sanford, who was Chairman of the Democratic Caucus of California at the time,[12] called women’s suffrage a “disease,” a “political hysteria,” a “cruel and intolerable burden,” and a “backward step in the progress of civilization.”[13] In the same opinion piece published by the Los Angeles Times, Democratic State Senator Sanford also used homophobic language in writing the following about certain classes of people who advocate women’s suffrage: “It is the mannish female politician and the little effeminate, sissy man, and the woman who is dissatisfied with her lot and sorry that she was born a woman.”[14] During the November 3, 1896 General Election, California voters rejected Constitutional Amendment No.