A red light injunction and abatement bill, not essentially different
from the law now in effect in Iowa and Nebraska, passed both houses of
the California Legislature with good majorities and was signed by
Governor Hiram W. Johnson on April 7. The law declares houses of
prostitution and assignation to be nuisances and holds responsible both
the proprietor of the house and the owner of the building. It enables
any citizen, whether personally damaged or not, to bring action; and it
levies a fine against the property itself and forbids its use at any
future time for such purpose.[2]
The bill has had a somewhat dramatic history. In 1911 it was introduced
at the request of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union by Assemblyman
Wyllie, but though favorably reported from the Public Morals Committee
it was killed by re-reference to the Judiciary Committee too late to be
returned to the floor.
The tremendous general awakening since then on the subject of the social
evil and the exposure in San Francisco of the enormous sums reaped by
organized vice under the Schmitz-Ruef regime, led to the formation of a
society of social hygiene. The efforts of the United States Department
of Justice to suppress the traffic in girls led to the establishment of
an anti-slavery society; and the State Board of Health, under the
leadership of Dr. William F. Snow, made venereal, like other contagious
diseases, reportable, though only by case numbers.
Attention has been gradually focussed upon the question of the
desirability of segregation of vice or “red light” districts which exist
in nearly all the cities of California except Los Angeles, and in most
of the larger towns. San Francisco is the only city to make an attempt
at systematic regulation and medical examination and this city has been
the object of repeated criticism on the part of those who do not believe
in the European system of regimentation. It has also done its part in
preparing the public mind for a more intelligent discussion of such
measures as the injunction and abatement bill, the requirement of a
health certificate for marriage, and the several bills limiting the
liquor traffic which were offered in the present Legislature.
The bill as passed was sponsored by the Woman’s Christian Temperance
Union and endorsed by the State Federation of Women’s Clubs and the
California Civic League, thus rallying to its support the many thousands
of women who were given the vote by last year’s suffrage amendment. It
is a significant fact that the measure, though approved by many men, was
formally endorsed only by ministerial bodies. The large property
interests involved and the subterranean coercion of liquor and certain
real estate interests, made it impossible to obtain the formal support
of commercial organizations.
The campaign on behalf of the measure was, therefore, necessarily a
woman’s movement. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union which, as
Franklin Hichborn has pointed out, has “the largest single block of
votes in the state,” educated their own membership and their men folk.
The California Civic League—chiefly composed of those who had been
active in the suffrage campaign and whose motto is “study and
service”—undertook the systematic work of educating the public on the
general subject of the social evil. For four successive months it
published syllabi to be studied by its three thousand members in thirty
centers. Beginning in January, the union carried on a publicity campaign
in the newspapers and during the last two months kept several women
speakers in the field talking on the “red light” bill before church
congregations, mass meetings, conferences and clubs.
The California Legislature met for the first time under the new law of a
divided session, bills being received in January, a recess taken in
February, and measures then being discussed and voted upon. During the
recess most of the legislators were invited to speak at mass meetings in
their own district and to put themselves on record on this particular
bill. It soon became known that the delegations from San Francisco and
from Alameda County were, with the exception of a very few men, against
the bill, while the members of the delegation from southern California
were almost unanimously for it.
A picturesque episode of the campaign lay in the selection of Edwin D.
Grant of San Francisco to introduce the bill in the senate, for Senator
Grant is the successor of a well-known politician, Eddie Wolf, who had
misrepresented San Francisco for sixteen years in the Legislature. The
replacing of Wolf by Grant was one of the first political results of
woman suffrage in the city. Although young and relatively inexperienced,
Mr. Grant stood the ridicule of the reactionary press that constantly
heckled him as “the boy reformer” and, with the support of older men on
the floor, got his bill through without any weakening amendments.