One of the most energetic reformers in southern California during the early twentieth century was a remarkable woman named Katherine Philips Edson.

Edson began her fight for reform by demanding the passage of pure milk laws in Los Angeles. She had learned that babies were dying from drinking contaminated milk. In a letter to a friend, she wrote: "If the milk supply is in the hands of politicians, how can a woman who wants to do the right thing by her babies stay at home and keep quiet while they drink impure milk?" Edson pressured the city government to hire more inspectors to make sure that all milk sold in the city was pure.

Edson later became a leader in the fight for woman suffrage. California in 1911 became the sixth state in the nation to grant women the right to vote.

Women and children in the early twentieth century often worked ten or twelve hours a day in unhealthy and unsanitary conditions. Cannery workers, for instance, stood knee-deep in dirty water, breathed foul air, and received less than 15 cents an hour. Edson led the fight for the passage in 1913 of a minimum wage law for women and children. Governor Hiram Johnson appointed Edson to be the executive director of a state commission to enforce the new law.

 

"California women suffrage parade," photographic post card, 1908. California Historical Society, Photography collection, FN-19319.

Marching in the streets was one of the strategies by which women gained equal voting rights in California in 1911. The photograph shows the leaders in a march of 300 members of the California Equal Suffrage Association in August 27, 1908 in Oakland. Handwritten on the back of the postcard: "Left to right: Mrs. L.H. Coffin; Mrs. J. (Theodore ?) Pinther, Jr.; Mrs. Hanna Kane (Mrs. T. Pinther, Sr. ?). Mrs. Kane made the banner and it was carried in the first parade for the Women Suffrage in Calif. The meeting was held at the Rep. Convention in Oakland." Addressed to Mrs. Jeanette Pinther, Burlingame. Banner reads: California Equal Suffrage Association.

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