percentage of
opposition in the district containing the so-called best people.
Districts 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43 would probably be designated the most
aristocratic of the city. Their vote on the amendment was 5,189 ayes,
13,615 noes, an opposing majority of 8,426, or about 1,400 to the
district. This left the remainder to be distributed among the other
eighteen districts, including the ignorant, the vicious and the
foreign born, with an average of less than 1,300 adverse votes in each
district.

The proportion of this vote was duplicated in Oakland, the most
aristocratic ward giving as large a negative majority as the one
commonly designated "the slums."

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.[179]

In the spring of 1885 the first woman suffrage association of Southern
California was organized in Los Angeles at the home of Mrs. Elizabeth
A. Kingsbury, a lecturer and writer of ability and a co-worker with
the Eastern suffragists in pioneer days. This small band of men and
women held weekly meetings from this time until the opening of the
Amendment Campaign in 1896, when it adjourned--subject to the call of
its president--and its members became a part of the Los Angeles
Campaign Committee.

The principal work of this early suffrage society was educational.
Once a month meetings were held to which the public was invited,
addresses were given by able men and women, good music was furnished
and suffrage literature distributed. For five years Mrs. Kingsbury
continued its efficient president and then returned to her Eastern
home. She was succeeded by Mrs. Margaret V. Longley, another pioneer
worker from the East, who served acceptably for the same length of
time, when Mrs. Alice Moore McComas was elected. Under her regime was
called the first county suffrage convention ever held in the State.

All other organizations of women wholly ignored the suffrage
association during these years. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union
had its franchise department, but it was by no means so popular as the
other thirty-nine. Discouragement was met on every hand, but the
faithful few, adhering to the principles of political liberty, saw
year by year a slow but certain growth of sentiment in favor of the
ballot for women.

In the winter of 1887, an effort was made to secure a bill from the
Legislature conferring Municipal Suffrage upon women. Hundreds of
letters were written and a large petition was sent but no action was
taken.[180] Every year after