rs
and the people of Hawaii resented this discrimination but the U. S.
Congress then and for years afterwards was adamant in its opposition
to woman suffrage anywhere. After the women of Washington, California
and Oregon were enfranchised in 1910-11-12 this resentment found
expression among the women of Honolulu in 1912, when they called on
Mrs. John W. Dorsett to help them organize a suffrage club. They
learned in October that by good fortune Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt,
president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, would stop
there on her way home from a trip around the world and they arranged
by wireless messages for her to address a mass meeting at the opera
house the one evening she would be there. The audience was large and
sympathetic and she learned that every legislative candidate at the
approaching election had announced himself in favor of getting the
vote for women. She met with the suffrage club and found its
constitution modeled on the one recommended by the National American
Woman Suffrage Association. She was in touch with the women afterwards
and the interest was kept alive.

By 1915 the more thoughtful men of the Territory were beginning to
feel that its women must be enfranchised. Both political parties
declared in favor of asking the U. S. Congress for an Act giving the
Hawaiian Legislature authority in this matter and that body itself
passed a bill to this effect. This was taken to Washington by the
Delegate from the Territory, J. K. Kalanianaole, who presented it but
it received no attention. He presented it again in 1916, with a like
result. Soon afterwards Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin F. Pitman of Brookline,
Mass., visited the Islands. Mr. Pitman was the son of a Hawaiian
Chiefess and although he had not been there since childhood he was the
person of the highest rank. Mrs. Pitman was prominent among the
suffrage leaders in Massachusetts and was deeply interested in the
situation in Hawaii. She attended the opening of the Legislature and
conversed with nearly all the members, finding them to a man in favor
of the bill, and the Legislature adopted strong resolutions calling
upon Congress to sanction it. In answer to a request for her
experience to use in this chapter she wrote:

It was on Jan. 30, 1917, that we arrived in Honolulu and on the
31st Madame Nakiuna, who was known as the Court historian, gave
us a large reception at Laniakea. At this fete were all the women
of th