titled to vote.

SEC. 2. That the said Legislature is further hereby vested with
the power to have submitted to the voters of the Territory the
question of whether or not the female citizens shall be empowered
to vote....

The bill was reported favorably by the committee and passed by the
Senate without objection or even discussion on September 15. In the
House it was referred to the Committee on Woman Suffrage, which set
April 29, 1918, for a hearing. Delegate Kalanianaole had been called
back to Honolulu by business but was represented by his secretary and
there were present Mrs. Park, who presided, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw,
honorary president of the National Suffrage Association, and Mrs.
Pitman, the principal speaker. Judge John E. Raker was chairman of the
committee, which did not need any argument but was interested in
asking many questions of Mrs. Pitman. At the close of the hearing the
committee voted unanimously to make a favorable report. The bill was
passed June 3 without a roll call. It was signed by President Wilson
on the 13th.

The matter was now in the control of the Hawaiian Legislature, which
received petitions from a number of organizations of women to exercise
its power to confer the suffrage without a referendum to the voters.
This was recommended by Governor C. J. McCarthy and early in the
session of 1919 the Senate took this action and sent the bill to the
House. This body under outside influence refused to endorse it but
substituted a bill to send the question to the voters. The Senate
would not accept it and both bills were deadlocked.

The women were then spurred to action; old suffrage clubs were
revived; one was formed in Honolulu of the native high class women and
what is known as the "missionary set," a very brilliant group. Mrs.
Dorsett made a tour of all the Islands to arouse interest and on
Mani, under the leadership of Mrs. Harry Baldwin, clubs were formed
all over the island. A Hawaiian Suffrage Association was organized. At
the next convention of the National Association a resolution was
adopted that it be invited to become auxiliary without the payment of
dues and the invitation was officially accepted with thanks.

The Federal Suffrage Amendment proclaimed by Secretary of State Colby
Aug. 26, 1920, included the women of the Territories and it was thus
that Hawaiian women became enfranchised. They voted in large numbers
at the November elections that year.