Topics in Kansas History:
Reform Movements

Essay

By the turn-of-the-century, America was no longer a simple rural, agricultural country. The industrial revolution and urban growth had transformed the face of the nation and resulted in great economic, social, and cultural change. This change meant many benefits for the nation as a whole, but it also meant new problems, which had to be addressed for the first time. This time of change led to a number of reform movements including those in politics, prison, prohibition, and woman's suffrage.

Prison Reform

Since frontier days, Kansans have built prisons to confine lawbreakers. Efforts to build a penitentiary began during the territorial period. Land was finally purchased in 1861. Serious construction began in 1866 using prison labor. The first section was opened in 1870. The site of the prison was originally called Petersburgh but was often referred to as "Penitentiary." The name was changed to Lansing in 1875.

Henry Brown, marshal of Caldwell, his assistant, Ben Wheeler, and two other men were convicted of robbing a bank. From his jail cell, Brown wrote a letter to his wife just hours before his death. He admitted his guilt and told her: "I will send you all my things, and you can sell them, but keep the Winchester." This rifle is currently on exhibit in the Kansas Museum of History.

Coal mining was one of the more significant prison industries. Beginning in the 1880s, inmates mined enough coal to meet the needs of the prison and other state institutions.

In the 1870s, people began to realize the need for separate facilities to house juvenile offenders. This reform school for boys under sixteen years of age opened in 1881. In March 1901, convicts working in the coalmines mutinied. Two prisoners were killed and the ringleaders were captured.

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union founded a girl's reformatory in 1888. It was taken over by the state the following year.

In 1891, Congress authorized funding for three federal prisons. Leavenworth was selected as one of these sites and construction began in 1898.

In 1917, the state prison for women was established at Lansing.

Progressivism

The Populist movement of the 1890s raised many reform issues, but its primary focus was the farm. After 1896, Populism lost its effectiveness as a reform movement. Although its impact was felt throughout the nation, the movement died without realizing its primary objectives, and the reform banner was carried into the new century by a broader based movement known as progressivism.

In Kansas, where the Republican Party continued to dominate, a number of GOP politicians were concerned about the conservatism of the party. As a result, they sought to promote reform by controlling the party organization. Most of these men had remained loyal Republicans during the Populist revolt. By 1900, however, they had come to see the need for reform.

The Progressive wing of the Kansas Republican Party fought "Boss" Cy Leland and other members of the Old Guard for control of the GOP during the first decades of the new century. Men like Walter R. Stubbs, William Allen White, Joseph L. Bristow, Edward Hoch, Victor Murdock, and Henry J. Allen led these “insurgents”.

These liberal Republicans were supporters of Theodore Roosevelt, who became the most visible symbol of the national progressive movement. In 1900, he visited Kansas twice, delivered a number of speeches, and was nominated for the vice- presidency by the Kansas delegation to the GOP convention. Upon the death of President McKinley in September 1901, Roosevelt used the presidency as a "bully pulpit" for the promotion of his brand of progressive reform.

On the state level, William E. Stanley was serving as Kansas governor during the first years of the new century. He was a middle-of-the-road politician who was generally considered capable and honest.

In 1903, the Republican “machine” candidate, Willis Bailey, succeeded Stanley. Soon his administration was confronted with charges of corruption.

Opposition to the Leland-Bailey faction grew. According to Will White, editor of the Emporia Gazette, Kansas needed "a man with a jaw--not the jawbone of an ass; not a jawsmith full of wind and wonders, but a man with a firm jaw who can set it by time lock and go after the petty-larcenists."

Bailey was unable to recapture his party's nomination in 1904. The "Boss-busters" took control of the party and the governor's office with the election of E. W. Hoch, a legislator and editor of the Marion Record. Guided by Governor Hoch and Speaker Stubbs, the progressive majority in the Kansas legislature passed a number of significant reform measures.

The most important of these included the enactment of a child labor law, the creation of juvenile courts, the passage of a law regulating the hours of work for railroad employees, and the enactment of a civil service law. In addition, the legislature took steps to curb the economic and political power of businesses such as Standard Oil and several railroad companies.

The insurgents backed a program that included a host of political, economic, and social reforms. For many, the objective was a "Square Deal" for Kansas. Their four-point program favored equitable taxation, two-cent railroad fares, direct primaries, and the abolition of passes.

The big event of the 1905 session of the legislature was the "war" waged by the Kansas legislature and Governor Hoch, in behalf of the state's independent oil producers, against the Standard Oil Company. The independents opposed the monopolistic control that Standard exerted over the state's booming oil industry. Standard, they insisted, was able to control the market because it dominated oil refining in the state.

In addition, Standard controlled the pipelines that could transport crude oil to other plants. The Kansas Oil Producers Association fought back by petitioning the legislature for regulatory relief. Lawmakers gave them what they wanted, including provision for a state operated refinery. The courts declared this law unconstitutional and regulations were not entirely successful. The Kansas attempt to take on the Standard Oil Trust, however, attracted national attention and considerable praise from like-minded reformers across the country.

Kansas progressives generally identified with prohibition and were critical of state and local officials who ignored the law. Governor Hoch vigorously sought to enforce the state ban on liquor. More importantly, however, during his second term the legislature passed minimum freight-rate and anti- pass bills. They also created a three-member tax commission to assess railroads, approved a state pure-food law, adopted the commission form of government for larger cities, and enacted a primary election law.

On the national level, Kansas progressivism was well represented by Congressman Murdock. He was a leader in the fight against "bossism" in the U. S. House of Representatives, where Speaker Joe Cannon had ruled as a virtual dictator for many years.

Murdock received effective support from fellow Kansas Congressman E. H. Madison. Unfortunately, Madison died in September 1911 in the midst of the reform campaign.

In the U. S. Senate, Joseph Bristow became a leading voice for change. He joined such notables as Robert M. LaFollette and William Borah as spokesmen for national progressive reform. In 1912 Senator Bristow introduced the resolution that led to the adoption of the 17th Amendment which provided for the direct popular election of senators.

After succeeding Hoch as governor, Stubbs, who entered politics for the first time in 1902 at age 44, continued to guide reform efforts. His legislature regulated the sale of stocks and bonds, enacted a workmen's compensation law, created a commission to regulate utilities, and began state inspection of meat packing plants. It also passed bank guaranty and anti-cigarette laws. A businessman turned politician, Stubbs followed another progressive pattern by applying the techniques of business management to the administration of government.

By 1912, Kansas Republicans had been battling among themselves for control of the state party for more than a decade. In that year, this inter-party conflict intensified and moved to the national arena when former President Roosevelt challenged President Taft for the GOP nomination.

Roosevelt had left the presidency in 1909 and most Kansas Republicans had embraced his chosen successor. Within two years, however, Roosevelt decided Taft had deserted the proper course and was considering a new bid for the presidency.

In August 1910, Roosevelt visited Kansas and delivered an important speech at Osawatomie in which he outlined a reform program dubbed the "New Nationalism." Soon, this progressive program would serve as the platform in for his bid for the White House.

The former president had many friends and supporters among progressive Kansas Republicans. Despite their efforts, however, Roosevelt was unable to capture the GOP nomination in 1912. In response to the conservatives' renomination of Taft, Roosevelt and his followers bolted and formed the Progressive or "Bull Moose" party.

Although progressive Republicans in Kansas did not actually form a third party in the state, Roosevelt men controlled the party for their candidate. In the 1912 election, Stubbs defeated Charles Curtis, a Topeka conservative, for the senatorial nomination, and Arthur Capper beat Frank Ryan to become the party's gubernatorial candidate.

Most of the party's other nominees were also identified with the progressive wing. But the national and state split in the GOP worked to the benefit of the Democratic Party. Woodrow Wilson carried Kansas and the nation to become only the second Democratic president since Abraham Lincoln; Stubbs lost to Democrat William H. Thompson; and Capper lost the tightest race in Kansas history to George H. Hodges (167,437 to 167,408).

An Olathe businessman, Hodges was only the second Democrat to win the gubernatorial election in Kansas. The new governor, like President Wilson, was a progressive Democrat and the cause of reform continued under his administration. Ratification of the 17th Amendment and the enactment of a new ballot law, designed to make the process less partisan, were significant actions.

The GOP remained split in 1914, with many of the reformers running on a Progressive Party ticket. Arthur Capper, however, ran as a regular Republican and defeated Hodges in a rematch.

Some of the legislation passed during the Capper administration can be considered progressive--a law permitting the adoption of the city-manager form of government, a more stringent anti-cigarette law, the "bone-dry law," and the creation of the position of state fire marshal and a State Highway Commission. After 1916, however, the progressive movement faded away as the insurgents reconciled their differences with the conservatives in an effort to reestablish Republican dominance.

Although the movement itself had ended, many of its former leaders continued to play prominent roles in Kansas and the nation. Capper was elected to the U. S. Senate in 1918, where he would serve until his retirement in 1949 at age 83.

Henry Allen, a former “Bull Mooser” and editor of the Wichita Beacon succeeded Capper as governor. During his administration, the national prohibition and woman's suffrage amendments were ratified by the Kansas legislature.

In 1918, Kansas women, who had enjoyed equal suffrage since 1912, helped elect Elizabeth “Lizzie” Wooster to the office of state superintendent of public instruction. She was the first woman in Kansas, and one of the first in the country, to hold a state- wide elective office.

William Allen White, the "Sage of Emporia," continued his active involvement in Republican politics. In 1924, however, believing the major parties had not taken sufficiently strong stands against the Ku Klux Klan, White made his one and only effort to win elective office. He ran for governor as an independent against incumbent Democrat Jonathan M. Davis and Republican Ben Paulen.

Although unsuccessful, White attracted considerable national attention to the issue of K.K.K. influence in state government.

Alfred Mossman Landon, who took his political apprenticeship under the insurgents, went on to a role as party leader in Kansas. This led to the governorship in 1932 and the Republican nomination for president in 1936.

The leaders of Kansas' progressive reform movement ultimately stayed with or returned to the GOP. Many advocates for more radical reform, however, found a home in the Socialist party during the Progressive Era. Socialists won a few seats in the Kansas legislature and, for a third party, polled a significant number of votes in gubernatorial and presidential elections.

One radical reformer, Henry Vincent, moved to Winfield in 1886, where he published the American Nonconformist. Before leaving Kansas in 1891, Vincent played a major role in the establishment of the People’s party. In 1907, he moved back to Kansas, settled in Girard, and became a leader of the Socialist Party.

Socialism's most significant impact in Kansas came in the area of journalism. James Wayland moved his Appeal To Reason to Girard in 1897. From this unlikely location, the newspaper became the leading socialist publication in the country. It had a national circulation and ties with the leading socialists of the day.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle was one of the most widely read and influential novels of the century. It attacked poor and unsanitary working conditions in the meat packing industry and by implication American capitalism. In 1905, this important work first appeared in serial form in the Appeal. The following year, Eugene Debs, five-time Socialist party presidential candidate, worked for a short time as a staff writer on the Girard paper.

After Wayland's death in 1912, the paper was continued under the editorships of Fred Warren, Louis Kopelin, and Emmanuel Haldeman-Julius. It was discontinued in 1922. Throughout its history, the Appeal highlighted the evils of capitalism and the promise of a socialist society.

Prohibition

Efforts to limit or prohibit the use of intoxicating beverages in the U. S. began early in the 19th century. Local option laws were advocated by the 1830s. Maine adopted the first state-wide prohibition ordinance in 1851, three years before Kansas became a territory. During the territorial period in Kansas, prohibition became a leading political, social, and moral issue.

Territorial legislation, which continued during the early years of statehood, made the existence of dram- shops or taverns a local option. Many citizens believed "that the retailing of liquors [had] a great tendency to retard and prevent the growth and improvement socially, morally, and politically of all communities and neighborhoods." They fought to arrest "the further spread of this moral and political curse" by working to deny operating licenses to businesses engaged in the dispensing of liquor.

By 1878, the temperance movement was well organized and had influence throughout the state. Pushing toward constitutional prohibition, supporters staged the first National Temperance Camp Meeting in Bismarck Grove near Lawrence. The twelve-day gathering was held in late August and early September of 1878.

The state's first temperance organization, the Independent Order of Good Templars, was founded in the 1850s. After the Civil War, the Kansas State Temperance Union and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union joined the Good Templars in the struggle for state-wide prohibition. Drucilla Wilson was the Kansas W.C.T.U.'s second president. During her three-year administration, Kansas became the first state to write prohibition into its constitution.

Efforts in Kansas to organize a Prohibition Party failed. By the mid-1870s, however, Kansas Republicans had adopted the major temperance principles as their own. In 1878, voters elected Republican prohibitionist John St. John governor. In his inaugural address to the state legislature, the new governor called for decisive action to deal with the liquor issue.

"I desire," instructed the governor, "to call your attention to the fact that here in Kansas, where our people are at least as sober and temperate as are found in any of the states of the West, the money spent annually for intoxicating liquors would defray the entire expenses of the State government . . . and all this expenditure for something that, instead of making mankind nobler, purer and better, has only left its dark trail of misery, poverty, and crime . . ..

"Could we but dry up this one great evil that consumes annually so much wealth, and destroys the physical, moral and mental usefulness of its victims, we should hardly need prisons, poor houses or police."

The legislature responded to the governor's speech, by passing a constitutional amendment that prohibited "the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors" in the state. It was ratified by a majority of the voters in November 1880. Laws and amendments alone, however, could not "dry up" the state; they had to be enforced. The Senate Saloon was only one of 43 "joints" still operating in the state's capital city in 1883. Proprietors kept their businesses open and liquor flowing, according to one report, by paying a monthly fine of $100.

Loopholes and lax enforcement of the law, according to the Oberlin Eye, actually led to an increase in the number of saloons in some towns.

The temperance movement went into decline during the 1890s but came back with renewed zeal before the turn-of-the-century. The K.S.T.U. began publishing and distributing the Kansas Issue throughout the state, and its annual meeting drew bigger and bigger crowds. This revitalized movement drew support from a new progressive reformers who were politically active and influential.

While the established organizations worked to get stronger laws and better enforcement, radical prohibitionists tired of waiting. Led or inspired by Carrie A. Nation of Medicine Lodge, women and men throughout the state took up the hatchet.

Mrs. Nation, who changed the spelling of her first name to "Carry" in 1903, used rocks to smash her first saloon in Kiowa in June 1900.

Frustrated after five futile years of conventional temperance activity in and around Medicine Lodge, Nation began a campaign that attracted national attention. After Kiowa, she took her campaign to Wichita, Enterprise, and Hope. Finally, on January 26, 1901, she arrived in Topeka, which would be her home base for the next four years. At nearly every stop, Nation endured ridicule, arrest, and jail to promote the cause to which she was committed.

During February 1901, in addition to leading raids on Topeka joints, Nation and State Librarian Annie Diggs met with the governor. Nation also addressed a joint session of the Kansas legislature, went on a lecture tour, and began publishing the Smasher's Mail, a temperance newspaper.

A former Populist, Mrs. Diggs was an active member of the W.C.T.U. Like other temperance organizations, the W.C.T.U. did not always agree with Nation's tactics but endorsed her objectives.

Carry Nation attracted a great deal of attention to the liquor issue. It was 1907, however, before real enforcement of the existing prohibition laws began. In addition, during Governor Hoch's administration the legislature revised and strengthened the statutes. The 1909 revision closed the major loophole in the old law that had allowed druggists to sell liquor for "medicinal purposes."

Kansas really seemed to be on a course toward the prohibitionists' goal. At least violators became much less open. Atchison's "liquor policy," explained the Kansas City Star, "has always embraced the maintenance of saloons without let or hindrance, an amendment to the constitution of the state of Kansas notwithstanding." By July 12, 1909, however, the Star could report: "Atchison is now so dry that it is sometimes necessary to sweep the dust from the Missouri River in order to cross the toll bridge to East Atchison without personal discomfort, while an appropriation for a municipal marine sprinkling apparatus is among the possibilities."

By 1914, the country was moving closer to national prohibition. While many looked to Kansas as an example, Charles Sheldon of Topeka's Central Congregational Church and others worked to make their state "bone dry."

For these crusaders, the goal was the total elimination of alcohol from the state. To accomplish this they were forced to attack the private use of liquor in the home. Finally, in 1917 Kansas took what many believed to be the final step toward real and effective prohibition.

In February 1917, the legislature passed, and Governor Capper signed, the so-called "bone dry" bill. Under this new statute, it became unlawful for anyone "to keep or have in his possession, for personal use or otherwise," any intoxicating liquors. The lone exception was communion wine. Anti-liquor forces across the country held Kansas up as an example for what should be done on a national scale. In 1919, the 18th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution made this prohibitionist dream a reality.

For 14 years national, state, and local law enforcement officials tried in vane to "dry up" the country. Most people believed that the "noble experiment" was a failure, and the amendment was repealed in 1933. Kansas, however, maintained its' state-wide ban on alcohol until 1948. In that year, despite the efforts of the W.C.T.U. and other "drys," voters rejected prohibition by a vote of 422,294 to 358,485. Kansas was once again placed under a local option law, similar to what had been abandoned nearly 70 years before.

Suffrage

The first woman's rights convention convened at Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. A host of issues important to 19th-century women were addressed at this meeting, but suffrage (the right to vote) quickly became the cornerstone of the movement. Thus, when Kansas Territory was organized just six years later, women's issues, and suffrage in particular, were of immediate concern. National leaders saw the newly organized western territories and states as ideal battlegrounds for their struggle to break down the tradition of male dominance in America. There were some early victories; women gained the right to vote in school district elections in 1861 and municipal elections in 1887. The crusade for equal voting rights, however, continued for more than a half century. Finally, in 1912, eight years before the ratification of the national woman suffrage amendment, Kansas became the eighth state to extend equal voting rights to women.

Born in Vermont in 1810, Clarina Nichols migrated to Kansas Territory in October 1854. She was already a recognized leader in the woman's rights movement and a champion of many other reform causes. In 1859, when delegates assembled at Wyandotte to draw up a state constitution, Nichols presented a petition calling for equal political and civil rights for Kansas women.

In some ways, the original Kansas Constitution was relatively progressive with respect to women's rights. The document stated that "No distinction shall ever be made between citizens and aliens in reference to the purchase, enjoyment, or descent of property." But despite the efforts of Mrs. Nichols and others, the state's founding fathers limited the suffrage to "every white male citizen of the United States, of the age of twenty-one years or upwards." In 1861, women were permitted to vote in school district elections, but it took 50 years of struggle for them to gain equal voting rights.

In 1867 the State Impartial Suffrage Association, led by Governor Crawford, Samuel Wood, and others, campaigned to convince the voters to ratify an amendment that would have granted equal suffrage to women and African Americans in Kansas. In a circular issued by the executive committee, Wood called for "impartial suffrage, without regard to sex or color. We are satisfied," Wood wrote, "that an argument in favor of colored suffrage, is an argument in favor of woman suffrage. Both are based upon the same principle. It is the doctrine of our fathers, 'that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.' We 'white men' have no right to ask privileges or demand rights for ourselves that we are unwilling to grant to the whole human family. There never has been, and never can be, an argument, based upon principles, against colored or woman suffrage."

The Kansas campaign and vote attracted a great deal of national attention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Lucy Stone, and several other nationally known suffragists toured the state in an effort to win support for the cause. Kansas became a national battleground and a victory could have set an important precedent. Unfortunately, by a vote of better than 2 to 1, the electorate rejected suffrage for women, as it did for Blacks.

After their defeat in 1867, Blacks had to await the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution before they could exercise the right to vote. Women turned their attention toward efforts to gain the franchise in municipal elections. Success in this area finally came early in 1887. In the April elections women captured several local offices. They won all five seats on the Syracuse City Council, and Susanna Madora Salter was elected mayor of Argonia.

The leadership for the suffrage campaign after 1880 came from the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association. Its first victory came on February 16, 1887, when the legislature passed "An Act conferring on women the right to vote at city elections, and to hold certain offices." The statute went on to guarantee "That in any election hereafter held in any city of the first, second or third class, for the election of city or school officers, . . . the right of any citizen to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex; and women may vote at such election the same as men, under like restrictions and qualifications; and any women possessing the qualification of a voter under this act shall also be eligible to any such city or school office."

On April 2, 1888, Oskaloosa voters filled their mayor's office and all five council seats with women.

Many reform-minded groups adopted the cause of woman's suffrage during the late 19th century. Mary Lease and many of her Populist allies included it as part of their political agenda during the 1890s. But woman's suffrage was still a divisive issue in the Farmers' Alliance-Populist movement that divided women as well as men. In 1893, the Kansas Legislature decided to let the voters decide.

Despite a campaign that once again involved Susan B. Anthony and other national suffragists, voters rejected the Equal Suffrage Amendment in November 1894.

Anthony was one of the most prominent suffragists of the era. Her interest in Kansas was primarily political, but she also had family ties here. D. R. Anthony, Susan's younger brother, moved to Kansas in 1854. He became a prominent journalist and political leader in Leavenworth.

With the tide of reform running high during the first two decades of the 20th century, the campaign for woman's suffrage took on new life.

With the help of progressives such as Republican Governor Walter R. Stubbs, Kansas became the eighth state to grant full suffrage to women. In November 1912, voters finally approved the Equal Suffrage Amendment to the state constitution.

After gaining equal suffrage through state action for themselves, Kansas women continued to work for a national suffrage amendment. Governor Capper lent his support to their crusade.

The national suffrage movement continued through World War I. Finally, on August 8, 1920, the long fought for goal of a national woman's suffrage amendment was achieved. The states ratified the 19th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. Governor Allen called a special session of the legislature so that Kansas could act quickly on this issue. Lawmakers ratified the amendment on June 16, less than two weeks after it was proposed by Congress.

Four years after gaining equality at the polling place, Kansas women helped elect Lizzie Wooster to the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction. She was the first woman in Kansas, and one of the first in the country, to hold a state-wide elective office.

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