A Seattle Pastor Tells College Students the Ballot Would Bury the Saloon
Speaking at Puget Sound University, Rev. W. H. W. Rees urges students to stand for woman suffrage — predicting that once women vote, the whole liquor traffic goes into the ground.
Puget Sound University students last night were urged to stand for woman suffrage by Rev. W. H. W. Rees, pastor of the First Methodist church of Seattle, who addressed the college on "Winners." Dr. Rees thinks that when the women get the ballot they would settle the saloon question by burying the whole liquor traffic.
“Dr. Rees thinks that when the women get the ballot they would settle the saloon question by burying the whole liquor traffic.”
Washington women would win the ballot the very next year, in 1910, and the temperance alliance that packed this college lecture hall went on to deliver a dry state in 1916. The pitch — give women the vote and they will clean up the saloon — is a reminder that suffrage was won by coalition politics, not abstract principle. It also rhymes with every modern ballot fight where moral reform and voting rights get bundled together.
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