SENATOR WETBACK

I prefer to refer to him as Senator Wetback. His real name was Patrick Anthony McCarran, and this bitter xenophobic, contemptuous narcissistic windbag, represented the very worst in the American character. He  preached fear of the future, fear of our enemies,  fear of our friends and even fear of ourselves. It was Pat McCarran who gave the Health Insurance Industry their anti-trust status, allowing them to collude in setting drug prices.  It was Pat McCarran who fed America’s vile dead end phobia of Mexican immigration.  It was Pat McCarran who first used the Senate of the United States to bully and terrorize loyal American citizens. It was Pat McCarran who turned Joe McCarthy’s bungling histrionics into the best weapon the Communists had in the cold war. In short, it was Pat McCarran who planted the seeds of the poisons politics that Donald Trump would harvest.

Pat McCarran was born the same year that George Custer died on the Little Big Horn; 1876. He was raised on an isolated sheep farm outside of Reno, Nevada, 15 miles from his nearest human playmate. He remained an isolationist his entire life. He attended the University of Nevada Law School, but had to drop out when his father was injured. Pat would later pass the bar, studying on his own.

As a new lawyer Pat McCarran made two big mistakes. The first was in 1907 when Nevada Governor John Sparks offered the thirty year old an appointment as a judge. But Pat’s paranoia drove him to reject the appointment. He later admitted ruefully, “That was the first and only appointment that was ever offered to me.”

His second mistake was when he served as counsel in a divorce case, Wingfield v Wingfield. The husband, George Wingfield, was the Democratic political boss who ran Nevada politics. And by representing the wife, Mae Wingfield, Pat McCarran earned the undying enmity of the Nevada Democratic Party leadership. When he tried to run for the U.S. Senate in 1908 he was black balled. One party leader noted, “His reputation as a double-crosser is too well established throughout the state.” Twenty years later the black ball still denied him a nomination for a Senate run.

Pat McCarran was finally allowed to run for the for U.S. Senate in 1932, at the age of 56, primarily because nobody else wanted what seemed like a useless nomination. The Democrats had been the second party in Nevada since the civil war. But in the general election this “ rotund man with a double chin, wavy hair and a high-pitched voice, who often says "My hide yearns for the alkali dust and the desert"— was swept into Washington on Franklin Roosevelt’s coat tails. Pat then proceeded to spit on those coattails.

The new Junior Senator from Nevada (left - second row) opposed every element of the New Deal. “The innovations of executive power, indulged in by Jackson, promoted by Lincoln, expounded by Garfield, declared righteous by Roosevelt and philosophically promulgated by Wilson, appear to have been but forerunners, rivulets, as it were, contributing to a flood that now sweeps on, submerging the Utopian doctrines and theories of Jefferson and conferring unheard of and unfettered expansion to the executive” That kind of rhetoric got him re-elected in 1938 with 73% of the vote.

Now secure in his seat, McCarran made speech's along side fellow Catholic Charles Lindberg, preaching isolationism. “I think one American boy, the son of an American mother, is worth more than all central Europe.”  He condemned Roosevelt’s supposed “secret plan” to push America into WW II. After Pearl Harbor, it was McCarran's desperate attempts to justify his prewar opposition,   which gave birth to the conspiracy myths that FDR had purposefully ignored Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor. In fact it was McCarran's stinginess over military budgets that left the Army and Navy short planes and radar to intercept the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

After Pearl Harbor, however, Senator McCarran was certain that Nevada got it’s share of war spending, including the third largest manufacturing facility built during the war, Basic Magnesim’s $140 million plant, built at full government expense, and the town of Henderson, built again at government expense, to house the plant’s 15,000 workers. Pat won re-election in 1944 with 68% of the vote.

The war and time made Pat McCarran one of the nation’s most powerful senators, by making him one of its most senior Senators. By 1945 he had become the new political boss of Nevada, the new George Wingfield. Pat even filled the U.S. capital building with so many graduates from Nevada Universities that they became known as “McCarran’s Boys”. And after a couple of years working in Washington, many of the “boys” became part of the McCarran Machine, back home in Nevada.

Pat McCarran handed out just as many “black balls” as he had been handed. Federal Marshal Les Kofed explained to the Senator that Federal law prevented political appointees like him from making speeches in support of a local politician. Marshal Kofed explained, “Out of a clear blue sky, shortly thereafter,…I received a call from the chief deputy at Carson City, that a new marshal had been appointed, that I had better come in and turn in my keys.”

By 1950 Time magazine had begun describing the 73 year old Pat McCarran as “pompous, vindictive and power-grabbing”. According to the magazine he “staged a one-man committee filibuster against an “Emergency Immigration bill” to admit (250,000) D. P’s to the U.S  The D.P.’s were Displaced Persons, who had survived the Nazi death and work camps, but whose identification papers had been lost or destroyed. They were people without homes or a nation willing to accept them. What concerned Pat McCarran was that many of them were Jews. He argued that the “Emergency Immigration Bill” was supported by a particular “pressure group” with “unlimited money” - code words for Jews.

The DP bill had the support of President Eisenhower. But when it was first introduced into a subcommittee in the spring of 1953, Senator McCarran “demanded” a ten day delay while his wife sought medical treatment. When “Senator Wetback” instead surfaced in Los Angles, holding hearings for his own Senate Security and Intelligence Sub Committee, and asked for three more weeks of delay, the immigration hearings finally began.

Three weeks into the hearings McCarran managed to snooker the Judiciary Committee (parent committee to the subcommittee) into voting to delay any further action by the subcommittee. When most of the Senators realized they had been tricked, fisticuffs almost broke out. It took a week, but the delay was eventually overturned. Still, in the end, McCarran managed to kill the bill. And tens of thousands of desperate people were turned away from America's shores because of one bigott.

In June of 1952 Pat McCarran co-sponsored a rewriting of immigration law, declaring that “…we have in the United States today hard-core, indigestible blocs which have not become integrated..." More code words for Jews. "Today, as never before, untold millions are storming our gates for admission and those gates are cracking under the strain… I do not intend to become prophetic, but if the enemies of this legislation succeed in riddling it to pieces, or in amending it beyond recognition, they will have contributed more to promote this nation's downfall than any other group since we achieved our independence as a nation.” He could have had the same speech writer as Donald Trump, except McCarran, at least, knew lots of multi-syllable words.

Next came the program which, for me, earned the Senator his nickname, “Operation Wetback.” That  really was its name, and it was launched in 1954 after Senator McCarran’s prodded the bureaucrats of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The program contrasted with the ten year old “Bracero” system, in which Mexican recruiters contracted to supply workers for American farmers and railroads.

By 1954 some 300,000 Mexican citizens were legally working in the United States on temporary “Bracero” visas. Few stayed in the United States at the end of their contracts. However those programs, which protected worker’s rights and wages, were disliked by employers. Racists forces in Texas had prevented that state from participating in the program for five years. But in 1954 this successful program was killed, in favor of mass deportations - the same approach promoted by Donald Trump, and producing the same outcome - rising food prices because of a lack of field workers.

The INS would later claim to have expelled 1.3 million Mexicans (not the 13 million claimed in recent mythology) under Operation Wetback.  But a closer examination of the data shows the service could only prove some 80,000 were expelled. The addition half a million were an estimate of those who left the country out of fear, but the number was more hopeful than accurate.

The U.S. Army successfully resisted joining Operation Wetback, and in an internal report written later carried the notation, "Thank goodness"   The program ended abruptly when seven “illegals” being deported by ship, drowned while trying to swim back to the American shore. The crew of the steamer transporting them, then mutinied against their captain, and against the entire program. In the conservative myth the mutiny may get mentioned but never discussed.

But Pat McCarran’s most powerful weapon was his anti-communism. In this he was merely echoed by Senator Joe McCarthy. McCarran also supported Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, to the point that he was called “The Senator from Madrid.” He was an equally fierce supporter of Chiang Kai-Shek, after Chiang and his supporters were driven out of mainland China and retreated to the island of Taiwan. So rabid was McCarran's defense that it was not until Richard Nixon visited China in the 1970’s that some sanity and common sense return to American Asian policy.

The McCarran’s Internal Security Act (of September 1950) required members of the communist party to register with the Attorney General. So onerous were the details of the act that between 1965 and 1967 almost all of it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Walt Kelly, who drew the popular "Pogo" comic strip, chose to memorialize McCarrain with "Mole J. Macarney", a blind, paranoid creature, who spread tar on everything and everyone he touched.

Pat McCarran died of a heart attack in September of 1954, proving once again that politics is not about being right. It is about being re-elected. To most politicians, nothing else matters.

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CHESTER ARTHUR CROSSING THE BORDER LINE

I think we have all seen his photo, but I doubt if many of you have seriously gazed into the chubby self satisfied face of President Chester A. Arthur and wondered what made him such a clothes horse? You ought to. “Elegant Arthur” was a vain, shallow, mutton chopped political hack who owned 80 pairs of trousers, and who rarely wore the same pair twice. “Chet”, as his friends liked to call the 6 foot 2 inch dandy raconteur, spent more on hats annually than most Americans earned in a year. Chester was a product of the spoils system. In six years as the Collector of the Port of New York, with a salary of $6,500 a year, Chester amassed a fortune of $3 million. And yet it was not his sticky fingers which endangers his reputation to this day . It was his massive ego, which inspired him to tell one little white lie . He fibbed about how old he was.

Chester had never held elected office before joining the Republican national ticket in 1880. He was the choice of Senator Roscoe Conkling, boss of the Stalwarts, the renamed Tammany Hall graft machine. In exchange for a promise to get-out-the-vote in New York “Lord Roscoe” had forced James Garfield to accept Chester Arthur as his Vice President. The Republicans needed the help. During the campaign Democrats spread the rumor that Chester had actually been born in Canada, and thus was not eligible to serve as Vice President. Chester refused to even dignify the charge with a response, even tho at least one Republican politician wondered why Chester didn't just “say where he was born, and put an end to all this mystery.”

It might have made a difference. Out of 4 million votes cast that Tuesday, 8 November, 1880, Garfield and Chester Arthur received just 1,898 more votes than Civil War hero Winfield Scott Hancock and Indiana banker William English, running for the Democrats. The close defeat was a bitter pill for Democrats to swallow, and they stayed bitter. In mid-December, the New York Times noted that a Democratic operative had arrived in St. Albans, Vermont, investigating Chester's ancestry. The Democrats had tried this tract before, claiming Chester had been born in Ireland. That smear fell apart quickly, but evidently they were were not willing to let it go. If Chester noticed that small item in the paper, and I bet he did, it must have made him more than a little nervous.

According to the Times, the operative's name was Arthur P. Hinman. Shortly after the 1880 election members of the Democratic National committee had walked into Hinman's offices at 14 Wall Street, offering to pay his expenses to investigate the persistent rumors that Vice President-elect Chester Arthur was not “a native born citizen” as required by the Constitution. They had picked their man well. Besides being a loyal Democrat, Hinman had written a poem recently published in Harper’s Magazine. It began, "My back is to the wall, My face is to my foes, That surge and gather around me, Like waves that winter blows”.  And it was this combative and contentious bull dog who traveled to the town of St. Albans, 15 miles south of the Canadian border, and further, to the little villages beyond, on both sides of the political line.

Interviewed by the Times in the American Hotel at the corner of Main and Lake Streets, in St. Albans, Himman claimed his investigation had uncovered that Chester A. Arthur was actually, “born in Canada....that he was 50 years old in July instead of October...and generally that he is an alien and ineligible to the office of Vice-President.” 

It was hard to disprove the allegation. Vermont did not begin recording and issuing birth certificates until 1857 - 28 years and a month after Arthur's birth. Yet, the tiny article, printed under the headline “Material For a Democratic Lie”, caused barely a hiccup back in Washington. After all Chester was just the vice president. He did not matter.

Still, it was just one more reason why, after taking the oath in March of 1881, President Garfield had bared Chester from even entering the White House. Garfield had decided on civil service reform, doing away with the profitable spoils system, and that meant figuratively castrating Senator Conkling and freezing his “Stalwarts”, like Chester Arthur, out of the government. Then, 2  July , President Garfield was shot in a Washington, D.C. train station. As the deranged assassin was arrested he shouted, "I am a Stalwart, and Arthur will be President!”. 

In September, 88 days later, Garfield died of blood poisoning, and abruptly, the charming but vapid Chester A. Arthur was President, and the assassin had publicly tied the new POTUS to the murder.

And what happened next did not improve the trouser snake's public image. Chester refused to occupy the executive mansion until Lewis Comfort Tiffany had spent two months and lots of public money redecorating it, with pomegranate plush drapes and a floor to ceiling ornate wood and glass screen (above) jammed into the main entrance hall. To complete the grotesque gilded age transformation of a national monument, 24 wagon loads of historical paintings, furniture and furnishings accumulated by Presidents John Adams through Ulysses Grant were sold at auction. It was just one more reason why a journalist would later write, “No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan Arthur.”

The Democrats saw a quick opening, but Hinman rushed his shot and he missed. His new conspiracy theory presented in the fall and winter of 1881, was a repeat of what he had told the Times, with a few more details. And again the story fell apart. This time there was the testimony of Chester Abell, the doctor who delivered the future President. The boy was even named after him. Dr. Abel insisted Chester had been born in Fairfield, Vermont, a few miles east north east of St Albans, less than a dozen miles from the Canadian border. 

And although the father, William Arthur, had not become a naturalized American citizen until 1843, there was no doubt that he married Chester's mother Malvina Stone (above)  in 1821, and she was blatantly American born. Her grandfather had even fought in the American Revolutionary Army, for crying out loud. So when Chester Arthur was born in October of 1830, he was automatically an American citizen, like his mother, no matter what his father's status. 

And once President Arthur began to crusade for the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, his public image improved and most people forgot the Democratic smear. In fact the public began to notice that Chester was just so...likeable. It even began to look as if he might even run for re-election. And that meant that Arthur Hinman would be back.

Lawyer Hineman's third theory still insisted that Chester had been born in Canada. Malvina's parents had lived in Dunham, Quebec for years, just 8 miles north of the border. William and Malvina had met and eloped in Dunham. It would have been natural, in the fall of 1830, for Malvina to seek her mother's help in minding her four older children when it came time to deliver Chester. And as for Dr. Abel's testimony, well, the old man was just confused. See, Chester Alan Arthur had been born in Dunham, Quebec, but in 1828. Then there had been another son, named Chester Abel Arthur, born in 1830 in Fairfield, Vermont. That was the baby Dr. Abel had remembered. But, said Hinman's research, Chester Abel had died before his first birth day. And years later, when applying to Union College in Schenectady New York, Chester Alan Arthur had appropriated his dead brother's birth date and location, making him an American citizen and qualifying him for student aid. It was such a good story that Hinman put it all down in a book, “How A British Subject Became President of the United States”, and in the summer of 1884, with another Presidential election looming, summarized it in an article he wrote for the Brooklyn Eagle Newspaper.

It might have caught on. It might have become a majestic conspiracy theory, like the rabbit Alice followed, or a million other myths created by political hacks.  And the Democratic party might have fallen down that rabbit hole in the election of 1884. The American people have always been drawn to conspiracy theories, be it FDR sacrificing Pearl Harbor in 1941, or  Lee Harvey Oswald's claim he was a patsy in November of 1963, or the black helicopters hiding in National Parks in the 1990's, or even President Obama being born in Africa.  But reality intervened in 1884 when President Chester Arthur fell ill and decided not to run for re-election. And as quickly as that, Arthur Hinman lost his livelihood. He had become irrelevant, the Jeb Bush of his age, leaving behind a brown smudge as his only contribution to the historical record.

Chester Alan Arthur left the White House in March of 1885 a very sick man. On 16 November, 1886 he ordered his son to burn all his personal papers, reducing to ashes all the shady deals he had cut while a loyal Stalwart for Senator Conkling.  And then on 18 November, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and died. Mark Twain, the man who had invented the title “Gilded Age”, offered a powerful obituary; “It would hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration”

After his work as a hatched man dried up, Arthur Hinman suffered the roller coaster life of a political flunky, in with one administration, out with the next. His law business fell off and his was forced to move his office to cheaper space at 644 Hancock street in Brooklyn. But then the worm turned again and by 1901 he was back at 375 Fulton Street, just blocks from City Hall in Manhattan.   But he never lost his pugnaciousness. In October of 1904, the now aging lawyer got into a fist fight with an undertaker, a Mr. Joseph P. Pouch. Hinman had represented Pouch's  wife in their divorce case, and when the judge awarded her custody of their 7 year old child, Arthur Hinman offered to effect the transfer, to avoid a confrontation. With any other lawyer that might have worked. But Hinman was never one to suffer an insult. He belted Joe in the eye, and Joe pounded Himman in the face and head. Poor Joe got arrested for contempt of court, and Mrs. Pouch got her child. And Arthur Hinman got the fight he always relished. It was straight out of  the final stanza of his poem, where Arthur recalls his “life of combat”; "I stand, poor speck of dust, Defiant, self reliant, To die – if die I must.” Well, hell, we all must.

And the mystery of Chester Alan Arthur's birth would not be finally be answered until 1949 when Chester A. Arthur's great-grandson donated the family bible to the New York Public Library. And there, recorded in William Arthur's own handwriting are listed in order, the births of all nine of his children. The name of the first male and fifth child is indeed Chester Alan Arthur. But the birth date is October 5, 1829. It was the same year William Arthur was elected to the school board in Fairfield, Vermont. And all the great mystery and drama compounded by politicians over the birth place of President Chester Alan Arthur, boiled down to a  vain man's vanity about his age. He want to appear a year younger than he actually was.  Simple, and foolish. But human.

- 30 -  

THE SAUSAGE FACTORY, Women Win Voting Rights

"He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of."

Mae West

I wish William Bright (above) had been more of a hero. In reality he struggled his whole life against his own bigotry and bad timing. First, he was a Democrat, which in the late 1860's was the definition of political irrelevancy.   In 1867 Bright emigrated westward, to South Pass City,  a sort of rest and resupply stop astride the 7,500 foot high wagon route through the Rocky Mountains. The transcontinental railroad was in the process of making the town and the pass irrelevant. What had drawn the 44 year old William and his new wife, along with 2,000 miners, to South Pas was the discovery of gold nearby.  Not that William was much of a miner, but the he used what little he had made trading in mining claims to buy a saloon...just as the gold was running out. By the end of the year South Pass City had a total population of just 60 people, and a disturbing number of them were temperance supporters, making even Mr. Bright's saloon irrelevant..

"The only good woman I can recall in history was Betsy Ross. And all she ever made was a flag."

Mae West

Nationally, by 1869 the Democrats were an endangered species on the national stage. Victorious in the Civil War, the party of Lincoln dominated the 41^st Congress, controlling the Senate - 57 Republicans to just 9 Democrats, and 150 Republicans to just 65 Democrats in the House of Representatives. Thus it was no surprise that newly selected first governor for the new Wyoming Territory, would be a good Republican – Ohioan John A. Campbell.  Arriving in the railroad town of Laramie, the new Governor promptly called elections for the Territorial Legislature to be held on Tuesday, 3 August, 1869. And shortly thereafter the newly appointed U.S. Attorney for the territory, another good Republican name Joseph Carey, issued a legal opinion that because of the new 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution, no person could be denied the right to vote because of their skin color. And that was the start of all kinds of Wyoming insanity

"Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly."

Mae West

The turnout on election day was disappointing. Only 5,266 men showed up to cast ballots. More might have voted but for the gangs of drunken Democrats flashing guns and knives around all the polling places because they did not believe blacks or Asians or people who thought blacks or Asians should be allowed to vote, should be allowed to vote. Still, it seems unlikely better order at the polls would have significantly changed the outcome. The census taken the following year found only 6,107 men in the entire territory. And when the new legislature convened in Cheyenne in October of 1869 it consisted in total of 12 Representatives in the lower house and 8 Councilmen in the upper house -  and they were all Democrats.

"A man in the house is worth two in the street."

Mae West

One of the most prominent Democrats elected was the racist from South Pass City (above), William Bright. He was so respected by his fellows that he was named President of the Council (the upper house) before the legislature got down to work. And they were very busy, passing 86 laws and 13 memorials and resolutions by mid-December. One law ensured that male teachers should not be paid more than women teachers, while another guaranteed that wives would retain property rights after separating from their husbands. And then there was the  “Act to Prevent Intermarriage between White Persons and those of Negro or Mongolian Blood,” which was self explanatory. Governor Cambell vetoed that one, but the legislature passed it again over his veto. And then, wrote the Wyoming Tribune, “amid the greatest hilarity, and after the presentation of various funny amendments and in the full expectation of a gubernatorial veto, an act was passed enfranchising the women of Wyoming.”

"Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often."

Mae West

William Bright introduced the measure, labeled Council Bill (CB) 70 on 30 November.  It read, in full, “Section 1. That every woman of the age of eighteen years, residing in this territory, may at every election to be held under the laws thereof, cast her vote. And her rights to the elective franchise and to hold office shall be the same under the election laws of the territory, as those of electors. Section 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage.” And according to his supporting speech, William's primary reasons for introducing such a revolutionary measure – there were only about 1,000 females over the age of ten in all of Wyoming - was that, as an unnamed Councilman said, “if you are going to let the n--gers and the pigtails (Chinese) vote, we will ring in the women, too.”  Three members of the council disagreed on grounds that even as a joke, neither women nor Negros nor Chinese should be considered intellectual or moral equals to white men. But CB70 passed the same day, 6-2 with one abstention.

"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before."

Mae West

When things got to the other side of the Rollings House hotel, where the legislature was meeting,  Benjamin Sheeks, also from South Pass, led the opposition. He tried to permanently table the bill, and when that failed he and his allies tried adding “poison pill” amendments, such as the addition of the phrase,  “colored women and squaws” to section one, and substituting the word “ladies”, as in “ladies of the evening” for the word “women”. These attempts produced some laughter, but they were both defeated. Then Sheeks moved to temporally table the bill, so the House could consider more “pressing matters” first. That passed, but it bought the opponents only two days to lobby against the joke measure.

"Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can't figure out what from."

Mae West

When the debate was resumed, opponents tried moving to adjourn three times in a row, hoping to catch somebody in the outhouse or off sneaking a shot of whiskey or a beer. All three attempts failed. Then it was moved that CB70 should be reconsidered on 4 July, 1870 – seven months after the house permanently adjourned. Amid all the laughter and snickering, that maneuver was also defeated . But Sheeks did finally amend CB70, raising the voting age for women from 18 to 21. After all a joke's a joke, but let's not go crazy here. And then, finally, at 8:20 that night the house approved CB70, 7 to 4. It was immediately moved to reconsider the issue, but that was just as quickly defeated. And with that, finally, the issue of female suffrage was dumped into the lap of the Republican Governor, with a snicker.

"The score never interested me, only the game."

Mae West

Governor John Cambell was a bit young, but he was nobody's fool. He knew this bill was intended to mock Republicans for giving the vote to African-American males, and because Edward M. Lee, the appointed Republican Territorial Secretary, was an ardent supporter of female suffrage. As the measure had moved through the legislature, Cambell had asked advice from everybody he knew, looking for the least embarrassing option. And in the end, he decided the best thing to do was to not take the bait, meaning not fight the issue as he had with the mixed race marriage bill. After considering the matter for a few days Governor Cambell decided to simply sign it without comment, which he did on 10 December, 1868. In Wyoming, females now had the right to vote.

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."

Mae West

Back in South Pass City, Justice of the Peace R.S. Barr decided to deliver the punch line to Mr. Bright's joke. On Valentine's day 1870 he placed an ad in the newspaper, offering to resign his position “whenever some lady elector shall have been duly appointed to fill the vacancy.” Ha, ha, and no lady appeared. But they did serve on a grand jury, and they did vote at the next territorial election, in 1871. And the world did not dissolve into an estrogen mush 

"I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it."

Mae West

William Bright would not stand for re-election. His bar went bankrupt in 1870, and he moved to Denver, and from there back to his hometown of  Washington D.C.  On 3 May, 1912 the Cheyenne State Leader ran his obituary. “Mr. Bright was 86 years of age, and had been for twenty years past an employee of the government printing office...(He) moved to Wyoming and...drew up and fought through the bill for woman suffrage, which was the first law of its kind ever presented to a law-making body in the United States.” And often, that is how you become a hero -  in retrospect and with heavy editing

"I use to be Snow White, but I drifted."

Mae West

In 1871, at the next meeting of the Territorial Legislature, the male politicians, led again by Mr. Sheek, passed a bill to overturn female suffrage. Governor Cambell vetoed it, and the attempt to override by a two third margin failed, but only just barely. Women in Wyoming retained their voice in their government by one slim vote.   But it would be 1910 before a woman would be elected to serve in the Wyoming legislature, and into the 1950's they were routinely blocked from serving on juries. And yet, Wyoming insists on calling its self the “Equity State”. It seems to me, that is something of an gross exaggeration.

"To err is human - but it feels divine."

Mae West

- 30 -