Show OUR WOMAN SENATOR The Fiist to Be Elected In America MRS CANNON INTERVIEWED CANN THE FIRST OF ANNIE 1AUIUES SALT LAKE LEflTEIlS Published In the San Francisco Examiner Ex-aminer Tells How She Came to Enter Politics anti Gives Her Views on Public Questions When The Herald announced a few days ago that Annie Laurie the famous fam-ous special writer for the San Fran wrtcr I cisco Examiner wa in Salt Lake for the purpose of writing a series of articles on the recent election here and esDeci ally the part taken by the women in it the result was awaited with interest I particularly a Annie Laurie or Mrs Black is strongly opposed to woman suf franere I Her first article appeared in Mondays Examiner and is as follows a I SALT LAKE Utah Nov 8 Martha I Hughes Cannon is the first woman who I was ever elected to a state senate in I America She lives in Salt Lake City Sha is a Mormon and she is a Democrat Demo-crat She ran against her husband In the same district and she beat him into testate senate of Utah by a neat little majority of 4000 votes She believes in woman suffrage she believes in jrolys amy and she most heartily disbelieves in I the prohibition of Intoxicating liauors She is called the fourth wife of Ants M Cannon Mr Cannon is a leading cU > r in the Mormon church and he stands In the first order of precedence for appointment as one of the twelve j est rviCly apostles ini has four wives living in neignborly communion None of the four however has the least legal claim oii the man whose name she bears When the United States government declared against polygamy the law pave every polygamist man the right to choose cna woman for his legal wiie Mr Cannon Can-non is the somewhat wellknown gentle man who married two ssters at one swoop and who afterwards told the United States authorities that he would b switched if he would be ungallant enough t decide between one of the I sisters and either of the other wives So there really is not any legal Mrs An us Cannon although there are four very lively and interesting establishments in which a woman presides who lays cato ca-to the right to that title riglt tte A DOCTOR BY PROFESSION Martha Hughes Cannon the senator is a doctor by profession She lives in a neat little red brick house In a neat little threeset street She has a little i I 1 years old and a little boy seven years old She is between 30 and S5 to look at and she is a clearskinned slender trim little woman weliproamed and fresh hair with brown plentifully snkle with gray and a pair of bril liant alert hazel eyes She has little bits of thin hands and little bits of slim feet and she wears good clothes of a auet unobtrusive kind She has a clear voice and a good serviceable vocabulary and she Is perfectly free from selfconscious I ness of any sort I asked her how she crone to g into politics Why she said it was this way Last ea they wanted to give us suffrage suf-frage We all became very much interested inter-ested We formed a Womans Democratic Demo-cratic Campaign club and we started into in-to raise money for th campaign Right in the midst of things the supreme court decided against us and out went the suffrage clause But the womans campaign cam-paign clubs kept right on working just the same I made forty speeches myself my-self Well this suffrage Wel year we got sufrate and the party thought there ought to be a lady In the senate and a committee came and asked me If I would run and L said yes I went to the nominating convention con-vention as a delegate My name was offered of-fered as a candidate and I was duly nominated Then I went home and congratulated con-gratulated Mr Cannon on his nomination I nomina-tion He ran on the Republican ticket I VICTORIOUS OVER HER HUSBAND I worked pretty hard I studied upon up-on all the questions of the campaign and I do made a lot of speeches I did not any personal work talking to people myself i my-self and why they ought to vote for me I mean I just stayed right with my party and spoke for that and on election day 1 went to the polls and voted Then I went and attended to my patients I beat Mr Cannon by a majority of something some-thing liko 4000 I heard a prominent politician say that he wished Mr Cannon Can-non and I had both been elected He said hed liked to have seen the fight He would have been disappointed I a woman quarrels over politics with her husband shed quarrel with him over I whether he liked biscuit or raised bread or any other subject that came in handy halv alms I am not in for any one particular reform I shall take great interest In-terest in all the sanitary bills of course and all bIlls pertaining to educational matters Women are gocd ones for those things We know how to keep house and wo know how to keep a city Am I a strong believer in woman suffrage Oh of course I am I will help women and it will purify politics Women are better bet-ter than men Slaves are always better than their masters A slave learns obedience maer dience and selfcontrol and unselfishness Thats why women will do the world of politics good They have been slaves s long They will tech some of the slavish slav-ish virtues SOME VIEWS ON POLYGAMY Polygamy Do I mean polygamy Indeed In-deed I do not mean polygamy I believe in polygamy My father and mother were Mormons and I am a Mormon Of course the law of the United States says no and we must obey But that does not alter ones belief in the right of the thing A plural wife Is not half a much a slave as a single wife I her husband has four wives she has three weeks of freedom every single month She and her children order their lives and do not have to wait and be ready for husband When the fourth week comes around shes glad to see him and she des not mind getting three meals a day for him and making the children stop breathing to give him a chance to read A plural wife has more time to herself and more independence every way than a single one But then of course that is not the reason I believe in I I believe in i because be-cause I think it is right Jealousy unhappiness unhap-piness Not half a much of i among plural wives as there Is among single wives Plural wives look upon marrage a a sacred duty and not as a means of selfseeking vanity Ive heard sentimentalists sentiment-alists say that polygamy destroys poetry and takes all the sentiment out of Hfe Nonsense A man loves 1 his wives He Is not in love with just one of them NOW AS TO SALOONS On the salcon question I stand with my party Prohibition does not prohibit So what earthly use Is there of mixing things up with a party thats always preaching some thing that they never practice I dont believe anyone who has lived in Europe much can scare up such a terrifically strong hatred of the demon rum Europe Oh yes I went there when I was underground Oh I forgot youre a gentile Well when the anti polygamy law came into force we plural wives went as we called it underground We went away and waited for things to blow over I took my children to Europe and then t California Have things blown over To this extent ex-tent They cant put us in jail now for living In polygamy during a certain term of years Of course i 5 all at a end now But I think and the women of Itoh think with me that we were better off in the state of polygamy Sixty per cent of the voters of this state are women Did you realize that Oh we control t estate e-state Intelligent women we are too the Mormon women They dont g in much for society but they are well Informed and practical and they know just what suffrage means to them and to the community com-munity I am the only woman In the senate yet you know but then we are every one of us Democrats there so I shall feel perfectly at home CARE OF CHILDREN What am I going to do with my children chil-dren while I am making laws for the state The same thing I have done with them when I have been practicing medicine I medi-cine They have been left to themselves a good deal and I must say they compare very favorably with children who need a governess and a nurse and a mamma t look after them every minute Somehow Some-how I know that women who stay at home all the time have the most unpleos apt homes there are You give home8 ae me a woman who thinks about something besides be-sides cook stoves and wash tubs and baby I < flannels and Ill show you nine times out of ten a successful mother moter Who is that California woman who writes such smart things about the worship wor-ship of the holy stove Id like to know her She knowsthis woman question from A to Z Motherhood is a great thing a i glorious thing and it ought to b a successful suc-cessful thing It will be when it Is regulated regu-lated Some day there will be a law compelling com-pelling people to have no more than a certain amount of children and the mothers of the land can live as they ought to live Thats one thing about us Mormons You know we never did let a man marry till he showed conclusively that he could take care o his wife and family We never raise paupers Speaking of paupers we dont know so very much about hard times In Utah In the country the farmers all live in villages and cultivate their farms on the outside The villages all have halls and churches and places for the young people to meet and have good times Our Mormon Mor-mon boys dont have to run away from the farm to haye a good time I you should go through the country districts of Utah youd see a spinning wheel In nearly every farm house The Mormon farmers spin and weave and mae their own clothes They make their own boots and dont have to mortgage their farms to get money to dress t I dont believe you could find half a dozen beggars on the whole of Mormon dominion WOMEN AND PUBLIC OFFICE Now you are going to ask me about women running for olfice r Cannon leaned forward and laid a persuasive finger on the arm of my chair 1 dont want them to run for unseemly un-seemly offices she said Take the governor gov-ernor for instance thats too mannish altogether I cant bear a mannish woman wom-an or a mannish man either By mannishness man-nishness I mean you perceive not an inherent quality but an assumption a sticking out of the elbows and a raising of the head and a strutting Mrs Cannon pointed her elbows and raised her head and began to strut thought better of i and sank Into her chair again That is as offensive to me in a man as in a woman l the best men I know are ladylike and all the best women I know are gentlemanly You catch my idea I perceive I did not catch the idea but I gave a perfidious nod and Mrs Cannon said Our great teacher Brigham Young understood un-derstood all these He said r heard him say it with these ears of mine The dry hal come when men and women shall walk together side by side In the temple tem-ple That day Is dawning now Electricity Electric-ity will soon do away with much of the domestic drudgery Women are growing wise and men are growing gentle I think the mlllenium Is coming sooner than we dare to hor > e In the millenium I said will there be polygamy polygm No said Mrs Cannon we wont need it then Each will then find his affinity and be happy And will there be legislatures and wi legs1atures ward politIes and women senators Oh said Mrs Cannon you ore too literal Women must not be too literal Men now Mrs Cannons e e grew pathetic pa-thetic and there was a platform ring In her voice men ore wedded to the present pres-ent women are promised to the future But you ore not promised to the future fu-ture I said You have arrived Arrived said Mrs Cannon mildly raising her delicate brows In a expression expres-sion of sweet interrogation Yes said I the first woman senator in America Ah said Mrs Cannon the first woman wom-an senator I hadnt thought of it in that tat l ht I do seem to b a sort of milestone mile-stone dont I Well I will have t try t live up to my privileges |