SUFFRAGIST OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST

“Don’t you consider your mother as good as, if not better than, an ordinary street bum?” the speaker asked rhetorically. The target of her question was a curious barefoot boy who had just joined the attentive little audience at her rally on Marion Square in Salem, Oregon. Glancing about, 10-year-old Oswald West noted that his listening companions sported long dresses, sunbonnets and serious expressions. The year was 1883, and they had gathered to hear the touring speaker advocate a radical concept sweeping the nation—women’s suffrage.

Donning a solemn face, Oswald nodded decisively and replied with a firm, “Sure I do.” Nearly 30 years later West, by then the governor of Oregon, would again don that serious expression as