nd Dumb
Institute were given to women, Harriet F. Emerson and Dr. Martha
Hughes Cannon.

The first Legislature, 1896, passed "An act for the establishment of
sericulture" (raising of silk worms). Women had worked energetically
to secure this measure, and it was appropriate that five of them,
three Republican and two Democratic, should be appointed as a silk
commission, Zina D. H. Young, Isabella E. Bennett, Margaret A. Caine,
Ann C. Woodbury and Mary A. Cazier. Each was required to give a
thousand-dollar bond. A later Legislature appropriated $1,000 per
annum to pay the secretary.

Two women were appointed on the Board of Regents of the State
University, Mrs. Emma J. McVicker, Republican and Gentile; Mrs.
Rebecca E. Little, Democrat and Mormon. Both are still serving. Two
were appointed Regents of the Agricultural College, Mrs. Sarah B.
Goodwin and Mrs. Emily S. Richards.

At the close of the Legislature the Republican State Central Committee
was reorganized; Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells was made vice-chairman, Miss
Julia Farnsworth, secretary. The Democratic party was quite as liberal
toward women and the feeling prevailed that at the next election women
would be placed in various State and county offices. There were many
women delegates in the county and also in the State conventions of
both parties in 1896, and a number of women were nominated.

It was a Democratic victory and the women on that ticket were
elected--Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon to the Senate, Eurithe Le Barthe and
Sarah A. Anderson to the House; Margaret A. Caine, auditor of Salt
Lake County; Ellen Jakeman, treasurer Utah County; Delilah K. Olson,
recorder Millard County; Fannie Graehl (Rep.), recorder Box Elder
County, and possibly some others.

In the Legislature of 1897, Mrs. Le Barthe introduced a bill
forbidding women to wear large hats in places of public entertainment,
which was passed. Dr. Cannon championed the measure by which a State
Board of Health was created, and was appointed by the Governor as one
of its first members. She had part in the defeat of the strong lobby
that sought to abolish the existing State Board of Public Examiners,
which prevents incompetents from practicing medicine. She introduced a
bill compelling the State to educate the deaf, mute and blind; another
requiring seats for women employes; what was known as the Medical
Bill, by which all the sanitary measures of the State are regulated
and put in operation; and another pr