may hold property as tenants in common or otherwise, with
each other, and with others. All property of the wife owned
by her before marriage, and acquired afterwards by gift,
devise, bequest or descent, with the rents, issues and
profit thereof, is her separate property, and she may convey
the same without his consent. All property acquired after
marriage is community property. The earnings of the wife are
not liable for the debts of the husband. Her earnings, and
those of minor children in her custody, are her separate
property. A married woman may dispose of her separate
property by will, without the consent of her husband, as if
she were single. One-half of the community property goes
absolutely to the wife, on the death of the husband, and
cannot be diverted by his testamentary disposition. A
married woman can carry on business in her own name, on
complying with certain formalities, and her stock, capital
and earnings are not liable to her husband's creditors, or
his intermeddling. The husband and father, as such, has no
rights superior to those of the wife and mother, in regard
to the care, custody, education and control of the children
of their marriage, while such husband and wife live separate
and apart from each other.

The foregoing exhibits the spirit of the California law. It
is believed by friends of woman suffrage that had the
convention been held under normal conditions, the word
"male" might have been eliminated from that instrument.

Several creditable attempts were early made in journalism. In
1855 Mrs. S. M. Clark published the weekly _Contra Costa_ in
Oakland. In 1858, _The Hesperian_, a semi-monthly magazine, was
issued in San Francisco, Mrs. Hermione Day and Mrs. A. M. Shultz,
editors. It was quite an able periodical,[505] and finally passed
into the hands of Elizabeth T. Schenck.

As journalists and printers, women have met with encouraging
success. The most prominent among them is Laura DeForce Gordon,
who began the publication of the _Daily Leader_ at Stockton in
1873, continued afterward at Oakland as the _Daily Democrat_,
until 1878. In Geo. P. Rowell's _Newspaper Reporter_ for 1874