On October 24, 1884, Marietta Stow declares her candidacy for vice president of the United States on the Equal Rights Party ticket, during a speech at the Metropolitan Temple in San Francisco.
Stow, a founder of the Equal Rights Party, tells the audience she would “never lay down the sword and battle axe” until the fight is won for women’s equality.
The Daily Alta California dubs her the “Battle -Axe of Female Liberty,” noting in its coverage of Stow’s speech that “a time has come in the affairs of Man when the ferocity of Woman must be curbed.”
Two years before seeking federal office, Stow, then 52, runs for governor of California as the candidate of the Women’s Independent Political Party, 29 years before women secure the right to vote in California elections.
Stow, a publisher, writes in her newspaper, Women’s Herald of Industry, that she is a “self-made woman, a farmer’s daughter educated at Oberlin.…” As governor she pledges to “give women the ballot” and “retire the Chinese” – expressing the same anti-Chinese immigration position as many state and federal politicians of the time.
Another campaign pledge is to abolish probate court — the entity Stow believes prevented her from inheriting her husband’s estate in 1874. She wages a years-long battle against probate law, advocating in her 1876 manifesto, Probate Confiscation, that in marriage the property of both husband and wife and the “accumulations of wedlock” should be common property. She isn’t successful in changing the law.
Or in her race for governor.
As editor of the Women’s Herald of Industry, Stow calls for a shorter work day and addresses issues like birth control and eugenics as well as the “mischief resulting from a purely masculine form of government in Church and State.”
Besides creating the Equal Rights party, Stow also founds the Women’s Social Science Association, lectures on women’s suffrage, and envisions a women’s colony where residents can learn ranching, beekeeping and agriculture.
Marietta Stow dies in 1902, nine years before women gain the right to vote in California.