Transcribe your podcast
[00:00:04]

Hey, and welcome to the short stuff, I'm Josh and there's Chuck, and this is short stuff and this is a good one. I'm excited about this one. Chuck, let's go. Go, go.

[00:00:14]

Yeah, I mean, we're talking about Petticoat rulers, and it might surprise people considering America today is ranked 81 out of 193 countries and women representation in government that we actually had women who were mayors and city council people way back in the eighteen hundreds.

[00:00:34]

Yeah, there are two towns in particular, Oskaloosa, Kansas, and Kanab, Utah, that had elected all female town councils in 1888 and 1912 respectively, which is pretty substantial.

[00:00:49]

But then Jackson, Wyoming, home to the famous Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which I guess is a hamlet or a burg or some sort of affiliated town. But it's basically the same place, from what I understand. Oh, man. We're going to get some email from the Jackson people. They said, you know what? Hold our beer, our hold our sarsaparilla, because we're going to up both of those towns. And in 1920, the year that women were granted suffrage by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, I should say, that same year, Jackson, Wyoming, elected not only in all woman town council, Chuck, but also a mayor, a woman mayor for the first time ever.

[00:01:29]

And that that group, these petcoke rulers, as they came to be known, appointed women to the highest positions in the town clerk, health treasurer and Marshall in that amazing.

[00:01:43]

It is amazing. And I'm a I was surprised to see that the first woman elected mayor in the United States was all the way back in 1887.

[00:01:53]

Yeah, I had. And I had no idea. Yeah, it was in a Kansas. Her name was. Well this one was the one I believe we covered her before. And something Susanna Salter, who was placed on the ballot is as a sort of a prank by men in the town who didn't think that women should hold office. They put her on the ballot thinking that she would be humiliated and it would set women back politically. And she didn't know she was on the ballot.

[00:02:19]

It was like a blind ballot until the day of the election. And she she won that toss and went on to be mayor. The other ones, Oskaloosa, married, and she was legitimately elected mayor in the first woman elected as mayor in Kansas with an all city council full of women, nothing but ladies.

[00:02:41]

That's amazing. But the thing is. Yeah, like we think about it today and we're like, that's just that's unheard of, you know, like literally unheard of.

[00:02:49]

I hadn't heard about that before.

[00:02:52]

But the state of Wyoming is actually known as the equality state. And one of the reasons why is because, you know, we associate 1920 as the year that women were granted the right to vote, that a national thing, they have the right to vote back in 1869 in Wyoming. So it kind of gives it a little more texture or context or both to know that that women already had the right to vote for more than 50 years before Mayor Miller, an all female town council, were elected in Jackson.

[00:03:26]

Yeah, and that's how Mary Lowman won in Oskaloosa, is they had in Kansas, they had the right to vote in municipal elections and they won by a two to one margin on the Oskaloosa improvement ticket. The one in Utah was interesting, too, and they both kind of had similar stories and that when they got in office, one of their big things was to kind of just clean up the town, collect back taxes. I think they had something like two hundred dollars and collected taxes just because people just refused to pay.

[00:03:59]

And they went around personally to the houses. And I think they left office with two thousand dollars in the city coffers. And then Mary Woolie Chamberlain of Kanab, Utah. She was mayor for two years and she had a female city council and she was elected one of the first leash laws for dogs. Oh, cool. And then wanted to protect local business. So she enacted a a daily tax on traveling salesman coming through town because she was like, you can't just come through town, steal a bunch of business and then leave with your pockets full.

[00:04:34]

So we're going to tax you guys per day just to kind of drive business to protect local business. That's some smart government right there. Yeah, well, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about some more smart government that was instituted by women around the turn of the last century.

[00:04:49]

OK, let's do it. Hi, I'm Sam Adams, and I'm Amy Nelson, we're the hosts of Eyharts newest podcast, what's her story with Sam and Amy? Amy and I met on a business trip three years ago. Since day one, we've talked about everything from growing our families to growing our companies. We've basically been in an endless conversation about how it all works and sometimes how it doesn't. We talk about the juggle of parenting and work and also about how we both want to make a lot of money, but also be the best moms possible.

[00:05:34]

We've also bonded over our love of women stories. We all know the stories of industry titans like business and jobs, but the stories of women remain incomplete.

[00:05:44]

So we ask the questions that no one else even touches from closing deals while pregnant to winning Olympic medals while losing on pay equity to my personal favorite, falling in love with someone who's not your husband on a book tour. So listen to what's her story with Sam and Amy on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or whatever. You listen to podcasts. Hi, this is Hillary Clinton, host of the new podcast, You and Me both, there's a lot to be anxious and worried about right now, and it's made so much worse by the fact that we can't be together.

[00:06:19]

So I find myself on the phone a lot, talking with friends, experts, really anyone who can help make some sense of these challenging times. These conversations have been a lifeline for me.

[00:06:31]

And now I hope they will be for you to please listen to you and me both starting September 29th on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so, Chuck, you said Kanab Town Council were elected by a two to one margin. I saw the same thing, too, for Jackson's Petticoat rulers, which really kind of goes to underscore this. This was not like some fluke or a joke like the first female mayor in America Psalter.

[00:07:14]

Is that what you said her name was? Yes. Hussein assaulter.

[00:07:18]

She reminds me her story reminds me of Elizabeth Blackwell getting into med school. Remember, it was supposed to be a prank and kind of blew up in the face. That's probably what I was thinking of, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:29]

Because I don't remember talking about Susanna Salter before either. But the fact that they won that the PETTICOAT rulers and the Kanab, Utah Town Council won by like a two to one margin really shows that this was not like a joke or a fluke. I think one woman, one of the city council members, beat her husband in the election in Jackson in 1920. Those Crabtree. Yeah. And which that had to taste pretty, pretty sweet. And then the the fact is that a lot of them were re-elected when they came up for re-election.

[00:08:06]

So not only was it a good idea, they proved themselves as worthy for re-election, too. And some of the things they did, like you said, they they beefed up the town coffers. I saw they didn't institute a leash law in Jackson, but they did criminalize littering for the first time. They cleaned up the town square, meaning that they didn't allow cattle grazing there anymore. That was another thing they did. What else?

[00:08:33]

They graded the streets. They said, how about some street lights and street lamps? Let's expand electrical service. Let's get a symmetry going in this town because everyone's always shooting each other. Right?

[00:08:45]

Or they used to when the men ran the place. That was another thing I saw, too. I mean, you were talking about the back taxes not being collected and then getting like an additional eighteen hundred dollars into the Treasury. One of the things that I saw, I think it was in a Jackson Hole newspaper. The reason for that was that the town had been run like really insouciantly by men up to that point, and that there was like this this kind of pioneer spirit where everyone was expected to take care of their neighbor and everyone did and stepped up when help is needed.

[00:09:18]

But it it wasn't like an organized structural civic pride and that that's what the Petticoat rulers came in and instituted. They basically said, hey, you know, that the whole take care of your neighbor thing. There's actually a lot of things we could be doing, you know, through government. And let's let's just let's start doing that. And that actually kind of took off. Yeah. And Grace Miller, the mayor of I think she was Jackson, right?

[00:09:45]

Yeah. She said in an interview, we simply tried to work together. We put into practice the same thrifty principles we exercise in our own homes. We already clean, well-kept, progressive town in which to raise our families. What is good government, but a breathing space for good citizenship? Nice.

[00:10:02]

And it sort of reminds me of that quote, I don't know the exact quote, but it's sort of like if you want if you want the job done on time and write like hire a working mom or something like that, I think you're talking about something to do with, like lipstick and pit bulls.

[00:10:20]

I now know that a different one.

[00:10:23]

I think so. Okay. The one you're talking about makes a tremendous amount of sense, though.

[00:10:30]

So the the the the the petticoat rulers came in. And from what I understand, there's a town historian, Morgan Albertsen. I'm going to take a stab at this last name jawin.

[00:10:43]

What do you think, Jao you UTM. It's a beautiful, just beautiful thing, right?

[00:10:51]

Either way, it looks very, very nice spelled out. But historian, we're just going to call this person. The historian basically said that the petticoat really shaped shaped Jackson and Jackson Hole into the town that they they know and love today and that it may have just kind of become a town that ended up deserted and misused and mistreated and misgoverned and lost to history. The historians willing to go so far as to say that either way, the rulers definitely deserve credit for shaping the place.

[00:11:25]

But the weird thing is, Chuck is like despite how successful the all female town council and mayor and appointive positions was for Jackson, it's like the town was like, okay, well, we tried that. Let's wait another 80 or so years before we do it again.

[00:11:41]

Yeah, we tried that and it worked out really great. So let's just wait till the 1980s.

[00:11:46]

Yeah. 1980S was the first time that women city council people were elected again. And it wasn't until 2001 when they had another woman, Mayor Gene Jackson, was elected. In 2001, so it went from Mayor Miller, Grace Miller in 1920 to Jean Jackson in 2001, that was quite a drought.

[00:12:07]

Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else. We salute them. I do, too. But I have one last thing that the women were all members originally of what was called the Pure Foods Club, which was a social group that met a couple of times a month. And that's where the idea to run was hatched and nurtured. And that group is still around today, but they call themselves the birthday club. But isn't that adorable? This group's been around since the early 1980s and they still meet twice a month.

[00:12:36]

And now men are allowed.

[00:12:38]

I love the birthday club. I want to be in that group. They all let you in. You're a man and likeable. So I think those are the two qualifications. And I have birthdays.

[00:12:46]

You do you have a birthday? Well, yeah. Hats off to the petticoat rulers and all of the women who helped shape the United States then and now. And I guess that means stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart Radio, is it the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows?