"Go for Your Rights Today"

An article in the Feb. 21, 1913 issue of The Morning Albertan was headed:

Reporting on her remarks before the Canadian Women's Club on women's suffrage, the newspaper quoted the speaker as saying:

It has been difficult for me to know why the English women throw stones to get the votes, whereas we [Norwegian women] put on our best dresses and sweetest smile when we wanted anything. And your papers did not tell me and I did not know till I heard how you had been timid and had asked politely for this thing for 50 years. Oh, I think if I had to ask for a thing for 50 years I would do strange things too. I would shout and sing and march -- and maybe -- yes -- perhaps -- throw stones.

English ministers had recently consulted ministers of the Kingdom of Norway to ascertain the effects of equal suffrage there, Sandal informed her audience, advising:

 [T]he women are proud of what they said, for they told your England that never in Norway had political life been so moral or so clean and that never had the country been in so fine a condition as during the lengthy period in which women had equal rights with men. They told them that the women had not only surprised the men -- they had astonished themselves as they had not guessed till they got political power how much good they could do with that power. 

She continued:

 You need not be afraid of women becoming masculine, for the Norwegian women do not imitate the men -- no, they do great work because they are so different. The men see their view and the women their view and between them they get things right.

The women are just as womanly and sweet as ever and now they are working for the children. They see that no woman works for one month before she gets her baby and they give parks to the poor for the children to play in. Also they give them schoolbooks. Ah! and many good things these women have thought out and done for the children.

Never were the women so happy as now, and I tell you to go for your rights today. Do not wait 50 years more -- not one -- but get your rights now, for after you get all that, you have the children to fight for and their right is stronger still.

The newspaper observed:

Loud applause broke from the audience at the close of Mme. Sandal's address, after which the gifted Norwegian sang two selections, Grieg's "I Love Thee," and Solveig's "Song."

A newspaper article published two decades after another of Marta Sandal's speeches in favor of equal voting rights reflected:

Madame Marta Sandal was the guest at the Calgary [Alberta] Women's Press Club, at the tea hour at the rathskeller," according to a society page item of 20 years ago. On the same page appeared a reference to the fact that Madame Sandal was addressing a meeting of the Calgary Suffrage Society, in the public library.

Which reminds us...what do women do with their time, now that they've got the vote?

Through the efforts of such suffragettes as Marta Sandal, women in the Province of Alberta gained the right to vote in provincial elections on April 16, 1916. The provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan had extended suffrage to women earlier that year. Canada instituted universal suffrage in federal elections in 1918. Through the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, women in the United States in 1920 gained the right to vote in elections at all levels of government. Some states had already accorded that right.