100 years ago in Spokane: Women reluctant to register to vote because requirement to reveal age

Mrs. Abbie Challman of Spokane was convinced she knew the reason why so many women had failed to register so far for the fall elections. They did not want to state their ages.

Spokane’s city clerk “demands an exact statement of the age of each registrant, and this keeps many women from entering their names on the election rolls,” Challman said.

“It is a fact that women strongly dislike to state their ages,” said Challman in a letter to the state attorney general. “This dislike is the result, as you know, of age-old social and economic conditions. These conditions are rapidly changing, but the psychic state does not keep pace; it will catch up in time.”

So Challman wrote to the city clerks of several other Washington cities and asked if they also required women to state their ages. The clerks replied that they “accepted as sufficient” a woman’s statement that she was of legal age, without demanding specifics.

Challman suggested that Spokane’s clerk do the same – at least until women finally “grasped the absurdity, if such it be, of hesitating about (their) age.”

From the ad beat: An ad with the headline, “Building Better Boys,” declared that “military training will help – but it takes something besides ‘setting-up’ exercises (sit-ups) to make healthy sturdy men.”

What was that something?

Shredded Wheat Biscuit cereal, which was touted as “the most real food for the least money.”