The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1920-12-30
$500 Per Year in Advance
Laney, WASH, Has Woman
Mayor and 7own Council

The story Of how women are run
ming town comes from a newspaper
of Everett, Washington, and is sent
by Miss Katherine Crayton, who lives
at Everett, just across the Sound
from Langley, the town which has
achieved the distinction of being run
entirely bf women:
Doubtless that first time Adam got
home at 3 a. m. from the Eden CLUB
and Eve told him in superlatives and
tears how she wished she'd never met
him and how she'd like to run things
in the Garden for awhile and there'd
be an end to such doings, doubtless
aeons back there, Adam wondered
@sWhat would a place become run by
Eve and a few others like her?'
Just after Caesar reminiscing
about Cleopatra, pondered some Sc
rene moment in old Rome what Rome
would be if Cleopatra's gender in
stead of his own did the bossing.
On down through history probably
not, human has lived that hasn {
sometimes stopped to make guess.
After all those milleniums of ques-
tioning, the Interrogation is no more.
The question mark is gone.
We know.
langley, the little WILDLY island
town of $50 odd people just across the
Sound from Everett, cut the Gordian
knot. So far as we know, it's the first
town On the face of the earth in the
long sequence of ages since the slime
in some oozy tropic marsh first was
wiggled by the wiggling of the origin
al bit of protoplasm-the first one
that ever had an executive body OF
women to run it.
What is Langley's answer to the
question?
Ask anybody over in Langley.
You'll be surprised.
It's nothing like what you'd expect
after reading the literature of Carrie
Nation and it's villainesses and it's
saints and clinging vines.
How it Happened.
Hugh Mcleod, attorney and notary
public and real estate dealer and
former CITY clerk, has a sense of hum
or.
Along in November last fall came
the caucus meeting when candidates
were to be named for city ofices-the
mayors chair, treasurer, and four
councilmen.
Not a soul showed up. In fact no
body cared much about how the town
was run. Though council meetings
we're supposed to be called every two
weeks, the men who had been serving
never met more than once month or
every three months when there were
pleasanter things to do.
From May to- August, 1919, there
wasn't single session, to be exact.
Clerk Mcleod got an idea. He Or
dered the ballots printed. They came.
Not q soul in town knew what was on
them until Dec. /, the day before
voting. Then somebody heard.
He had picked the best known Wo-
men in town and he had named them
on one side of the ballot as the can
didates of the "Citizens' ticket and
he had named on the other side OF
the ballot under the heading, 'Peo-
pies ticket the best known men IN
town. The news went around fast
and it startled the little community.
Forty people voted in the choice
for mayor-twice as many as ever
took the trouble to get to the polls in
a Langley town election before.
The women's ticket lost in just two
places. Mr.. Foster is in the bank.
That's why he won in the treasurer
ship contest. It's easier to pay at the
bank. Mrs. Peck is telephone central
for the whole village and environs-
that's said to be the reason the pub
lie thought it wouldn't be wise to put
her in.
Five mem bers compose the council
body at Langley. A woman mayor
and three women councilmen' had
been put in by the election it will be
noticed. One woman councilman
went in and another held over.
Here shows the essential muleish-
ness Of the male-or else his chlval-
rous desire for once let womanklnd
run the whole works. Neither Of
those two men would act. One would
not qualify and the other resigned.
That's how Mrs. Margaret Mcleod
and Mrs. Grace Brown came to be
APPOINTED councilwomen to act with
Mrs English, Mrs Wiley and Mrs.