Bicycling had come into vogue and women as well as men were taking it up, some women even riding their bicycles in short skirts or bloomers. What did she think of this? "If women ride the bicycle or climb mountains," she replied, "they should don a costume which will permit them the use of their legs." Of bicycling she said, "I think it has done more to emancipate woman than any one thing in the world. I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammeled womanhood."[396] [Illustration: Ida Husted Harper] * * * * * Susan returned to California in February 1896. Through the generosity and interest of two young Rochester friends, her Unitarian minister, William C. Gannett, and his wife, Mary Gannett, she was able to take her secretary with her. Making her home in San Francisco with her devoted friend, Ellen Sargent, she at once began to plan speaking tours for herself and her "girls," many of whom, including her niece Lucy, had come West to help her. She appealed successfully to Frances Willard to transfer the national W.C.T.U. convention to another state, for she was determined to keep the issue of prohibition out of the California campaign. With the press more than friendly and several San Francisco dailies running woman suffrage departments, she realized the importance of keeping newspapers fed with readable factual material and enlisted the aid of a young journalist, Ida Husted Harper, whom she had met in 1878 while lecturing in Terre Haute, Indiana, and who was in California that winter. When the San Francisco _Examiner_, William Randolph Hearst's powerful Democratic paper, offered Susan a column on the editorial page if she would write it and sign it, she dictated her thoughts to Mrs. Harper, who smoothed them out for the column, helping her as Mrs. Stanton had in the past, for writing was still a great hardship. Grateful to Mrs. Harper, she sang her praises: "The moment I give the idea--the point--she formulates it into a good sentence--while I should have to haggle over it half an hour."[397]