The way in which California women have striven for remedial legislation is thus described by Mary Roberts Coolidge in _The Survey_, under the title of “California Women and the Abatement Law”: Women voters, it is now generally conceded, were chiefly responsible for the passage by the California legislature of 1913 of two important measures dealing with the social evil. One, the bill to appropriate $200,000 for a detention home for girls, met with little opposition, because perhaps it was preventive in character. The other, the red-light abatement bill, was bitterly fought, not only upon the floor, but by every secret device known to vicious interests throughout the state. Although it passed the Assembly by a vote of 62 to 17 and the Senate by a scarcely less significant majority of 29 to 11, it was apparent in the debates that many of the legislators were yielding to the demands of urgent constituents rather than to willing conviction. A political pressure, to which all politicians are accustomed when corporate and financial interests are involved, made them squirm unhappily when brought to bear by 50,000 organized women. The red-light bill had scarcely received the governor’s signature and the women had scarcely turned their minds to the emergency measures which would be needed by those who would be thrown out of their miserable trade by the law, when rumors of a referendum to be invoked against it began to be heard. The so-called Property Owners’ Protective Association, with offices in the Phelan Building, San Francisco, became the distributing center for the referendum petitions. Two months later it was announced that they had secured over 30,000 names. As only 19,283 signatures of qualified voters were necessary to hold up the law, the referendum was assured of a place on the ballot of November, 1914. Although disappointed that the abatement law was not to go into effect in August, some of the women leaders saw an opportunity in this delay to educate citizens further in the intent of the law itself. In this way they could insure more intelligent public support when it should finally become operative. At this stage of readjustment the questionable methods and support behind the anti-abatement referendum were suddenly exposed by the discovery that hundreds—and since then, thousands—of signatures to the petitions were not genuine. So many, indeed, that, if the facts had been known before the petitions were certified, there might have been enough to invalidate the referendum itself.