XLV. MASSACHUSETTS.[303]…

XLV. MASSACHUSETTS.[303]

The first suffrage convention ever held which assumed a national character by inviting representatives from other States took place in Worcester, Mass., Oct. 23, 24, 1850.[304]

The New England Woman Suffrage Association was formed at Boston in November, 1868, with Mrs. Julia Ward Howe as president; and the Massachusetts Association was organized in the same city Jan. 28, 1870, of which also Mrs. Howe was elected president. In 1871 Henry B. Blackwell, editor of the Woman's Journal, was made corresponding secretary of both associations and has filled the office of the latter continuously, of the former twenty-two years.

From those years until the present each of these bodies has held an annual meeting in Boston and they have almost invariably been addressed by men and women of State, of national and of international reputation. They have met in various churches and halls, but of late years the historic old Faneuil Hall has been selected. The State association meets in the winter and the New England association during Anniversary Week in May, when there are business sessions with reports from the various States, public meetings and a great festival or banquet. The last is attended by hundreds of people, all the tickets are frequently sold weeks in advance, and with its prominent after-dinner speakers it has long been an attractive feature.[305]

The annual meeting of 1884 was held January 22, 23, presided over by William I. Bowditch, who had succeeded the Rev. Dr. James Freeman Clarke as president in 1878. A number of fine addresses were given and the official board was unanimously re-elected.[306] Mr. Bowditch's opening address was afterwards widely circulated as a tract, The Forgotten Woman in Massachusetts.

It was voted that a fund should be raised to organize local suffrage associations or leagues throughout the State, and that, as soon as $2,500 was in hand, an agent should be put in the field. Mr. Bowditch, Miss Louisa M. Alcott, John L. Whiting and Henry H. Faxon each subscribed $100 on the spot; $800 was raised at the meeting and more than $2,500 within four months.

This year, in the death of Wendell Phillips, the cause of equal rights lost one of its earliest and noblest supporters. On February 28 an impressive memorial service was held in Boston. Mrs. Howe presided and the other speakers were William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore D. Weld, Judge Thomas Russell, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, Elizur Wright, the Rev. Samuel May, George W. Lowther, Mrs. Lucy Stone and Mr. Blackwell. John Boyle O'Reilly and William P. Liscomb read memorial poems.

Fifty-seven meetings were held this year in different parts of the State, arranged by Arthur P. Ford and Miss Cora Scott Pond. The speakers were the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, Miss Matilda Hindman, Miss Pond and Miss Ida M. Buxton, and at some of the meetings Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell and Mrs. Adelaide A. Claflin. In addition six conventions were held and a large number of local leagues were formed. Suffrage sociables were given monthly in Boston. Leaflets were printed, including Wendell Phillips' great speech at the Worcester Convention in 1850, which were sent out by tens of thousands, and 50,000 special copies of the Woman's Journal were distributed gratuitously. Mrs. H. M. Tracy Cutler was employed for a month in Worcester to enlist interest in the churches, and Miss Pond for two months in Boston. Letters were sent to every town, with postal cards inclosed for reply, to find who were friends of suffrage, and to those so found a letter was sent asking co-operation. This constitutes an average twelve months' work for the past thirty years.

The sixteenth annual meeting of the New England Association took place May 26, 27, Lucy Stone presiding. The Rev. Minot J. Savage and Edward M. Winston of Harvard University were among the speakers. The two associations united as usual in the May Festival. Letters of greeting were read from the Hons. George F. Hoar, John D. Long and John E. Fitzgerald, Postmaster Edward S. Tobey, Col. Albert Clarke and Chancellor William G. Eliot, of Washington University, St. Louis. The Rev. Robert Collyer, Mr. Garrison and the Rev. Miss Shaw made addresses.

At the State convention, Jan. 27, 28, 1885, addresses were made by Mrs. Margaret Moore of Ireland, A. S. Root of Boston University, and the usual brilliant galaxy, while letters expressing sympathy with the cause were read from John G. Whittier, the Rev. Samuel Longfellow, the Rev. Samuel J. Barrows and many others. An appeal to the Legislature, written by Lucy Stone, was unanimously adopted.

An Anti-Woman Suffrage Association formed in Massachusetts the previous year, had devoted itself chiefly to securing signatures of women to a protest against the franchise. In 1885 Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells and her associates obtained the signatures of about 140 influential men to a remonstrance against "any further extension of suffrage to women," and published it as an advertisement in the Boston Herald of Sunday, February 15. The list included President Eliot of Harvard, a number of college professors, one or two literary men, several ex-members of the Legislature, and a number of clergymen of conservative churches; but it was made up largely of those prominent chiefly on account of their wealth.

An average of ten suffrage meetings and conventions a month were held in various cities throughout the year. The Rev. Miss Shaw and Miss Pond attended nearly all, and Mrs. Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Claflin, Mr. Garrison, Miss Eastman and Mr. Bowditch addressed some of them, besides local speakers. Two thousand persons gathered in Tremont Temple on the opening night of the May anniversary, Lucy Stone presiding. Senator Hoar, Mrs. Livermore and others made short speeches and later responded to toasts at the Festival.

Mr. Blackwell presided over the State convention Jan. 26, 1886. At the New England meeting this year Frederick Douglass delivered an oration and spoke also at the Festival, over which Miss Eastman presided. The association kept Miss Shaw in the field for six months and Miss Pond throughout the year and held summer conventions in Cottage City and Nantucket, besides ten county conventions in the fall. There were 123,014 pages of literature sent out and agents visited seventy-five towns. A suffrage bazar was held in December with Mrs. Livermore as president and Mrs. Howe as editor of the Bazar Journal. The list of vice-presidents included Phillips Brooks and many other distinguished persons. The brunt of the work, however, was borne by Miss Pond and Miss Shaw, and the bazar cleared $6,000.

Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Stone, Mr. Garrison, Mrs. Cheney, State Senator Elijah A. Morse and others addressed the annual convention of 1887. Petitions were circulated for Municipal and Presidential Suffrage and a constitutional amendment; also for police matrons, the raising of the age of protection for girls, improvements in the property rights of married women, a bill enabling husbands and wives to make legal contracts with each other, and one making women eligible to all offices from which they are not debarred by the constitution. In March the association gave $1,000 to the constitutional amendment campaign in Rhode Island, and a number of the officers contributed their services.

Mrs. Howe presided at the May Festival, and among the speakers were Mrs. Helen M. Gougar of Indiana, Mrs. J. Ellen Foster of Iowa, the Revs. Henry Blanchard of Maine and Frederick A. Hinckley of Rhode Island. Mr. Garrison read an original poem rejoicing over the granting of Municipal Suffrage in Kansas. At the New England Convention which followed, these speakers were reinforced by the Rev. Jenkyn Lloyd Jones of Chicago. On October 19 the State Association gave a reception to Miss Frances E. Willard, president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, at the Hotel Brunswick.

In December a great bazar was held in Boston for the joint benefit of the American Suffrage Association and various States which took part. The gross receipts were nearly $8,000. This year the association moved into larger offices at No. 3 Park street; held fifty-one public meetings and four county conventions and organized twenty-one new leagues. The Woman's Journal was sent for three months to all the members of the Legislature; 378,000 pages of suffrage literature were sold and many thousands more given away.

During the annual meeting in February, 1888, a reception was given to Mrs. Rebecca Moore, of England, at which John W. Hutchinson sang and many bright speeches were made. At the twentieth anniversary of the New England association, in May, Lucy Stone presided. Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant and Mrs. Alice Scatcherd of England, and Baroness Gripenberg and Miss Alli Trygg of Finland, were among the speakers. Others were Miss Clara Barton, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker of Connecticut, the Hon. William Dudley Foulke and Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace of Indiana. At the Festival Music Hall was crowded to overflowing and Miss Susan B. Anthony was one of the guests of honor.

This year great excitement was aroused among both men and women by a controversy over the historical text-books used in the public schools of Boston. At the request of a priest the school board removed a history which the Catholics regarded as unfair in its statements, and substituted one which many Protestants considered equally unfair. The school vote of women never had risen much above 2,000, and generally had been below that number. This year 25,279 applied to be assessed a poll tax and registered, and 19,490 voted, in one of the worst storms of the season. All the Catholic candidates were defeated. The suffrage association kept out of the controversy as a body, but its members as individuals took sides as their personal views dictated.

In 1889 Gov. Oliver Ames, for the third time, recommended women suffrage in his inaugural, saying: "Recent political events have confirmed the opinion I have long held, that if women have sufficient reason to vote they will do so and become an important factor in the settlement of great questions. If we can trust uneducated men to vote we can with greater safety and far more propriety grant the same power to women, who as a rule are as well educated and quite as intelligent as men."

The convention met January 29-31. Among outside speakers were Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick of Kentucky, Prof. William H. Carruth of Kansas, and the Hon. Hamilton Willcox of New York. Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson presided at the May Festival and Mrs. Howe's seventieth birthday was celebrated. Mrs. Laura M. Johns of Kansas, Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell of New York, Mrs. Emily P. Collins of Connecticut, and many from other States were present.

An organizer was kept in the field eight months and a State lecturer two months; summer meetings were held at Swampscott, Hull and Nantasket. Two quarterly conferences took place in Boston between the State officers and representatives from the eighty-nine local leagues. A great Historical Pageant was given under Miss Pond's supervision in May and October, which netted $1,582; the Woman's Journal was sent four months to all the legislators, and leaflets to all the students of Harvard and Boston Universities; 15,000 leaflets were given to the South Dakota campaign. The State Farmers' Institute, held at West Brookfield, adopted a woman suffrage resolution almost unanimously.

In Boston 10,051 women voted and the Catholic candidates for the school board were again defeated. The Independent Women Voters elected all their nominees, and candidates who had the joint nomination of both Republicans and Democrats were defeated.

Ex-Gov. John D. Long was one of the speakers at the convention of Jan. 28, 29, 1890; also Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates of Maine. In April an evening with authors and composers was arranged, chiefly by Miss Lucia T. Ames. Well-known authors read from their writings and musicians contributed from their own compositions. In the same month a week's fair called The Country Store was held, Miss Charlotte H. Allen supervising the arrangements, with gross receipts, $2,346. The Rev. Charles G. Ames presided at the May Festival and the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer of Rhode Island was one of the speakers.

In July a reception was given in the suffrage parlors to the ladies of the National Editorial Association and the members of the New England Women's Press Association. The editors of the Woman's Journal--Lucy Stone, Mr. and Miss Blackwell--and the associate editor, Mrs. Florence M. Adkinson, received the guests, assisted by the Rev. Miss Shaw and Miss Lucy E. Anthony. During Grand Army week in August a reception was extended to the ladies of the Woman's Relief Corps and others, the guests received by Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Howe, the editors of the Journal and Dr. Emily Blackwell, dean of the Women's Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.

In October the association exhibited at the Hollis Street Theater a series of Art Tableaux, The History of Marriage, showing the marriage ceremonies of different ages and countries, Mrs. Livermore acting as historian. The receipts were $1,463. The association sent literature to the legislators, to several thousand college students and to all the members of the Mississippi Constitutional Convention; had a booth for two months at the Mechanics' Fair in Boston; supplied suffrage matter every week to 603 editors in all parts of the country and gave 133,334 pages of leaflets to the campaign in South Dakota. The chairman of its executive committee, Mrs. Stone, also donated 95,000 copies of the Woman's Column to the same campaign, and the secretary, Mr. Blackwell, contributed five weeks' gratuitous service in Dakota, lecturing for the amendment.

The Boston Methodist ministers, at their Monday meeting, passed unanimously a resolution in favor of Municipal Woman Suffrage; and a gathering of Massachusetts farmers, at the rooms of the Ploughman, did the same with only one dissenting vote, after an address by Lucy Stone, herself a farmer's daughter.[307]

The annual meeting, Jan. 27, 28, 1891, was made a celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the First National Woman's Rights Convention, which had been held at Worcester in October, 1850. Miss Susan B. Anthony came on from Washington to attend. The advance of women in different lines during the past forty years was ably reviewed in the addresses by representative women in their respective departments.[308] Only two of the speakers at the convention of forty years ago were present on this occasion, Lucy Stone and the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell; and two who had signed the Call--Colonel Higginson and Charles K. Whipple. The resolutions were reaffirmed which had been reported by Wendell Phillips and adopted at the convention of 1850. At this time Mrs. Howe was elected president of the State association.

The New England meeting in May was preceded by a reception to Miss Anthony, the Rev. Miss Shaw and Miss Florence Balgarnie of England, all of whom made addresses at the convention and the Festival, where ex-Governor Long presided.

The meetings this year included a number of college towns and among the speakers were Senator Hoar, Mr. Garrison, Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Stone, with the younger women, Mrs. Anna Christy Fall, Mrs. Adelaide A. Claflin, Miss Elizabeth Sheldon (Tillinghast), Miss Elizabeth Deering Hanscom. At Amherst a large gathering of students listened to Senator Hoar. President and Mrs. Merrill E. Gates occupied seats on the platform. At South Hadley President Elizabeth Storrs Mead of Mt. Holyoke entertained all the speakers at the college, and at Northampton it was estimated by the daily papers that 500 Smith College girls came to the meeting.

On October 21 the association gave a reception to Theodore D. Weld in honor of his eighty-eighth birthday. This date was the anniversary of the famous mob of 1835, which attacked the meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Later a reception was tendered to Mrs. Annie Besant of the London School Board. On November 17, during the week when the W. C. T. U. held its national convention in Boston, a reception was given in the suffrage parlors to all interested in the Franchise Department. A special invitation was issued to White Ribboners from the Southern States where none was yet adopted, and the spacious rooms were filled to overflowing. Lucy Stone presided and Julia Ward Howe gave the address of welcome. Many brief responses were made by the Southern delegates and by Northern delegates and friends.

In December a suffrage fair was held under the management of Mrs. Dietrick, now of Boston, which netted $1,800. Senator Hoar's speech at Amherst was sent to the students of all the colleges in the State.

At the annual meeting Jan. 26, 27, 1892, the Rev. Joseph Cook gave an address. Lucy Stone presided at the New England convention and Mrs. Howe at the Festival. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt was the speaker from a distance. Letters were read from the Hon. Thomas B. Reed, Terence V. Powderly and U. S. Senators Joseph M. Carey and Francis E. Warren of Wyoming.

In addition to the usual work this year $200 were offered in $5 prizes to the children of the public schools for the best essays in favor of woman suffrage. Mrs. Dietrick was employed for six months as State organizer. An appeal for equal suffrage signed by Mrs. Stone, Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Livermore was sent to editors throughout the State with the request to publish it and to indorse it editorially, which was done by many. A letter signed by the same was sent to every minister in Boston asking him either to present the subject to his congregation or permit it to be presented by some one else, and a number consented.

A Woman's Day was held at the State Agricultural Fair in Worcester, when it was estimated 70,000 people were present. Col. Daniel Needham, president of the Fair, expressed himself as thankful for the opportunity to welcome woman suffrage. Mrs. Rufus S. Frost, Lucy Stone, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Claflin and Mr. Blackwell were the speakers. When a vote was taken at the close, the whole audience rose in favor of suffrage.

The Independent Women Voters of Boston again elected their entire school ticket. Miss Frances E. Willard and Mrs. Claflin addressed the Working Girls' Clubs of the State on suffrage at their annual reunion in Boston. The association was represented at the great farewell reception to Lady Henry Somerset, Lucy Stone presenting her with twenty-three yellow roses for the States with School Suffrage and one pure white for Wyoming.

This year at a special meeting the association amended the old constitution under which it had been working since 1870, and unanimously adopted a delegate basis of representation.

The annual meeting was held Dec. 6, 7, 1892, instead of January, 1893. Mrs. Howe presided and addresses were made by Mrs. Stone, Mrs. Livermore, the Hon. George A. O. Ernst, Mrs. Estelle M. H. Merrill, president of the New England Women's Press Association, and others. Lucy Stone was elected president and superintendents were instituted for different departments of work.

At a gathering of Massachusetts farmers in Boston, Lucy Stone and Mrs. Olive Wright of Denver, spoke for woman suffrage; the meeting declared for it unanimously by a rising vote and every farmer present signed the petition. The State Grange, at its annual convention, adopted a strong suffrage resolution by 96 yeas, 27 nays. The Unitarian Ministers' Monday Club of Boston, after an address by Mrs. Stone, did the same, and every minister present but one signed the petition. The Universalist Ministers' Monday meeting in Boston, at her request, voted by a large majority to memorialize the Legislature for woman suffrage. The Central Labor Union took similar action. The Boston Transcript, Globe, Advertiser, Traveller and Beacon, the Springfield Republican, Greenfield Gazette and Courier, Salem Observer, Salem Register and many other papers supported the Municipal Suffrage Bill which was then pending.

At the May Festival of 1893 Senator Hoar presided and 900 persons sat down to the banquet. Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant of England, and Miss Kirstine Frederiksen of Denmark, were the speakers from abroad. A reception to these ladies preceded the annual meeting of the New England Association. Mme. Marie Marshall of Paris, was added to the above speakers, also Wendell Phillips Stafford of Vermont, Mrs. Ellen M. Bolles of Rhode Island, and others. On June 5 a reception was given to Mrs. Jane Cobden Unwin of London, Richard Cobden's daughter. On July 19, by invitation of the Waltham Suffrage Club, the State association and the local leagues united in a basket picnic at Forest Grove. On this occasion Lucy Stone made her last public address.

Woman's Day at the New England Agricultural Fair in Worcester was observed in September with addresses by Mrs. Chant, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Fanny Purdy Palmer and Mr. Blackwell, representing Lucy Stone, who was too ill to be present. There was a very large audience. Part of a day was also secured at the Marshfield Fair with an address by Mrs. Katherine Lente Stevenson. A convention was held at Westfield, October 2, when the opera house was crowded to hear Mrs. Livermore.

Mr. Blackwell presented a resolution in favor of Municipal Suffrage for women in the Resolutions Committee of the Republican State Convention, October 6. It was warmly advocated by the Hon. John D. Long, Samuel Walker McCall, M. C., Mayor Fairbanks of Quincy, and others, and would possibly have been passed but for the strenuous opposition of the chairman, ex-Gov. George D. Robinson, who said he would decline to read the platform to the convention if the resolution was adopted. It was finally lost by 4 yeas, 7 nays.

On Oct. 18, 1893, occurred the death of Lucy Stone at her home in Dorchester. She said with calm contentment, "I have done what I wanted to do; I have helped the women." Her last whispered words to her daughter were, "Make the world better." The funeral was held in James Freeman Clarke's old church in Boston. Hundreds of people stood waiting silently in the street before the doors were opened. The Rev. Charles G. Ames said afterward that, "the services were not like a funeral but like a solemn celebration and a coronation." The speakers were Mr. Ames, Colonel Higginson, Mrs. Livermore, Mr. Garrison, Mrs. Cheney, the Rev. Samuel J. Barrows, Mrs. Chant, the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer of Providence, Mary Grew of Philadelphia, with a poem by Mrs. Howe. A strong impetus was given to the suffrage movement by the wide publication in the papers of the facts of Lucy Stone's simple and noble life, and by the universal expression of affection and regret. A life-long opponent declared that the death of no woman in America had ever called out so general a tribute of public respect and esteem.

The State association again held its annual meeting in December. Among the resolutions adopted was the following:

In the passing away of Lucy Stone, our president, the beloved pioneer of woman suffrage, who has been, ever since 1847, its mainstay and unfailing champion, the cause of equal rights in this State and throughout the Union has suffered an irreparable loss.

Her daughter closed the report of the year's work by saying: "Let all those who held her dear show their regard for her memory in the way that would have pleased and touched her most--by doing their best to help forward the cause she loved so well."

Mrs. Mary A. Livermore was elected president.

On December 16 the association celebrated in Faneuil Hall the one hundred and twentieth anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. One of the last expressed wishes of Lucy Stone had been that the celebration should take place in the Old South Church, but the use of this historic building was refused by the trustees, much to the mortification of the more liberal members of the General Committee of the Old South. Colonel Higginson, who had presided at the centennial celebration of the same event by the suffragists twenty years before, again presided and made the opening address. Other speakers were Mrs. Chapman Catt and Wendell Phillips Stafford. Mr. Garrison gave a poem and Mr. Blackwell read the speech made by Lucy Stone at the celebration in 1873. Letters were read from Senator Hoar, Frederick Douglass and others. Governor-elect Frederick T. Greenhalge and Lieut. Gov.-elect Roger Wolcott occupied seats on the platform.

This year the Massachusetts W. S. A. had become incorporated. It had sent suffrage literature to all the Episcopalian, Unitarian and Universalist clergymen in the State, to most of the Methodist ministers, to 1,100 public school teachers and to a large number of college students. Its president, Lucy Stone, had sent, from her death bed, the largest contribution to the Colorado campaign given by any individual outside of that State. Its secretary, Mr. Blackwell, had attended the National Convention of Republican Clubs at Louisville, Ky., and secured the adoption of the following resolution: "We recommend to the favorable consideration of the Republican Clubs of the United States, as a matter of education, the question of granting to the women of the State and nation the right to vote at all elections on the same terms and conditions as male citizens."

A thousand copies of William I. Bowditch's Taxation Without Representation and George Pellew's Woman and the Commonwealth were bound and presented to town and college libraries. Mayor Nathan Matthews, Jr., of Boston appointed two women on the Board of Overseers of the Poor, despite the strong opposition of the aldermen. He also appointed three women members of a commission to investigate and report to him upon the condition of public institutions. Toward the end of the year he again appointed two women on a similar committee, including one of those who served before. The Hon. George S. Hale said at the annual suffrage meeting, "Both ladies are admirably qualified, and the one who acted last year is declared by all the men who served with her to be the most valuable member of the board."

Out of 622 students and professors at Wellesley College, who were questioned as to their views on suffrage, 506 declared themselves in favor, and 500 of them united in sending a telegram of congratulation to the women of Colorado on the passage of the equal suffrage amendment this year. (1893.)

At the May Festival 1,000 sat down to the banquet and hundreds occupied the balconies. Ex-Governor Long presided. One of the speakers was Robert S. Gray, chairman of the Committee on Woman Suffrage in the Legislature. In honor of Mrs. Howe's seventy-fifth birthday Mrs. Alice J. Harris sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic, the audience joining in the chorus.

On June 18 delegates from many labor organizations met in Boston, in response to a call from the Boston Workingmen's Political League, and decided to act together at the ballot box. Their platform demanded universal suffrage irrespective of sex.

Lucy Stone mite-boxes were circulated by the association for funds to aid the amendment campaign in Kansas. Mr. Blackwell attended the National Convention of Republican Clubs held in Denver. On June 27 it reiterated the woman suffrage resolution it had passed the year before in Louisville.

On July 24 Woman's Day was celebrated at the Massachusetts Chautauqua in South Framingham, with many able speakers. On September 4 Woman's Day was observed at the New England Agricultural Fair in Worcester. Colonel Needham, its president, made an earnest woman suffrage address and was followed by Mrs. Howe, Miss Yates, Mrs. Mary Sargent Hopkins and Mr. Blackwell. In December a suffrage fair was held under the management of Mrs. Abby M. Davis which cleared about $1,800. On the opening night Mrs. Cheney presided and there were addresses by Lady Henry Somerset and Miss Frances E. Willard.

This year the association kept the papers supplied with suffrage articles more thoroughly than ever before; had speakers present the subject to thirty-one women's clubs; furnished literature to the legislators, to 5,000 public school teachers, to all the Congregational ministers in the State and to many of other denominations; and sent 3,782 leaflets to college students and graduates.

Governor Greenhalge in his inaugural in 1895, said, "I hold to the views expressed in the message of last year as to the extension of Municipal Suffrage to women." He also referred to it favorably in an address before the New England Women's Press Association, and at the Parliament of Man held in Boston.

Mrs. Livermore presided at the annual meeting, January 8, 9. Mrs. Helen H. Gardiner and Representative Alfred S. Roe were among the speakers. From this time date the Fortnightly Meetings at the suffrage headquarters, and these have been held ever since except during the summer vacations. They are usually well attended and seldom fail to have some speaker of note.

On May 4 Mr. Blackwell's seventieth birthday was celebrated by a reception and dinner at Copley Square Hotel, Boston, ex-Governor Long presiding. A newspaper said, "The guests on this occasion represented the conscience and culture of New England." Addresses were made by many of his co-workers,[309] and among those who sent letters were the Rev. Samuel May, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ainsworth R. Spofford, of the Library of Congress, Ex-Governor Claflin, Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, the Hon. James L. Hughes, president of the Equal Rights Association of Toronto, Professor and Mrs. Carruth of Kansas University, and others. On May 14 the golden wedding of the Rev. D. P. and Mrs. Livermore was celebrated by a reception in the suffrage parlors. Their daughters, son-in-law and grandchildren received with them. In accordance with Mrs. Livermore's wish there was no speaking but a great throng of distinguished guests, including both suffragists and "antis," were present.

At the May Anniversary a reception was given to Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi of New York, and Miss Elizabeth Burrill Curtis, daughter of the staunch advocate of suffrage, George William Curtis. Mr. Blackwell presided at the Festival in Music Hall and 700 sat down to the banquet.

Woman suffrage was indorsed by the Garment Makers' Union of Boston, with its 400 members. This year a long list of prominent persons signed a published statement declaring themselves in favor, all the names being collected within about a week. This remarkable list included several hundred names, about one-third of men. So far as personal achievement goes they were among the most prominent in the State and included several presidents of colleges, a large number of noted university men, public officials, lawyers, editors, etc. Among the women were the president, dean and twenty professors of Wellesley College; the director of the Observatory and six instructors of Smith College, physicians, lawyers, authors, large taxpayers, and many noted for philanthropy.[310]

The association secured a Woman's Day at the New England Chautauqua Assembly; brought the question before hundreds at parlor meetings and public debates, outside of the many arranged by the Referendum Committee; published six leaflets and a volume, The Legal Status of Women in Massachusetts, by Mr. Ernst, and distributed an immense amount of literature.

Up to this time the anti-suffrage associations organized in Massachusetts always had gone to pieces within a short period after they were formed. But in May, 1895, the present Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women was organized, with Mrs. James M. Codman at its head and Mrs. Charles E. Guild as secretary. This was a society composed of women alone. Col. Higginson said in Harper's Bazar:

All the ladies move in a limited though most unimpeachable circle. All may be presumed to interchange visiting cards and meet at the same afternoon teas. There is not even a hint that there is any other class to be consulted. Where are the literary women, the artists, the teachers, the business women, the temperance women, the labor reform advocates, the members of the farmers' grange, the clergymen's wives? Compared with this inadequate body how comfortably varied looks the list of the committee in behalf of woman suffrage. [Distinguished names given.] It includes also women who are wholesomely unknown to the world at large but well known in the granges and among the Christian Endeavorers. Can any one doubt which list represents the spirit of the future?

The more cultivated social class--the "Four Hundred," as the saying is--have an immense value in certain directions. They stand for the social amenities and in many ways for the worthy charities. Generous and noble traditions attach to their names and nowhere more than in Boston. But one thing has in all ages and places been denied to this class--that of leadership in bold reforms.

On November 5 the mock referendum, which had been opposed by many of the leading suffragists, was voted on and received a large negative majority. (See Legislative Action.)

The State association held its annual convention, Jan. 14, 15, 1896, with large audiences. It opened with a Young People's Meeting, Miss Blackwell presiding.[311] The Rev. Father Scully and Mrs. Fanny B. Ames, State Factory Inspector, were among the many who gave addresses. At the business meeting the following resolution on the mock referendum was adopted:

WHEREAS, The returns show that we only need to convert twenty per cent. of the male voters in order to have a majority; and

WHEREAS, Public sentiment is growing rapidly and grows faster the more the subject is discussed; therefore,

Resolved, That we petition the Legislature to give us a real instead of a sham referendum, by submitting to the voters a constitutional amendment enfranchising women.

The president, Mrs. Livermore, was made a Doctor of Laws by Tufts College and was given a great birthday reception by her fellow-townsmen, with addresses by Mrs. Susan S. Fessenden and Mr. Blackwell and a poem by Hezekiah Butterworth.

The May Festival also opened with a Young People's Meeting, Mrs. Howe as "grandmother" introducing the speakers.[312] Mr. Garrison presided at the Festival and the speakers included Alfred Webb, M. P., of Dublin, the Rev. Dean Hodges, of the Episcopal Theological School, Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson and Prof. Ellen Hayes of Wellesley.

A series of meetings was held this year in Berkshire County. Mrs. Mary Clarke Smith was kept in the field as State organizer for seven months. A speaker was sent free of charge to every woman's club or other society willing to hear the suffrage question presented; 13,000 pages of literature were distributed. On October 27 the State Baptist Young People's Union at its anniversary indorsed woman suffrage. In December a rousing meeting was held in Canton, Congressman Elijah Morse presiding, with Mrs. Livermore and Miss Yates as speakers.

Among the deaths of the year was that of Frederick T. Greenhalge--the latest of a long line of Massachusetts governors who have advocated woman suffrage since 1870--Governors Claflin, Washburn, Talbot, Brackett, Long, Butler and Ames.

At the annual meeting, in 1897, the speakers included the Rev. George L. Perin and Augusta Chapin, D. D. As the laws were about to be revised and codified it was decided to ask for an equalization of those bearing on domestic relations. The Women's Journal noted that never before had so many petitions for suffrage been sent in within so short a time. On February 16 the association gave a large and brilliant reception at the Vendome to Miss Jane Addams of Chicago. Col. Higginson presided, and Miss Addams, Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Livermore spoke. On April 17 a reception was given in the suffrage parlors to Mrs. Harriet Tubman, the colored woman so noted in anti-slavery days for her assistance to fugitive slaves, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney assisting.

Mr. Blackwell presided at the Festival, May 27, and eloquent addresses were made by the Rev. Dr. George C. Lorimer, Lieutenant-Governor John L. Bates, Mrs. Florence Howe Hall and many others, while letters of greeting were read from Lady Henry Somerset and Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England. It was Mrs. Howe's seventy-eighth birthday and she was received with cheers and presented with flowers.

On July 29 the annual meeting of the Berkshire Historical and Scientific Society, held at Adams, was "a woman suffrage convention from end to end," with Miss Susan B. Anthony as the guest of honor in her native town. Her friends and relatives from all parts of the country were present and addresses were made by the vice-president of the society, the Rev. A. B. Whipple, by Miss Shaw, Mrs. Chapman Catt, Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton and Miss Blackwell, officers of the National Suffrage Association, and by Mrs. May Wright Sewall, vice-president of the International Council of Women, Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby, editor of the Woman's Tribune and Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, Miss Anthony's biographer.

The Prohibition State Convention in September resolved that "educational qualifications and not sex should be the test of the elective franchise." The next year it adopted a woman suffrage plank.

In December the association held a bazar under the management of Miss Harriet E. Turner which cleared $3,200. During the year the usual large amount of educational work was done, which included 1,024 suffrage articles furnished to 230 newspapers, and the holding of 176 public meetings. The New England Historical and Genealogical Society voted unanimously to admit women to membership. Strong efforts were made to have the Boston school board elect several eminently qualified women as submasters, but sex prejudice defeated them.

The Anti-Suffrage Association published an anonymous pamphlet entitled Tested by its Fruits. The Massachusetts W. S. A. published a counter-pamphlet by Chief-Justice Groesbeck of Wyoming, who testified that some of the laws which it represented as then in force had been repealed many years before, and that upon some "an absurd construction" had been placed.

The convention of Jan. 26, 1898, was addressed by J. M. Robertson of England. At the May Festival in Hotel Brunswick, the Hon. Hugh H. Lusk of New Zealand gave an address, and the occasion was made noteworthy by bright speeches from young women--Mrs. Helen Adelaide Shaw, Miss Maud Wood (Park) of Radcliffe and Miss Hanscom of Boston University and Smith College. Several members of the Legislature spoke and reports were received from all the New England States.

Woman's Day was celebrated at the Mechanics' Fair in Boston. This year the association began to issue a monthly letter to the local leagues. As an addition to the literature, Secretary-of-the-Navy John D. Long's suffrage address with his portrait was issued as a handsome pamphlet. In response to an appeal from the president, Mrs. Livermore (so well known through the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War), $500 and many boxes of supplies were sent to the soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and the secretary of the State association, Mrs. Ellie A. Hilt, literally worked herself to death in this service.

The usual meetings were held in 1899 and 1900 and the same great amount of work was done. To increase the school vote of women in 1899 thirty-eight public meetings were held by the association, with the result that in Boston 3,000 new names were added to the registration list. In 1900 the association contributed liberally to the suffrage campaign in Oregon. A large and brilliant reception was given at the Hotel Vendome in honor of Mrs. Livermore's 80th birthday.

Presidents of the State association since 1883 have been the Hon. William I. Bowditch (1878) to 1891; Mrs. Julia Ward Howe to 1893; Mrs. Lucy Stone elected that year but died in October; Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, 1893 and still in office. Henry B. Blackwell has been corresponding secretary over thirty years.[313]

The first president of the New England association was Mrs. Howe. In 1877 Mrs. Lucy Stone was elected, and at her death in 1893 Mrs. Howe was again chosen and is still serving.[314]

LEGISLATIVE ACTION:[315] The first petition for the rights of women was presented to the Legislature by William Lloyd Garrison in 1849. In 1853 Lucy Stone, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips and Thomas Wentworth Higginson went before the constitutional convention held in the State House, with a petition signed by 2,000 names, and pleaded for an amendment conferring suffrage on women.

The first appearance of a woman in this State before a legislative committee was made in 1857, when Lucy Stone, with the Rev. James Freeman Clarke and Mr. Phillips, addressed the House Judiciary asking suffrage for women and equal property rights for wives. The next year Samuel E. Sewall and Dr. Harriot K. Hunt were granted a similar hearing. In 1869, through the efforts of the New England Suffrage Association, two hearings were secured to present the claims of 8,000 women who had petitioned for the franchise on the same terms as men. This was the beginning of annual hearings on this question, which have been continued without intermission for over thirty years. Henry B. Blackwell has spoken at every hearing and Lucy Stone at every one until her death.

1884--Petitions were presented for Municipal Suffrage, for the appointment of police matrons; also for laws permitting husbands and wives to contract with each other and make gifts directly to each other; allowing a woman to hold any office to which she might be elected or appointed; and requiring that a certain number of women should be appointed on Boards of Overseers of the Poor, on State Boards of Charities and as physicians in the women's wards of insane asylums. Hearings were given on most of these petitions. At that of January 25 for Municipal Suffrage the speakers were William I. Bowditch, Mrs. Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, the Rev. J. W. and Mrs. Jennie F. Bashford, Mary F. Eastman, Mrs. H. H. Robinson, Mrs. Harriette Robinson Shattuck and Miss Nancy Covell.

On January 29 a hearing was given to the remonstrants conducted by Thornton K. Lothrop. The speakers were Francis Parkman (whose paper was read for him by Mr. Lothrop) Louis B. Brandeis, Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells, William H. Sayward, Mrs. Lydia Warner and George C. Crocker. A letter was read from Mrs. Clara T. Leonard. Mr. Parkman asserted that the suffragists "have thrown to the wind every political, not to say every moral principle;" that "three-fourths of the agitators are in mutiny against Providence because it made them women;" and that "if the ballot were granted to women it would be a burden so crushing that life would be a misery."

This year 315 petitions for suffrage with 21,608 signatures were presented. The remonstrants who set out with the avowed intention of getting more secured about 3,000. A number of persons who signed the anti-suffrage petition in Boston published letters afterwards over their own names and addresses saying that they had signed without reading, upon the assurance of the canvasser employed by the remonstrants that it was a petition to permit women to vote on the question of liquor license.

In the House Municipal Suffrage was discussed March 12, 13, and finally was defeated by 61 yeas, 155 nays. A bill to let women vote on the license question, which had not been asked for by the suffrage association, was voted down without a count.

A law was enacted requiring two women trustees on the board of every State lunatic hospital, and one woman physician in each. Samuel E. Sewall, Frank B. Sanborn, Mr. Blackwell and Miss Mary A. Brigham had been the speakers at the hearing in behalf of this measure. All the other petitions were refused.

1885--On Municipal Suffrage and the submission of a constitutional amendment a hearing was given February 17. As usual the Green Room was crowded. There were before the committee petitions for suffrage with 16,113 signatures, and petitions against it with 285. The speakers in favor were the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Mrs. Cheney, Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Mr. Bowditch, William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., Miss Eastman, Mrs. Adelaide A. Claflin, Mrs. Abby M. Gannett and Miss Lelia J. Robinson. The opposition was conducted by Mr. Brandeis and the speakers were Judge Francis C. Lowell, Mrs. Gannett Wells, Thomas Weston, Jr., Henry Parkman and the Rev. Brooke Hereford, lately from England, with letters from President L. Clark Seelye of Smith College, Miss Mary E. Dewey and Mr. Sayward. The committee reported in favor of Municipal Suffrage with only one dissenting. The House on May 4 rejected the bill by 61 yeas, 131 nays.

While the women sat in the gallery waiting for the measure to be discussed, the bill proposing to limit the working day for women and children to ten hours was "guyed, laughed at and voted down amid ridicule and uproar." This Legislature also refused the petition of Mr. Sewall and others for one or more women on every Board of Overseers of the Poor; for the better protection of wives; for the submission of a constitutional amendment granting women full suffrage; and for the amendment of the school suffrage law to make it as easy for women as for men to register. (See Suffrage.)

1886--At the hearing, January 28, a letter was read from the Hon. Josiah G. Abbott, and addresses were made by Mr. Garrison, Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Cheney, Mrs. Eliza Trask Hill, the Rev. Ada C. Bowles, Mrs. Shattuck, Mrs. Robinson, Miss Eastman and Mrs. Claflin. The remonstrants' hearing had been appointed for January 29. Their attorney, E. N. Hill, tried at the last moment to get a postponement but failed. The leaders of the "antis" declined to speak but several of the rank and file appeared and made the usual objections. The committee reported in favor of Municipal Suffrage. It was discussed in the House April 14, about the same number speaking on each side, and defeated by 77 yeas, 132 nays, the most favorable vote since 1879.

On May 20, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, representatives of the suffrage association and other societies had a hearing in behalf of bills to raise the "age of protection" and to provide adequate penalties for seduction, but no action was taken.

1887--On January 6 Governor Oliver Ames, in his inaugural address to the Legislature, said, "I earnestly recommend, as a measure of simple justice, the enactment of a law securing Municipal Suffrage to women." The suffrage petitions this year had 5,741 signatures, the remonstrant petitions 81. On February 2 it was ordered in the House, on motion of Josiah Quincy, that the Committee on Woman Suffrage consider the expediency of submitting the question of Municipal Suffrage to the women of the different cities and towns, the right to be given to them in any city or town where the majority of those who voted on the question should vote in favor; or where a number of women should petition for it equal to a majority of the number of men who voted at the last annual municipal or town election; or where a majority vote of the men should be given for it at the annual election.

On motion of Mr. Quincy an order for legislation to equalize the interest of husbands and wives in each other's property had been previously introduced but was lost.

On February 9 a hearing was given to the petitioners. The speakers were the same as the previous year with the addition of Col. T. W. Higginson. Mr. Blackwell presented two letters in favor of the bill, one addressed to Republicans, one to Democrats.[316] Clement K. Fay spoke for the remonstrants.

The committee reported in favor of Municipal Suffrage, two dissenting. It was discussed in the House March 3 and 10. Mr. Bailey of Everett offered an amendment that the provisions of the bill be tried for ten years, but it was not put to a vote. The bill was lost by 86 yeas, 122 nays, including pairs.

A bill to let women vote on the license question passed the House by 116 yeas to 88 nays, including pairs, but was defeated in the Senate, 24 yeas, 13 nays.

The bill was passed providing for police matrons in all cities of 30,000 or more inhabitants.

1888--The Legislature was asked for Municipal and Presidential Suffrage and for the submission of a constitutional amendment; also for various improvements in the laws relating to women. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union petitioned for License Suffrage. Several thousand women signed the petition and one hundred the remonstrance. On January 25 a hearing was given on the petitions for Municipal and License Suffrage. Mr. Bowditch, Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Cheney spoke for Municipal Suffrage and Miss Elizabeth S. Tobey for License Suffrage. Mr. Brandeis made an argument as attorney for the remonstrants. Charles Carleton Coffin, A. A. Miner, D. D., Mrs. Claflin, the Rev. Ada C. Bowles and Miss Cora Scott Pond replied for the petitioners.

On February 20 and 25 hearings were given on the petitions for six bills drawn by Mr. Sewall: 1. To give mothers the equal care, custody and education of their minor children. 2. To give married women a right to appoint guardians for their minor children by will. 3. To repeal the act of 1887 limiting the inheritance of personal property. 4. To regulate and equalize the descent of personal property between husband and wife. 5. To equalize curtesy and dower and the descent of real estate between husband and wife. 6. To enable husbands and wives to make gifts, contracts and conveyances directly with one another, and to authorize suits between them.

Addresses in support of the petitions were made by Mr. Sewall, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Stone, Mr. Blackwell, the Hon. George A. O. Ernst, Miss Robinson, George H. Fall and others. All these measures were refused. Several new statutes for the better protection of women were passed this year, however, at the instance of Mr. Sewall, among them one providing severe penalties for any person who should aid in sending a woman as inmate or servant to a house of ill fame; one prohibiting railroads from requiring women or children to ride in smoking cars; one providing that women arrested should be placed in charge of police matrons.

On April 23 Municipal Suffrage was defeated in the House, 50 yeas, 121 nays. License Suffrage, after a prolonged contest, passed by 118 yeas, 110 nays, and was defeated in the Senate, 20 yeas, 19 nays.

1889--At the hearing of January 31 the attendance was larger than ever before. Prof. W. H. Carruth, Franklyn Howland and the Rev. J. W. Hamilton (afterwards Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church) were added to the usual list of speakers.

On February 4 a hearing was granted to the W. C. T. U. for Municipal Suffrage, and on February 8 one was given to the remonstrants. The Hon. John M. Ropes, the Rev. Charles B. Rice, the Rev. Dr. Dexter of the Congregationalist and Arthur Lord spoke in the negative. They said they were employed as counsel by the remonstrants, whose names and numbers they declined to give. As Mr. Lord was unable to complete his argument in the allotted time, at his request a further hearing was granted on February 11. Extracts were read from letters by Mrs. Clara T. Leonard and Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney.[317] Mrs. Howe, Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Col. L. Edwin Dudley and Miss Tobey replied. Chester W. Kingsley, chairman of the legislative committee, said that as no petitions against suffrage had been sent in he would ask all the remonstrants present to rise. Not a person rose, but the men standing in the aisles tried to sit down. Mr. Lord suggested that the remonstrants were averse to notoriety, whereupon Senator Kingsley asked all in favor to rise, and the great audience rose in a body.

Among the petitions sent in this year for Municipal Suffrage was one signed by President Helen A. Shafer of Wellesley College, a number of the professors and about seventy students who were over twenty-one. The committee reported in favor of both Municipal and License Suffrage. The former was discussed March 12 and lost by a vote, including pairs, of 90 yeas, 139 nays. The Woman's Journal said: "Although not a majority, the weight of character, talent and experience was overwhelmingly in favor of the bill, as is shown by the fact that the chairmen of thirty of the House Committees, out of a total of forty-one, were recorded in its favor."

License Suffrage passed the Senate, 15 yeas, 12 nays, after a long fight, and was defeated in the House, 101 yeas, 42 nays.

1890--Suffrage petitions were presented and also petitions asking that fathers and mothers be made equal guardians of their children; that contracts between husbands and wives be legally valid; and that a widow be allowed to stay more than forty days in the house of her deceased husband without paying rent. All these were refused.

On March 12 a hearing was given to the petitioners for suffrage. Mrs. Stone, Mr. Blackwell, the Rev. J. W. Hamilton, Mrs. Ellen B. Dietrick, the Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley, Mr. Crane of Woburn and Miss Alice Stone Blackwell spoke in behalf of the W. S. A., and Mrs. Susan S. Fessenden, Mrs. Amelia C. Thorpe and Miss Tobey in behalf of the W. C. T. U. Mr. Ropes, Dr. A. P. Peabody and J. B. Wiggin spoke against woman suffrage. Mr. Lord asked that the hearing be extended for another day, as he wished to speak in behalf of the remonstrants, although no petitions had been sent in. Mr. Blackwell requested the chairman of the committee to ask Mr. Lord to state definitely whom he represented. The chairman answered that if he did not choose to tell he could not compel him. On March 19 a hearing was given to Mr. Lord, who spoke for more than an hour. The usual distinguished suffrage advocates spoke in answer.

On April 8 seventy-nine Republican Representatives met at the Parker House, Boston, in response to an invitation from the Republican members of the House Committee on Woman Suffrage. Ex-Gov. John D. Long presided. Addresses were made by Mr. Long, U. S. Collector Beard, Mayor Thomas N. Hart of Boston, the Hon. Albert E. Pillsbury, ex-president of the Senate, ex-Governor Claflin and State Treasurer George E. Marden. Letters were read from the Hon. W. W. Crapo and ex-Governor Ames. The following was unanimously adopted:

Resolved, That it is the duty of the Republican party of Massachusetts forthwith to extend Municipal Suffrage to the women of the commonwealth.

On April 17, after extended discussion in the House, the bill was lost, including pairs, by 73 yeas, 141 nays. The same Legislature defeated a proposal to disfranchise for a term of three years men convicted of infamous crimes, and it voted to admit to suffrage men who did not pay their poll-tax.

1891--On February 4 a hearing was granted to the petitioners for Municipal Suffrage, conducted by Mr. Blackwell for the association, by Mrs. Fessenden for the W. C. T. U. To the usual speakers for the former were added Mrs. Helen Campbell, the Rev. Charles G. Ames, and also the Rev. Daniel Whitney, who had advocated woman suffrage in the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1853 and now celebrated his eighty-first birthday by supporting it again. The speakers for the W. C. T. U. were the Rev. Joseph Cook, Mrs. Thorpe, President Elmer Hewitt Capen of Tufts College, Mrs. Katherine Lente Stevenson and others. Mrs. Martha Moore Avery spoke for the labor reformers. No remonstrants appeared.

In the Senate, March 31, Senators Gilman, Nutter and Breed spoke for Municipal Suffrage, and no one in the negative. The bill was lost by a vote, including pairs, of 12 yeas, 25 nays.

This year a bill was passed requiring the appointment of women as factory inspectors, and two were appointed.

1892--The suffrage association petitioned for Municipal and Full Suffrage, also for equal property rights for women. The W. C. T. U. for Municipal and License Suffrage, and both societies for legislation granting women equal facilities with men in registering to vote for school committee. On March 2 a hearing was given by the Committee on Election Laws on an order introduced by Senator Gorham D. Gilman to remove the poll-tax prerequisite for women's school vote, as it had been removed from men. Bills to secure for them a more just and liberal method of registration, drafted by ex-Governor Long and Mr. Blackwell, were submitted. Addresses were made by these two, Senator Gilman, Mrs. Cheney, Dr. Salome Merritt, Mrs. Brockway and others.

On February 19 a hearing was given on the suffrage petitions which were advocated by Senator Gilman, Colonel Dudley, Mrs. Howe, Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, the Hon. George S. Hale, Mrs. Trask Hill and others. No remonstrants appeared. On March 14 the hearing for the W. C. T. U. was held with many prominent advocates.

License Suffrage was discussed in the House April 27, and on a viva voce vote was declared carried, but on a roll call was defeated, 93 yeas, 96 nays. A reconsideration was moved next day and the advocates of the bill secured twenty-three additional votes, but the opponents also increased their vote and the motion was refused. Out of the 240 members 117 recorded themselves in favor of the bill. Municipal Suffrage was voted down in the Senate May 2, without debate, by 10 yeas, 22 nays.

The poll-tax was abolished as a prerequisite for voting in the case of women. This had been done in the case of men in 1890. A bill to permit a wife to bring an action against her husband, at law or in equity, for any matter relating to her separate property or estate passed the House but was defeated in the Senate. The Senate Judiciary Committee reported against legislation to enable a woman to be appointed a justice of the peace.

1893--This year for the first time the State W. S. A., the National W. S. A. of Massachusetts, the W. C. T. U., the Independent Women Voters and the Loyal Women of American Liberty all united in petitioning for a single measure, Municipal Suffrage. The hearing at the State House on February 1 was conducted by Mr. Blackwell. Addresses were made by Lucy Stone,[318] Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, Mrs. Stevenson, the Rev. Louis A. Banks, Mayor Elihu B. Hayes of Lynn, Mrs. A. J. Gordon, Mrs. Trask Hill, Mrs. A. P. Dickerman, Mrs. Fiske of St. Johns, N. B., Amos Beckford, George E. Lothrop, Mrs. M. E. S. Cheney and Miss Blackwell. Mrs. M. E. Tucker Faunce was the sole remonstrant.

The committee reported in favor of the petitioners, 7 yeas, 4 nays. The question was debated in the Legislature February 21. Every inch of space was crowded, the first three rows of the men's gallery were allowed on this occasion to be occupied by women and even then many stood. On motion of Representative White of Brookline an amendment was adopted by 110 yeas, 90 nays, providing that Municipal Suffrage should be granted conditionally; the question be submitted to a vote of the men and women of the State, and the measure to go into effect only in case the majority of those voting on it voted in favor. The bill as amended was then defeated by 111 yeas, 101 nays, almost every opponent of suffrage voting against it. They thus virtually declared that they were not willing women should have Municipal Suffrage even if the majority of both men and women could be shown to favor it. The adverse majority this year was ten votes; the smallest in any previous year had been 49.

1894--Gov. Frederick T. Greenhalge, in his inaugural message to the Legislature, strongly urged that it should consider the extension of Municipal Suffrage to women.

On January 18 a hearing was given by the Joint Special Committee. No remonstrant petitions had been sent in. The chairman invited alternate speeches from suffragists and opponents, but only one of the latter presented himself, J. Otis Wardwell of Haverhill, who said:

I appear here this morning for a lady who, I understand, has occupied a position as chairman or secretary of an organization that has for some time been an active opponent of woman suffrage.

Mr. Blackwell--May I inquire what the organization is that the gentleman refers to? We have never been able to find out much about this organization against woman suffrage. We hear that there is one, but if so it is a secret society. What is the name of it?

MR. WARDWELL--I do not know the name of it, sir. [Laughter.]

When pressed for the name of the lady at whose request he appeared he finally acknowledged that it was Mrs. C. D. Homans of Boston. It was afterwards reported that she was extremely indignant with him for having disclosed her name.

Addresses in favor of suffrage were made by Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Livermore, Mr. Ernst, Mr. Garrison, Mr. and Miss Blackwell, for the State W. S. A.; by Mrs. Cheney, president, for the State School Suffrage Association; by Dr. Salome Merritt and Miss Charlotte Lobdell for the National W. S. A. of Massachusetts; by Willard Howland, Mrs. Gleason and others for the W. C. T. U.; by Mrs. Trask Hill for the Independent Women Voters; and by Mrs. Avery for the labor element; also by Miss Catherine Spence of Australia, Mrs. Emily A. Fifield of the Boston school board, and others. Henry H. Faxon added a few words.

A second hearing was given January 19, at which Mrs. Fessenden and twelve other speakers represented the W. C. T. U. No remonstrants appeared. At the request of a member of the Joint Special Committee a third hearing was given on January 29. The Rev. Dr. Hamilton, Mrs. L. A. Morrison, Mrs. Trask Hill and others spoke in favor of suffrage, and Jeremiah J. Donovan against it. The committee made a majority report against Municipal Suffrage and a minority report in favor.

On January 31 Arthur S. Kneil offered an amendment providing that the question should be submitted to the men and women of the State, and that the act should take effect only if a majority of the votes cast on the proposition were in favor. Wm. H. Burges wanted it submitted to the men only. A second amendment proposed to lay the whole matter on the table till the opinion of the Supreme Court could be taken on the constitutionality of Mr. Kneil's amendment. On February 1 there was a spirited discussion but finally both amendments were defeated, and the minority report in favor of the bill was substituted for the adverse majority report by a vote of 104 yeas, 90 nays.

On February 2 Senator Arthur H. Wellman urged the adoption of his order that the Justices of the Supreme Court should be required to give their opinion to the House on three questions:

1. Is it constitutional, in an act granting to women the right to vote in town and city elections, to provide that such act shall take effect throughout the commonwealth upon its acceptance by a majority of the voters of the commonwealth?

2. Is it constitutional to provide in such an act that it shall take effect in a city or town upon its acceptance by a majority of the voters of such city or town?

3. Is it constitutional to provide that such an act shall take effect throughout the commonwealth upon its acceptance by a majority of the voters of the commonwealth, including women specially authorized to register and vote upon this question?

Alfred S. Roe and the other leading advocates of Municipal Suffrage withdrew their opposition to the order, saying that they preferred the bill as it stood, but that if amendments were to be added to it at any subsequent stage it would be well to know whether they were constitutional. The order was adopted.

On March 3 four Justices of the Supreme Court--Field, Allen, Morton and Lathrop--answered "No" to all three questions. Justices Holmes and Barker answered "Yes" to all three; and Justice Knowlton answered "No" to the first and third and "Yes" to the second. These opinions were published in full in the Woman's Journal of March 10, 1894.

On March 14 Municipal Suffrage was discussed in open session. An amendment was offered to limit the right to taxpaying women and a substitute bill to allow women to vote at one election only. The latter was offered by Richard J. Hayes of Boston, who said, "You would see the lowest women literally driven to the polls by thousands by mercenary politicians. The object lesson would settle the question forever." The amendment and the substitute were lost and the bill was passed to its third reading by a vote, including pairs, of 122 yeas, 106 nays.

On March 29 the galleries were crowded with women. Richard Sullivan of Boston offered an additional section that the question be submitted to the men at the November election for an expression of opinion. This was adopted by 109 yeas, 93 nays. The bill to grant women Municipal Suffrage at once, irrespective of what the expression of opinion in November might be, was then passed to be engrossed, by a vote, including pairs, of 118 yeas, 107 nays. A motion to reconsider was voted down.

On April 5 the bill came up in the Senate. Floor and galleries were crowded and hundreds were turned away. Senator William B. Lawrence of Medford, a distiller, offered as a substitute for the bill a proposal to submit the question to the men at the November election for an expression of opinion as a guide to action by the next Legislature. He said it was absurd to grant women the suffrage first and call for an expression of opinion by the men afterward. The vote on the substitute was a tie, 19 yeas, 19 nays. To relieve the president of the Senate from the necessity of voting Senator John F. Fitzgerald changed his vote, but Senator Butler declined to be so relieved and gave his casting vote against the substitute. The bill for Municipal Suffrage was then defeated by 14 yeas, 24 nays.

The Boston Herald, of April 9, had an editorial entitled Liquor and Woman Suffrage, expressing satisfaction in the defeat of the bill but emphatic disapproval of the corrupt methods used against it in the Senate. A majority of the Senators had promised to vote for it but the Liquor Dealer's Association raised a large sum of money to accomplish its defeat, a persistent lobby worked against it and several Senators changed front. The Herald plainly intimated that the result was due to bribery.

The credit of the unusually good vote in the House in 1893 and '94 was largely due to Representative Alfred S. Roe of Worcester, an able member, highly esteemed and very popular, who worked for the bill with the utmost zeal and perseverance.

There were petitions this year from many different organizations representing a vast aggregate membership. On June 9 a bill to allow women to be notaries public was defeated in the Senate by 10 yeas, 12 nays.

1895.--On January 30 a great hearing was held in old Representatives' Hall at the State House, with floor, aisles and galleries crowded to the utmost capacity. Senator Alpheus M. Eldridge presided and Mrs. Livermore, as president of the State Association, conducted the hearing for the five organizations that appeared as petitioners. Addresses were made by Lady Henry Somerset, Mrs. Howe, Mr. Blackwell, Profs. Hayes and Webster of Wellesley College, Mrs. Fessenden, Mrs. Trask Hill, Mrs. Emily McLaughlin, Mrs. Boland, John Dean, F. C. Nash, Frank H. Foster, chairman of the legislative committee of the American Federation of Labor for Massachusetts, James F. Norton, the representative of 10,000 Good Templars.

No opposing petitions had been sent in but Thomas Russell appeared as attorney for the remonstrants and said: "Believing as they do that the proper place for women is not in public urging or remonstrating against legislation before public gatherings, but rather in the home, the hospital, the school, the public institution where sin and suffering are to be found and to be alleviated, they have not themselves appeared before you"--but had sent him.[319] Representative Roe said that the lawyer who had spoken for the remonstrants at the hearing of 1894 had received $500 for his services, and asked Mr. Russell if he appeared in the same capacity. He answered that no compensation had been promised him, and that he did not mean to accept any. He added: "I represent no organization, anything more than an informal gathering of ladies, and as for the numbers I can not state. But I do not come here basing my claim to be heard on the numbers of those who have asked me to appear. It is the justice of the cause which I speak upon that entitles me to a hearing, as it would if there were no one but myself."

Later twelve remonstrances were sent in, signed by 748 women. For suffrage there were 210 petitions from 186 towns and cities representing 133,111 individuals, men and women.

The opposition, alarmed by the large affirmative vote of 1894, this year put forth unprecedented efforts. Daily papers were paid for publishing voluminous letters against suffrage--sometimes of four columns--and an active and unscrupulous lobby worked against the bill. For the first time in history an anti-suffrage association was formed within the Legislature itself. Representatives Dallinger, Humphrey, Bancroft of Clinton, Eddy of New Bedford, and others, organized themselves into a society, elected a chairman and secretary and worked strenuously and systematically, making a thorough canvass of the House and pledging as many members as possible to vote "No."

The suffragists made the mistake of devoting their attention mainly to the Senate, where it was expected that the bill would come up first, and where it was believed that the main difficulty would be, but on March 5 the Municipal Suffrage Bill was brought up in the House. Every inch of space was crowded with spectators. After much discussion the bill was defeated by 137 yeas, 97 nays.

On March 13 a bill to raise the "age of protection" for girls from 16 to 18 years was defeated by 108 yeas, 55 nays.

On May 17 Senator Wellman's bill for a "mock referendum" was adopted by the Legislature. It proposed to take a vote of the men and women of the State on the question "Is it expedient that Municipal Suffrage should be extended to women?"

THE MOCK REFERENDUM: This is called by the advocates of equal rights a "mock referendum" because it was to have no legal validity and was to give the women nothing even if it should be carried in their favor. The Woman's Journal said:

Two years ago an amendment was added to the Municipal Suffrage Bill providing that it should become law when ratified by a vote of the majority of the men and women of the State. Nearly every opponent in the House voted against the bill after that amendment had been incorporated, showing clearly that they were not willing to let women have suffrage even if a majority of the men and women of the State should vote for it. It was then believed that such action would be constitutional. The Supreme Court afterwards gave its opinion that Municipal Suffrage could not be extended by a popular vote of either the men or the women, or both, but must be extended, if at all, by the Legislature. Following that decision, the opponents have become clamorous for a popular vote.

The suffragists, who, beginning in 1869, had petitioned year after year for the submission to the voters of a legal and straightforward constitutional amendment, which would give women the ballot if the majority voted for it, were disgusted with this sham substitution. Mrs. Livermore, the State president, declared that she would neither take part in the mock vote herself nor advise others to do so. This feeling was so general that at the last meeting of the executive committee of the W. S. A. for the season, in June, it was found impossible even to pass a resolution recommending those men and women who favored equal suffrage to go to the polls and say so.

A number of individual suffragists, however, believed that advantage should be taken of the chance to make an educational campaign and, as the Woman's Journal of June 8 said, "to use the opportunity for what it is worth as a means of agitation." Therefore a Suffrage Referendum State Committee was formed of more than fifty prominent men and women, including U. S. Senator Hoar, ex-Governor Long, the Hon. J. Q. A. Brackett, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Fannie B. Ames, Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, the editors of the Woman's Journal and others. Mrs. Mary Clarke Smith was employed as organizer, beginning July 10, and as good a campaign was made as the circumstances permitted. By the time the executive committee reassembled in October, every one had become convinced of the wisdom of this course, and the State Suffrage Association and the Referendum Committee worked hand in hand during the last few weeks before election. It was a disadvantage that the bill for the "mock referendum" was passed just before people went away for the summer, and that the vote was to be taken soon after they came back in the fall; nevertheless, a spirited campaign was made, a large number of meetings and rallies were held and a great quantity of literature was distributed.

About six weeks before election a Man Suffrage Association was formed with Francis C. Lowell as chairman, Thomas Russell as treasurer and Charles R. Saunders as salaried secretary.[320] This society was composed wholly of men. It sent out an enormous number of circulars and other documents, spent money like water, enlisted active political workers, utilized to a considerable extent the party "machines," and as far as possible secured a committee of men to work at each polling place on election day and roll up a large negative vote of men. It contained a number of influential politicians who displayed much skill in their tactics. They published a manifesto against equal rights signed by one hundred prominent men. The Woman's Journal, which printed this document on October 19, said:

In the main the protest represents merely money and social position. There are half-a-dozen names on it which it is a pity and a shame to see there. All the rest were to be expected. They are men whose opinion would be of weight on questions of stocks and bonds, but whose opinion on questions of moral reform has only a minus value.... Its signers have pilloried themselves for posterity. It is regarded as discourteous to-day to remind President Eliot of Harvard that his father was the only member of Congress from Massachusetts who voted for the Fugitive Slave Law. Forty years hence it will be regarded as cruel to remind the children of these gentlemen [among whom was President Eliot] that their fathers put their names to a protest against equal rights for women.

At first the two anti-suffrage associations, the men's and the women's, co-operated with the suffragists in getting up debates; but no man ever consented to take part in one against suffrage a second time, and toward the end of the campaign it became almost impossible to secure speakers in the negative. Both sides published appeals and counter-appeals and the question was discussed in the press, at public meetings and in social circles to an extent unprecedented in the history of the State. Even the advertisements in the street cars began with the query in large letters, Should Women Vote? in order to attract attention to a particular brand of soap, etc.

During the early part of the canvass the opponents of suffrage circulated pledges for signature by women promising to vote "No" in November,[321] but they soon became convinced that in trying to get out a large vote of women against suffrage they had undertaken more than they could accomplish. The Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women supplied in plate form to a large number of State papers a series of articles one of which urged women to express themselves against suffrage, warned them that "silence will be cited as consent," and said: "It is our duty in any clear and forcible way that presents itself, to say 'I am not sure that our country should run this enormous new risk.'"

The "antis" have since asserted that in saying "in any clear and forcible way that presents itself," they did not mean to include the most obvious way, i. e., by voting "No" when given an opportunity by the Legislature to do so. Later in the campaign they issued a manifesto declaring that they did not urge women to register or vote, and that silence was not to be interpreted as consent. And finally, just before registration closed in Boston and the other cities, when it was clear that the majority of women were not going to register to vote either way, they issued another manifesto urging women not to vote against suffrage!

This was a transparent device to conceal the fewness of their numbers, and they thus stultified all their previous professions, as they had asserted for years that whenever women were given the right to vote on an important question it would be their duty to do so, irrespective of their personal inclinations, and it was in order to save women from this burden that their enfranchisement was opposed. If they could have brought out an overwhelming vote of women against equal suffrage, of course they would have done so. Since they could not, it was their policy to advise women not to express themselves and thus let the few who were strongly opposed be confounded with the mass of those who were indifferent. The Man Suffrage Association, which professed to be working in full harmony with the women's organization, declared in small and inconspicuous type that it did not urge women to take the trouble to register, merely for the sake of expressing themselves on the referendum, but that it did urge those who voted at all to vote "No." It published a circular giving reasons "why women and the friends of women should vote no," and it covered walls and fences from one end of the State to the other with huge placards bearing in enormous letters the words, "Men and Women, Vote No!"

The main object of this association, however, was not to get an expression of opinion from the women (which would weigh little either way) but to influence the Legislature through a large negative vote from the men. Mr. Saunders was reported in an interview in the Boston Herald as saying that the women who took the trouble to vote at all would probably vote in favor ten to one (it proved to be twenty-five to one), but that if the men would give a good majority against it the Legislature could be relied upon to defeat a genuine amendment for years.

The suffragists spent only $1,300 during the entire canvass. The Man Suffrage Association never made the sworn report of its receipts and expenditures which the law requires of every campaign committee, although even the papers opposed to suffrage exhorted it to do so and warned it that it was placing itself in a false position by refusing, but the treasurer published an unsworn statement, not of his receipts but of his general expenditures, by which it appeared that the association, during the six weeks of its existence, spent $3,576. In addition large sums were expended by the women's anti-suffrage association, which, not being a campaign committee but a permanent society, was under no legal obligation to file a statement.

The "mock referendum" was voted on at the State election, Nov. 5, 1895, receiving 108,974 yeas, 187,837 nays. Men cast 86,970 yeas, 186,115 nays; women cast 22,204 yeas, 861 nays. Forty-eight towns gave a majority for equal suffrage, two were a tie, and in several the adverse majority was only one or two votes, and yet in most of these towns no suffrage league existed, and in some of them no suffrage meeting ever had been held.

The number of men who voted in the affirmative was a general surprise. A leaflet by one of the leading remonstrants, circulated during the campaign, asserted that "not one citizen of sound judgment in a hundred is in favor of woman suffrage;" but nearly one-third of the male voters who expressed themselves declared for it. There was the smallest affirmative vote in the most disreputable wards of Boston. Nearly 2,000 more votes of men were cast for suffrage than had been cast for prohibition in 1889. The proportion of votes in favor was almost twice as large as in Rhode Island, the only other New England State in which the question had been submitted, although in that there was no anti-suffrage association in the field. Outside of Boston the largest negative vote by women was cast in Cambridge and Newton, which have the reputation of being remonstrant strongholds. In 238 of the 322 towns not one woman voted "No." In most of these the anti-suffrage association had no branches, and there is no reason to suppose that the women ever had heard of its eleventh-hour advice to women not to vote. In every county, and in every Congressional, Senatorial and Representative district the women's vote was in favor at least ten to one. The "mock referendum" answered the main purpose of its promoters, however, for it did seriously cut down the vote for suffrage in the Legislature for several years thereafter, but it made a host of converts among the people at large and gave a fresh impetus to the activity of the State Suffrage Association, which ever since has steadily grown in membership.

* * * * *

1896--The usual petitions for suffrage were presented from 79 cities and towns, with 7,780 signatures. The Joint Special Committee on Woman Suffrage, which had been appointed annually for many years, was discontinued, with the good result that the suffragists ever since have had their hearings before two more influential committees, those on Constitutional Amendments and on Election Laws. On February 26 the latter gave a hearing for Municipal Suffrage. Mr. Blackwell opened the case for the petitioners and the usual number of fine addresses were made. Thomas Russell spoke for the remonstrants, and Miss Blackwell replied to him. On February 27 the Committee on Constitutional Amendments gave a hearing. Addresses were made by Mrs. Howe, Mr. Garrison, the Rev. Florence E. Kollock, Oswald Garrison Villard, Mr. Ernst, Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows, Miss Cora A. Benneson and Clyde Duniway, formerly of Oregon. Mr. Russell again spoke for the remonstrants and was answered by Miss Blackwell, Miss Gail Laughlin and Mrs. Mary Clarke Smith.

On March 4 a hearing was given to the petitioners for License Suffrage. Just after the hearing closed Mr. Russell arrived to remonstrate, but too late.

On March 9 a hearing was given on the petition of the State W. S. A. that the times of registration should be the same for women (school) voters as for men.

The Committee on Constitutional Amendments recommended that the question of submitting a suffrage amendment be referred to the next Legislature--three dissenting and favoring its submission this year. On March 23 consideration of the question was voted down and the yeas and nays were refused.

On March 31 and April 1 License Suffrage was discussed and finally defeated by 93 yeas, 116 nays, including pairs.

The Committee on Election Laws reported in favor of Municipal Suffrage but the bill was defeated.

The Supreme Court decided that women could not be made notaries public because they are not distinctly named as eligible in the State constitution.

Thomas F. Keenan, an opponent of woman suffrage, introduced a bill to license houses "for commercial sexual intercourse," which he alone voted for.[322]

1897--It was decided to ask this year for a thorough revision and equalization of the statutes bearing on domestic relations, in view of the fact that the last Legislature had appointed a committee of lawyers to revise and codify the laws. Especial attention was called to the need of a law making fathers and mothers joint guardians of their children. Mr. Ernst, in behalf of the association, prepared a bill equalizing the property rights of husbands and wives. Mr. Russell, in behalf of the M. A. O. F. E. S. W. (which had for years been circulating leaflets declaring that the laws of Massachusetts were already more than just to women) prepared a bill tending in a similar direction; and a Judge of Probate prepared a more limited bill. All three appeared before the revising committee and, after repeated conferences, a bill making some improvements was recommended by the committee and enacted by the Legislature, but with a proviso that it should not go into effect until the following year, in order that the next Legislature might have a chance to amend it.

On February 10 the committee gave a hearing to the petitioners for the submission of an amendment to enfranchise women. It was addressed by Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Cheney, Mrs. Boland, the Rev. Thomas Scully, the Rev. Mr. Ames, the Rev. Augusta Chapin, Miss Blackwell and others. No remonstrants appeared. The committee reported favorably, but on February 18 the bill was defeated by 74 yeas, 107 nays.

On February 24 the Committee on Election Laws heard arguments for Municipal and Presidential Suffrage, and also on the petition of the W. C. T. U. for License Suffrage. The committee had before it 144 largely signed petitions for suffrage and none against it. Mrs. Howe and Mr. Blackwell spoke in behalf of the measures asked for by the suffrage association, and a large number of prominent women for the W. C. T. U. Mr. Russell, Mrs. J. Elliott Cabot, Frank Foxcroft, Miss Dewey, Dr. Walter Channing, Mrs. A. J. George, A. Lawrence Lowell and Miss Mary A. J. McIntyre spoke against all three bills. Miss Blackwell, at the close, replied in behalf of both associations. Members of the committee asked the president of the anti-suffrage association, Mrs. Cabot, and almost all the women who spoke on that side whether they would vote for or against license if they had the ballot. Everyone answered that she would vote for license. Mr. Russell had declared that if women were allowed to vote, "no license would be carried in every town and city of the commonwealth, contrary to the will of the people." The committee gave a majority report against all the bills.

On March 10 the question of accepting the adverse report on License Suffrage came up in the Legislature. The vote stood, 100 yeas, 100 nays, and Speaker John L. Bates gave his casting vote in favor of substituting the bill for the adverse report. On March 18 the question was debated and the vote resulted in 108 yeas, 125 nays. There was much public interest and a lively discussion in the papers. Municipal and Presidential Suffrage were lost without a roll-call. A bill to make the Boston School Board appointive instead of elective, which would have deprived women of their School Suffrage, was defeated.

1898--The hearing on February 2 was conducted by Mr. Blackwell for the petitioners; Mr. Russell for the remonstrants. A letter from ex-Gov. William Claflin in favor of suffrage was read. Mrs. Anna Christy Fall, Mr. Garrison, ex-U. S. Attorney Frank B. Allen, Mrs. Helen Adelaide Shaw, Dr. A. E. Winship, editor of the Journal of Education, and others spoke for suffrage; Mrs. Arthur D. Gilman, Mrs. Egbert C. Smythe, Mrs. Rothery of Wellesley, Mrs. Lincoln R. Stone and Mrs. George against it. Miss Blackwell replied for the petitioners. The committee reported "leave to withdraw." On February 14, after debate in the House of Representatives, the vote stood 44 yeas, 97 nays.

On February 23 the committee gave a hearing on Municipal Suffrage and on License Suffrage, both of which were eloquently urged. Mrs. Cabot, Mrs. Charles E. Guild, the Rev. Thomas Van Ness, the Rev. Reuen Thomas, Mrs. Henry F. Durant, Mrs. William T. Sedgwick, Mr. Foxcroft and Mr. Russell spoke in opposition. Municipal Suffrage was not debated, but after discussion on March 10 and 11, in the House of Representatives, the vote on License Suffrage, including pairs, stood 60 yeas, 116 nays.

The record for 1899 and 1900 presented no variations except that a number of local associations petitioned for Municipal Suffrage for Taxpaying Women. The State association did not officially ask for this, though the majority of its officers favored the measure. The annual hearings were given, the usual large crowds were in attendance, the ablest men and women in the State advocated the granting of suffrage, those heretofore mentioned spoke in opposition,[323] and the negative vote was in about the same proportion as before the "remonstrants" made their appearance.[324]

LAWS: Until 1845 the women of Massachusetts suffered to the fullest extent the barbarities of the English Common Law. After that date the changes were gradual but very slow. From 1884 there was but little improvement in the property laws until 1899, when a radical revision was effected by a legislative committee and approved by the Legislature. As there was to be a general revision of the statutes and the new book would not be issued until Jan. 1, 1902, it was decided that all should go into effect at that date. The new property law for women provides as follows: No distinction is made between real and personal property in distributing the estate. The surviving husband or wife takes and holds one-third if the deceased leaves children or their descendants; $5,000 and one-half of the remaining estate if the deceased leaves no issue; and the whole if the deceased leaves no kindred. This is taken absolutely and not for life. Curtesy and dower have not been abolished but the old-time curtesy, which is a life interest in the whole of a deceased wife's real estate, is cut down to a life interest in one-third, the same as dower; and in order to be entitled to dower or curtesy the surviving husband or wife must elect to take it in preference to abiding by the above provisions.

Either husband or wife can make a will under the new law without the consent of the other, but the survivor, if not satisfied with the will of the deceased, can waive it within a year and take the same share of the estate that he (or she) would have taken if there had been no will, except that, if he would thus become entitled to more than $10,000 in value, he shall receive, in addition to that amount, only the income during his life of the excess of his share of such estate above that amount; and except that, if the deceased leaves no kindred, he, upon such waiver, shall take the interest he would have taken if the deceased had died leaving kindred but no issue.

A discretionary amount may be assigned by the Probate Court to the widow for the support of herself and minor children and takes precedence of the debts of the deceased. The old law took this allowance out of the personal estate only, and often the widow was not able to receive the immediate assistance she needed, because the property was all in the form of real estate. The new law permits the real estate to be used if necessary. It also gives $100 to a minor child for his immediate necessities, if there is no widow; the old law gave $50. The new law permits the widow to remain in her husband's house for six months after his death. The old law gave her only forty days.

A married woman has full control of her separate property, and can dispose of her real estate subject only to the husband's interests. If she has been deserted or if the court has decreed that she is living apart from him for justifiable cause, she can by will or deed dispose of all her real and personal estate as if unmarried. The husband can do the same.

A married woman can be executor, administrator, guardian or trustee. She may make contracts with any one except her husband; may sue and be sued, carry on business in her own name, by complying with the legal requirements; control and invest her earnings and enter into partnerships. She is responsible for her contracts and debts and her property may be held for them. The husband is not liable on any judgments recovered against the wife alone, and her separate property is not liable on any judgment or execution against the husband. Suits between husband and wife are not allowed except for divorce.

The father is the legal guardian of the persons and estates of minor children; he has power to dispose of them during the lifetime of the mother and may appoint a guardian at his death.[325]

For non-support of wife and minor children the husband may be fined not exceeding $20 or imprisoned in the house of correction not exceeding six months. At the discretion of the court the fine is paid in whole or part to the town, city, society or person actually supporting such wife and children. (1893.)

The "age of protection" for girls was raised from 10 to 13 years in 1886; to 14 in 1888; to 16 in 1893. The penalty is imprisonment in the State prison for life or for any term of years, or for any term in any other penal institution in the commonwealth. This may be one day in the city jail.

Among various laws passed in the interests of women was one in 1895 making army nurses eligible to receive State aid. One of 1896 requires the State to inter the wife or widow of an honorably discharged soldier, sailor or marine who served during the Civil War, if she did not leave sufficient means for funeral expenses, provided she was married prior to 1870. In 1900 it was enacted that the State should perform a similar service for the mothers of said soldiers, sailors or marines, and that this should not be with the pauper dead, in either case.

Massachusetts has detailed laws regarding the employment of women, among them one restricting the hours of work in any mercantile establishment to fifty-eight in a week, except in retail stores during the month of December. Ten hours is a legal workday for women in general.

Separate houses of detention are required for women prisoners in cities of over 30,000.[326]

SUFFRAGE: The original charter of Massachusetts in 1691 did not exclude women from voting. In 1780 the first constitution prohibited them from voting except for certain officers. The new constitution of 1820 limited the suffrage strictly to males.

In 1879 the Legislature enacted that a woman twenty-one years of age, who could give satisfactory evidence as to residence and who could stand the educational test (i. e., be able to read five lines of the constitution and write her name), and who should give notice in writing to the assessors that she wished to be assessed a poll tax (two dollars) and should give in under oath a statement of her taxable property (which was not required of men, as they had the option of letting the assessors guess at the amount) should thereupon be assessed and should be entitled to register and vote for members of school boards.[327] In order to keep her name on the registration list this entire process had to be repeated every year, while a man's name once placed on the list was kept there without further effort on his part, and the payment of the same poll tax entitled him to full suffrage.

In 1881 the poll tax was reduced to fifty cents, and the law was changed so that women's names should remain on the registration list so long as they continued to reside and pay their taxes in the place where they were registered. Even now, however, it requires constant watchfulness on their part to have this done. In 1890 the poll tax as a prerequisite for voting was abolished for men, and in 1892 for women. Only a few weeks in each year were set apart when women might register until 1898, when it was enacted that the time of registration should be the same for both.

The School Suffrage includes only a vote for members of the school board and not for supervisors, appropriations or any questions connected with the public schools. Women are not authorized to attend caucuses or have any voice in nominations of school officers. As they were thus deprived of all voice in selecting candidates, an association, Independent Women Voters, was formed in Boston in 1889 by Mrs. Eliza Trask Hill, who served as president until 1896, when she removed from the city, and Mrs. Sarah J. Boyden has filled the office since then. This organization, which was entered at the registration office as a political party, holds a caucus in each ward between January 1 and April 1 every year and nominates candidates for the School Board. Such nomination by 100 or more legal voters entitles their names to be placed on the Australian ballot. Some of the nominees of the Independent Women Voters are often accepted by the regular parties, but even when this is refused they are sometimes elected over the Republican or Democratic candidates.

Because of the conditions attached and the small privilege granted it is remarkable that any considerable number of women should have voted during these past years. When School Suffrage was first granted, in 1879, only 934 women voted, and for the first seven years the average was only 940. Since then there has been a large increase of interest. During the past seven years the number never has fallen below 5,000. In 1898, 5,201 women voted; in 1899, 7,090; in 1900, 9,542; and this year (1901) there were 15,545 names on the register and 11,620 voted. The highest number was reached in 1888, when under special circumstances 25,279 women were registered and 19,490 voted.

OFFICE HOLDING: Women have served as School Committee (trustees) since 1874. For some time previous to 1884 they could hold by appointment the offices of overseers of the poor, trustees of public libraries, school supervisors, members of the State Boards of Education and of Health, Lunacy and Charity, without special legislation. It was required that there should be women on the boards of the three State Primary and Reform Schools, State workhouse, State almshouse and Board of Prison Commissioners, and that certain managers and officers of the Reformatory Prison for Women at Sherborn should be women.

In 1884 a bill was passed requiring the appointment of two women on the board of every Hospital for the Insane and one woman physician for each. In 1885 it was enacted that women might be assistant registers of deeds; in 1886 that they might be elected overseers of the poor. In 1887 a law was passed requiring police matrons in all cities of 30,000 inhabitants or more. There had been matrons in Boston fifteen years.

In 1890 the Supreme Court decided that a woman could not act as notary public. In 1891 it was enacted that there should be women factory inspectors; in 1895 that a woman could be appointed assistant town or city clerk; in 1896 that county commissioners might appoint a woman clerk pro tempore!

The evolution of the Special Commissioner shows the laborious processes by which women make any gains in Massachusetts. In 1883 a law was passed that women attorneys could be appointed Special Commissioners to administer oaths, take depositions and acknowledge deeds. In 1889 it was amended to give Special Commissioners the same powers as justices of the peace in the above respects and also that of issuing summonses for witnesses. In 1896 it was provided that any woman over twenty-one, the same as any man, whether a lawyer or not, could be appointed commissioner; a change of name by marriage should terminate her commission but should not disqualify her for re-appointment. In 1898 the powers were extended to appointments of appraisers of estates. In 1899 the powers of the Special Commissioner were made coincident with those of justice of the peace, but the authority to perform the marriage ceremony was taken from justices generally and is now given to specified ones only.

Women can not be justices of the peace. They may be appointed by the State to take acknowledgments of deeds but not to perform the marriage ceremony unless regularly ordained ministers.

Women at present are serving on State Boards as follows: Commissioners of Prisons, Charity and Free Public Library--two each; trustees of Insane Hospitals at Danvers, Northampton, Taunton, Worcester and Medfield--two each, and at Westborough, three; School for Feeble-minded, one; Hospital for Epileptics, two; for Dipsomaniacs and Inebriates, one; Hospital Cottages for Children, one; State Hospital and State Farm, two; Lyman and Industrial Schools, two.

It has been impossible to ascertain the number of women serving as School Trustees later than 1898. Then the records showed 194 on boards in 138 towns, but, as in many cases only the initials of the prefixes to the names were given, this is probably an underestimate. Women serve on the boards of public libraries.

Women are found in the following official positions in Boston: trustees of public institutions, two; of children's institutions, three; of insane hospitals, two; of bath departments, two; overseers of the poor, two; city conveyancer in law department, one; Superior Court stenographer, one; probation officers, two; chief matron House of Detention, one; supervisor of schools, one; members of school committee, four.

OCCUPATIONS: Massachusetts claims the first woman who ever practiced medicine in the United States--Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, who studied with her father and began in 1835, long before a medical college in the country was open to women. In 1881 Lelia J. Robinson applied for admission to the bar in Boston and the Supreme Court decided a woman to be ineligible. The Legislature of 1892 enacted that women should be admitted to the practice of law. No professions or occupations are now legally forbidden to them.

EDUCATION: One of the first seminaries for women in the United States was Mt. Holyoke at South Hadley, Mass., now a college with 550 students; the largest college for women in the world is Smith at Northampton, with 1,131 students; one that ranks among the four highest in existence, Wellesley, has 819; Radcliffe at Cambridge, has 407. The requirements of admission and the examinations are the same for Radcliffe as for Harvard and the courses of instruction are identical. The teaching is done by members of the Harvard faculty, over one hundred of them. All degrees must be approved by the President and Fellows of Harvard, the diplomas are countersigned by the President and bear the University seal. Nevertheless Radcliffe is not recognized as having any official connection with the ancient university. A number of graduate courses in Harvard are open to women but without degrees.

Boston University, with 1,430 students, is co-educational in all its departments, including law, medicine and theology. The same is true of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the State Agricultural College. There has been no distinction of sex in Tufts College (Univers.) since 1892; or in Clark University (post-graduate) in Worcester, since 1900. The College of Physicians and Surgeons and Tufts Colleges of Medicine and Surgery, in Boston, admit women. They are excluded from Andover Theological Seminary (Cong'l), Newton Theological Institute (Baptist), Amherst College, Williams College and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

In the public schools there are 1,197 men and 12,205 women teachers. The average monthly salary of the men is $136.23; of the women, $51.41. Omitting the High School salaries, the average amount paid to men per month is $130.09; to women, $49.61. In some counties over one-half as much is paid to women teachers as to men, but in Essex County the monthly ratio is $127.82 to men, and $47.17 to women, and in Suffolk County $200.07 to men and $63.44, or less than one-third, to women. Boston has 215 men teachers at an average monthly salary of $213.61; and 1,762 women at an average of $69.68. In no other State is the discrepancy so great in the salary of men and women teachers.

The women's clubs of Massachusetts are as the sands of the sea. Of these 169, with a membership of 21,451, belong to the State Federation. The New England Woman's Club was organized in 1868, the same year as Sorosis in New York and about one month earlier. These two are generally spoken of as the pioneers of women's clubs as they exist to-day.

THE NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION OF MASSACHUSETTS.[328]

When the third volume of the History of Woman Suffrage closed in 1885 it left this association three years old, with Mrs. Harriette Robinson Shattuck, president, Dr. Salome Merritt, vice-president, and thirteen other vice-presidents who represented the same number of counties. To these leaders and others it seemed necessary that Massachusetts should have this society in order to give a support to the officers and the methods of the National Woman Suffrage Association, which they were not receiving from the State society, at that time auxiliary to the American Association. In those three years conventions had been held in some twenty cities.

Mrs. Harriet M. Emerson was then engaged in preparing petitions, to which she secured many signers, asking for "a statute to enable a widow who desires it, to become on reasonable terms a co-executor with those appointed by her husband's will." For several years she spent much time on this work and had the help of many of the best citizens of Boston. It was ably presented at each session of the Legislature, but no action was taken.[329]

Mrs. Harriet H. Robinson, the corresponding secretary, has published Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement, The New Pandora, a woman's play, Capt. Mary Miller, etc.; Mrs. Shattuck, The Woman's Manual of Parliamentary Law, Advanced Rules for Large Assemblies. Another member, Mrs. Sara A. Underwood, has done valuable work on the newspapers of Boston, New York and other cities, and before the Legislature. The writings of Mrs. Evaleen L. Mason are well known.

In 1888 certain historical text-books which were objected to by the Roman Catholics were removed from the schools and replaced by others. This caused great excitement, over 25,000 women registered to vote, and for two successive years helped to defeat all the Catholic candidates for the school board and to elect a number of women. The members of this association maintained the non-partisan side and opposed the extremists who urged that Catholics should be excluded from the board, thus depriving it of some of its most experienced and faithful men.

In April, 1888, the association applied for a charter and became the first incorporated body of woman suffragists in the State. In December a petition was sent to Congress asking for an amendment to the United States Constitution prohibiting disfranchisement on account of sex.

In 1889 a petition from this association was introduced in the Legislature to require assessors to ask at every house whether there are women there who wish to be assessed a poll tax. A petition was also sent in for a law providing that one-third of the membership of the school committee consist of women. These were presented by Mr. Barker of Malden.

At the eighth annual meeting in May, 1890, C. W. Ernst gave an instructive address on political topics.

In October, 1891, a special meeting was called to discuss the question of discontinuing auxiliaryship to the National-American Association, and continuing work as an independent organization. After a full discussion the vote resulted in remaining auxiliary, only one opposed.

In March, 1892, a plan was laid before the association by Dr. Merritt for action in the various cities and towns of the State to secure the nomination in caucuses of such senators and representatives only as would declare themselves in favor of woman suffrage. A committee was formed to confer with other organizations, and at the next meeting it reported that the Boston Suffrage League, Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick, president, had approved the plan and called a meeting where nine wards were represented and a compact signed. In May this agreement was adopted by the Suffolk County Committee, who were to work in Boston while the association was to manage outside counties. One thousand copies were printed and circulated but the final results showed not enough interest to make the measure a success.

At this time Mrs. Shattuck resigned the presidency, "being engaged in work more imperative," and Mrs. Robinson gave up her office of corresponding secretary. At the October meeting Miss Hatch was elected a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Columbian Exposition. Mrs. Sarah A. P. Dickerman acted as president during the remainder of the year. Valuable discussions were held on State and National Banks, Should the Governor Exercise the Veto Power? Shall Immigration Be Restricted? Which Would Benefit Boston Most, License or No License? and other timely questions.

In January, 1893, it was voted to petition the Legislature that women be allowed to vote on a constitutional amendment affecting their property rights. A special effort was made in petition work both for Congress and the Legislature. In one small village where forty-two signatures were obtained, only four persons refused to sign. In May Dr. Merritt was unanimously elected president of the association, and remained in office until her death in 1900. At this meeting a statement was made that in Massachusetts there were from 105,000 to 110,000 families with widows or single women as heads, not represented by one vote. In December a committee was appointed to confer with the legislative committee of the State School Suffrage Association to secure an extension of the time (then only two or three days) which was allotted to the registration of women.

At the legislative hearing in January, 1894, petitions were presented by this association from seven counties, covering twenty-one towns. At this date 186 women were reported as holding office, eleven being district superintendents of schools. The following May the registration laws were so changed that women have since had the same time as men in which to register. Under the present law, the assessors in their regular rounds are required to take the names of women voters having the same residence as on a previous voting list. These are then entered on the register for the ensuing campaign without further trouble.

In September, 1895, a special meeting was called to decide how best to help the work for the referendum which had been submitted by the Legislature in order to ascertain how many women desired to vote. Twenty-five dollars were appropriated toward defraying the expenses of the State committee appointed to conduct this campaign.

In 1896 much time was spent on measures helpful to women and children. One of these was to secure the early closing of stores, the result being that through the entire summer all the principal stores in Boston were closed at 5 P. M. every day, and on Saturdays at 12 M., as they have been each summer since.

House Bill 625 of 1896 started with a most innocent appearance under the title, "A bill to enlarge the powers of the police commissioners of Boston." In reality it asked that the powers of the police force be so extended as to allow them to issue permits for the keeping of houses of ill-repute, with authority for their inspection and control. Other organizations joined this one in opposition, with the result that the bill was defeated.

The association also advocated "A bill to prohibit child insurance," on account of the injury done to families by absorbing the means which should be expended for food, clothes and other necessaries in the payment of policies. It was considered, moreover, in the nature of a premium for child murder by neglect.

The most interesting event of 1898 was the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention. Dr. Merritt spoke of the rise of the movement, saying that 1848 was as marked an epoch in the rights of women as was 1776 in the rights of men. Miss Hatch's paper gave the trend of events previous to the Seneca Falls Convention, showing that these molded public sentiment and gave rise to the calling of this memorable meeting. Speeches, letters from absent members and a roll of honor, each giving the name of an old worker and adding appropriate remarks, followed.

In addition to the usual petitions was one to Congress in behalf of the Hawaiian women. A protest was also sent against the admission to Congress of Brigham H. Roberts of Utah, a polygamist and an enemy to woman suffrage.

Since 1884 this association has held 128 public meetings. It has been represented by active working delegates at every convention of the National Association since becoming an auxiliary in 1882. The recording secretary has held that office for seventeen years, never having been absent from a monthly meeting unless because of illness or attendance at the national conventions. She has been a delegate to the latter for fourteen years.

This association did much pioneer press work. From its first session a report of the same, with items made up of whatever had occurred in any part of the world advantageous to woman's advancement since the previous meeting, has appeared next day in the leading Boston dailies, with scarcely an omission during the eighteen years.

Besides those already mentioned the following have held office and been faithful workers: Mesdames A. M. Mahony, Sarah A. Rand and Lydia L. Hutchins; and the Misses Hannah M. Todd, Elizabeth B. Atwill, Charlotte Lobdell, Agnes G. Parrott and Sophia M. Hale. In 1901 the society united with the Massachusetts State Association.

FOOTNOTES:

[303] The History is indebted for the material for this chapter to Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, editor of the Woman's Journal (Boston) and recording secretary of the National American Woman Suffrage Association since 1890. It is due to the Woman's Journal, founded in 1869, that so complete a record of the State work has been obtained.

[304] See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. I, p. 215.

[305] Among many names which appear in connection with these annual meetings are those of the Revs. Daniel P. Livermore, Charles W. Wendte, S. S. Herrick, Philip S. Moxom, Charles F. Thwing, L. B. Bates, F. A. Abbott, S. W. Bush, William J. Potter, C. P. Pitblado, George Willis Cooke, Fielder Israel, Eben L. Rexford, Christopher R. Eliot, David A. Gregg, Edward A. Horton, B. F. Hamilton, George A. Gordon, Charles F. Dole, Nathan E. Wood, W. W. Lucas, the Revs. Ida C. Hultin, Lorenza Haynes, Mary Traffern Whitney, Lila Frost Sprague, J. W. Clarke, of the Boston Traveller, D. H. Beggs, President of the Central Labor Union, Judge Robert Pitman, the Hon. Joseph H. Walker, Francis J. Garrison, John Graham Brooks, John L. Whiting, Sam Walter Foss, Sherman Hoar, W. L. Haskel, Mesdames Martha Perry Lowe, E. N. L. Walton, Martha Sewall Curtis, O. A. Cheney, Ellie A. Hilt, Abby M. Davis, Judith W. Smith, Misses Anna Gardner, Lucia T. Ames, Eva Channing, Amorette Beecher, Alice Parker, all of Massachusetts. The Rev. J. W. Bashford, Delaware College, Ohio, the Rev. Florence E. Kollock, Illinois, Mrs. Caroline M. Severance, California, Mrs. Helen Coffin Beedy, Mrs. Etta H. Osgood, Maine, U. S. Senator Henry W. Blair, Mrs. Armenia S. White, Miss Mary N. Chase, New Hampshire, Mrs. M. L. T. Hidden, Mrs. A. D. Chandler, Vermont, Mrs. Elizabeth B. Chace, Dr. John C. Wyman, Dr. Ira Aldrich, Jeanette S. French, Louise Tyler, Rhode Island, Mesdames Emily O. Kimball, Josephine M. Bissell, Emily J. Leonard, Annie C. S. Fenner, Judge Joseph and Miss Elizabeth Sheldon, Connecticut, Mrs. Cornelia Collins Hussey, New Jersey, Judge William S. Peirce, Philadelphia, Miss Anna Gordon, Illinois, Dr. Ida Joe Brooks, Arkansas, Ellis Meredith, Denver, Giles B. Stebbins, Michigan, Lloyd McKim Garrison, New York, Amelia B. Edwards, Mrs. Percy Widdrington, England.

[306] As this board was continued for many years with but little change, and as it indicates clearly the personnel of the association, the remainder is given in full. Vice presidents, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, John G. Whittier, U. S. Senator George F. Hoar, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, Theodore D. Weld, ex Gov. William Claflin, Judge Samuel E. Sewall, William Lloyd Garrison, Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Hon. John Hopkins, Miss Abby W. May, A. Bronson Alcott, Marie E. Zakrzewska, M. D., Col. Thomas W. Higginson, Miss Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Wendell Phillips, Miss Louisa M. Alcott, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Mrs. Adelaide A. Claflin, the Rev. William I. Haven, Judge Thomas Russell, Lucy Sewall, M. D., Robert C. Pitman, George A. Walton, Mrs. C. B. Redmund, Charles W. Slack, Seth Hunt, Mrs. Eliza K. Church, the Rev. Jesse H. Jones, Uretta McAllister, Julia M. Baxter; recording secretary, Charles K. Whipple; treasurer, Miss Amanda M. Lougee; executive committee, Mrs. Lucy Stone, chairman, Mrs. Mary C. Ames, Miss Mary F. Eastman, Mrs. Judith W. Smith, Mrs. Henrietta L. T. Wolcott, Mrs. W. I. Bowditch, Mrs. S. E. M. Kingsbury, Mrs. E. N. L. Walton, Mrs. S. C. Vogl, S. C. Hopkins, Mrs. E. P. Nickles, Mrs. Fenno Tudor, Dr. J. T. Leonard, Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, Miss Eva Channing, the Rev. J. W. Bashford, Mrs. Harriet W. Sewall, Miss Kate Ireson, Frederick A. Claflin, Arthur P. Ford, Miss M. Ada Molineux, S. Frank King, Miss Cora Scott Pond, J. Avery Howland.

[307] In the 111 Granges of the State, 70 women were secretaries and 39 lecturers this year.

[308] Mrs. Helen Campbell spoke on Women in Industry, Mrs. Howe on Women in Literature, the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell on Women in the Ministry, Mrs. Charlotte Emerson Brown, president of the General Federation, on Women's Clubs, Mrs. Susan S. Fessenden, president of the State W. C. T. U., on Women's Work for Temperance, Mary A. Greene, LL. B., on Women in Law, Dr. Emily Blackwell on Women in Medicine, Mrs. Sallie Joy White, late president of the New England Women's Press Association, on Women in Journalism, and Miss Eastman on Steps in Education for Girls from Dame School to College. The opportunities for women at Vassar, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Boston University and Mt. Holyoke were presented respectively by Dr. Emma B. Culbertson, Prof. A. Eugenia Morgan, Miss Cora A. Benneson, Miss E. D. Hanscom and Miss Sarah P. Eastman, president of the Boston Mt. Holyoke Alumnae. Mrs. Cheney read a paper on Women in Hospitals and Miss Alla Foster gave reminiscences of her mother, Mrs. Abby Kelly Foster. Lucy Stone spoke on the Gains of Forty Years, Colonel Higginson on Landmarks of Progress, Mr. Blackwell on Kansas and Wyoming. Woman Suffrage by State and Federal Legislation; Mr. Garrison on Women Needed as Political Helpmeets; and the Rev. Ada C. Bowles on the Suffrage Revival in Worcester in 1869. Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates spoke on Suffrage, and the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer on Our Debt to the Pioneers.

Letters were read from U. S. Senators Joseph M. Carey and Francis E. Warren of Wyoming, ex-president James H. Fairchild of Oberlin, the Hon. Charles Robinson of Kansas, Thomas Davis, husband of Paulina Wright Davis, Francis G. Adams, secretary of the Kansas Historical Society, Theodore D. Weld, Mesdames Hannah M. Tracy Cutler, Elizabeth B. Chace, Frances H. Drake, Caroline Healy Dall, J. Elizabeth Jones, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Caroline M. Severance, Clara B. Colby, Miss Mary Grew, Miss Anna L. T. Parsons, Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England, and others.

[309] Mrs. Livermore, the Rev. Charles G. Ames, Mrs. Cheney, Prof. Ellen Hayes of Wellesley, the Hon. Alfred S. Roe, Mrs. Phebe Stone Beeman, Mrs. Sallie Joy White and Mr. M. H. Gulesian of Armenia, with a poem by Mr. Garrison.

[310] The best known of these names are included in the list of eminent persons in the Appendix.

[311] There were addresses by Fletcher Dobyns and Oswald Garrison Villard of Harvard, Miss Maud Thompson of Wellesley College, Edson Reifsnyder of Tufts, and Miss Mabel E. Adams, with music by the Boston Choral Society.

[312] Miss Elva Hurlburt Young, president of the senior class of Wellesley College, A. M. Kales and Raymond M. Alden of Harvard, W. H. Spofford Pittinger of Providence, R. I. A poem by Mrs. Stetson, Girls of To-day, was recited by Miss Marion Sherman of the Boston School of Oratory.

[313] Other officers have been Recording secretary, Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, treasurers, Miss Amanda M. Lougee, Mrs. Harriet W. Sewall, Francis J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, chairmen of the executive committee, Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs. Judith W. Smith, Miss Blackwell. Vice presidents for 1900 are the Hons. George F. Hoar, John D. Long, William Claflin, W. W. Crapo, Josiah Quincy, George A. O. Ernst, J. W. Candler, Lieut. Gov. John L. Bates, Col. T. W. Higginson, the Rev. George Willis Cooke, William I. Bowditch, William Lloyd Garrison, Prof. Ellen Hayes, Mesdames Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, Pauline Agassiz Shaw (Quincy A.), Oliver Ames, Fanny B. Ames, Abby Morton Diaz, Susan S. Fessenden, Ole Bull, Emma Walker Batcheller, Martha Perry Lowe, Mary Schlesinger, Miss Mary F. Eastman, Miss Lucia M. Peabody.

[314] Mr. Blackwell was corresponding secretary from 1871 to 1893, Miss Laura Moore of Vermont, one year, and Mrs. Ellen M. Bolles of Rhode Island, from 1894 to the present time, recording secretaries, Charles K. Whipple, Mrs. O. Augusta Cheney, Mrs. Ellie A. Hilt, Miss Eva Channing, treasurers, Mrs. Harriet W. Sewall, John L. Whiting, Miss Amanda M. Lougee, Francis J. Garrison. The vice presidents are the presidents and prominent members of the New England State Associations.

[315] Limited space has prevented any resume of the speeches made during these years in the conventions or before the legislative committees. The reader is referred to the files of the Woman's Journal which have been placed in a number of public libraries. The names of legislators who have advocated woman suffrage will be found at the close of Legislative Action.

[316] The one to the Republican members was signed by Alanson W. Beard, William Claflin, William W. Crapo, Henry L. Dawes, Frank P. Goulding, Thomas N. Hart, George F. Hoar, John D. Long, Samuel May, Adin Thayer and John G. Whittier; the other to the Democratic by Josiah G. Abbott, Edward Avery, John M. Corse, John E. Fitzgerald, John Hopkins, George E. McNeil, Bushrod Morse, Frederick O. Prince, Albert Palmer and Charles H. Taylor.

[317] These letters have been doing duty ever since, being quoted in adverse reports of congressional committees, Legislatures, speeches and documents of the opponents, etc.

[318] This was the last time Lucy Stone addressed a legislative committee. She had presented her first plea in 1857. Every year since 1869 she had made her annual pilgrimage to the State House to ask for the rights of women.

[319] The remonstrants in past years had gone repeatedly before legislative committees, and since 1897 they have appeared and spoken every year in opposition to any form of suffrage for women.

[320] Mr. Saunders, when asked by a reporter of the Boston Record if it was true that he received $150 per month for his services, declined to say, but stated that he should consider that a small amount, as he was giving practically all of his time and effort.

[321] The M. A. O. F. E. S. W. says that this was not done by the association officially. It was certainly done by some of its prominent members.

[322] On one occasion, after Mrs. Julia Ward Howe and her associates had made their appeals, Mr. Keenan referred to them in the legislative debate as "women masquerading in pants," and said, "I never knew a woman who loved her children or her home that wanted to vote."

[323] Dr. Lyman Abbott of New York, Miss Heloise E. Hersey, Miss Sarah E. Hunt, Mesdames Barrett Wendell, W. W. Vaughan, Judith Andrews, Nathaniel Payne, James H. Robbins, Frank B. Fay and Henry Thompson also "remonstrated."

[324] It seems desirable to preserve the names of those who have championed and voted for a measure so bitterly opposed. Those of the eighty four opponents may drop into oblivion. Honor roll Senators S. Stillman Blanchard, Arthur B. Breed, Gorham D. Gilman, Robert S. Gray, Charles H. Innes, Francis W. Kittridge, Joel D. Miller, Henry S. Milton, Joseph O. Neill, Isaac N. Nutter, Representatives John E. Abbott, Charles H. Adams, Frederick Atherton, Frank E. Badger, Thomas C. Batchelder, John L. Bates, Alanson W. Beard, Amos Beckford, Frank P. Bennett, Thomas W. Bicknell, John B. Bottum, Harvey L. Boutwell, George A. Brown, Walter J. D. Bullock, Edward B. Callender, James F. Carey, George D. Chamberlain, Albert Clarke, Charles Carleton Coffin, Henry Cook, Louis A. Cook, Charles U. Corey, Fred E. Crawford, Franklin Cross, Arthur B. Curtis, Francis W. Darling, William D. Dennis, Solomon K. Dexter, E. Walter Everett, George H. Fall, Frank E. Fitts, Jubal C. Gleason, Samuel L. Gracey, James W. Grimes, Thomas E. Grover, Luther Hall, Harris C. Hartwell, Martin E. Hawes, William R. Hayden, Alfred S. Hayes, Ehhu B. Hayes, Charles E. Haywood, Edmund Hersey, John Hildreth, John G. Horan, Charles R. Johnson, George R. Jones, William E. Judd, Alfred F. Kinney, John Larrabee, Mahlon R. Leonard, Frederic O. MacCartney, Samuel W. McCall, James H. Mellen, John M. Merriman, Charles H. Miller, Daniel L. Milliken, Charles P. Mills, Bushrod Morse, James J. Myers, H. Heustis Newton, Herbert C. Parsons, George W. Penniman, Francis C. Perry, Albert Poor, Josiah Quincy, Francis H. Raymond, Alfred S. Roe, (Judge) Thomas Russell, Thomas E. St. John, Howard K. Sanderson, Charles F. Shute, George T. Sleeper, Frank Smith, Metcalf J. Smith, George L. Soule, Eugene H. Sprague, Ezra A. Stevens, Hazard Stevens, Stephen S. Taft, George F. Tucker, John E. Turtle, O. W. H. Upham, Horace G. Wadlin, Jesse B. Wheeler, Frederick L. Whitmore, John W. Wilkinson, John A. Woodbury, Charles L. Young.

[325] In 1847 Lucy Stone began to advocate giving the mother equal guardianship of the children with the father. During the past thirty years the State Suffrage Association has repeatedly petitioned the Legislature to this effect. In 1902 many other organizations joined in the effort, and the petition for equal guardianship was indorsed by 34,000 women. The Committee on Probate and Chancery reported adversely. Representative George H. Fall's Equal Guardianship Bill was debated on two days and finally passed both Houses and was signed by Gov. W. Murray Crane in June.

The only society of women that has ever ranged itself publicly on the opposing side of this question is the Massachusetts Anti-Suffrage Association. For years it circulated with its official imprint a leaflet in defense of the law which excluded mothers from the custody and guardianship of their children.

[326] For information in regard to the laws the History is indebted to Mrs. Anna Christy (George H.) Fall, a practicing lawyer of Malden.

[327] This was purely class legislation, as the woman who had paid property tax was not required to pay poll-tax, and poor women could not vote without paying two dollars each year. The law was not asked for by the Suffrage Association.

[328] The History is indebted for this chapter to Miss Lavina Allen Hatch of East Pembroke, recording secretary of the association from its beginning in 1882, and also corresponding secretary from 1892.

[329] In 1884 the Boston Political Class was formed as an auxiliary. While the idea of such an educational scheme originated with Sara A. Underwood, its successful development is due to Harriette Robinson Shattuck, who became president of the class. Lavina Allen Hatch kept its records, and Dora Bascom Smith gave the use of her parlors for its fortnightly meetings.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XLVI. MICHIGAN.[330]

From the time of the defeat of the suffrage amendment to the State constitution in 1874 there was no central organization in Michigan for ten years, although a few local societies maintained an existence. Through a conjunction of these forces a convention was called at Flint, May 21, 1884, which resulted in the forming of a State Equal Suffrage Association, officered as follows: President, Mary L. Doe; vice-president, Gov. Josiah W. Begole; corresponding secretary, Nellie Walker; recording secretary, Fannie Holden Fowler; treasurer, Cordelia F. Briggs.

The second State convention was held in Grand Rapids, Oct. 7-9, 1885, with Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell in attendance. Letters were received from Susan B. Anthony, president of the National Association, and Thomas W. Palmer, U. S. Senator from Michigan. The latter said: "I hope that you will put forward the economic aspect of the question--its effect upon taxation. Women are the natural economists."

In lieu of the annual meeting in 1886 four political State conventions--Prohibition, Greenback, Republican and Democratic--were memorialized for a plank indorsing a Municipal Suffrage Bill. Sarah E. V. Emery appeared before the Prohibition convention, which adopted the plank. She also attended the Democratic, where she was invited to the platform and made a vigorous speech, which was received with applause, but the suffrage resolution was not adopted. Emily B. Ketcham attended the Republican convention but was refused a hearing before the Committee on Resolutions. After its report had been accepted friends obtained an opportunity for her to address the meeting, but she was received with considerable discourtesy. Mrs. Fowler secured the adoption of the plank by the Greenback convention.

The association met in the State House at Lansing, Jan. 13, 14, 1887. Miss Anthony, vice-president-at-large of the National Association, gave an address in Representative Hall. She was introduced by Gov. Cyrus G. Luce, and many senators and representatives were in the audience.[331]

The convention of 1888 took place in Bay City, June 6-8. The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw and Helen M. Gougar of Indiana addressed large audiences in the opera house on successive evenings. Immediately afterward a series of two days' meetings was held by Mrs. Gougar, assisted by May Stocking Knaggs, at Saginaw, Flint, Port Huron, Detroit, Battle Creek and Grand Rapids, societies being organized at several places.

In November the Association for the Advancement of Women met in Detroit. Many suffragists were in attendance and the State president, Mrs. Doe, called a council in the parlors of the Church of Our Father. Fifty responded and it was unanimously decided to renew the effort for Municipal Suffrage.

The annual meeting was held in the State House at Lansing, Jan. 19-21, 1889. A letter was received from Senator Palmer, enclosing a draft for $100 and saying: "Equal suffrage in municipal affairs means better statutes, better ordinances, better officers, better administration, lower taxation, happier homes and a better race." This generous gift enabled the association to keep a committee--Helen Philleo Jenkins, Harriet A. Cook, Mrs. Ketcham and Mrs. Knaggs--at the capital for several weeks, where they worked systematically to convert members and to secure victory.

The convention met at Detroit, Feb. 13, 14, 1890. Mrs. Doe, who had been the leader of the State forces since their organization, declined renomination and Mrs. Jenkins was chosen president.

The association convened at Lansing again Feb. 10-12, 1891; and its speakers were given a joint hearing in Representative Hall on the Municipal Suffrage Bill, which was then before the Legislature. Addresses were made by Harriet J. Boutelle, Belle M. Perry, Sarah E. V. Emery and Martha Snyder Root.

Miss Anthony was present at the State convention, which took place in Battle Creek, May 4, 5, 1892. Articles of incorporation were adopted and Mrs. Ketcham was elected president.

In June the State Republican Convention met at East Saginaw. Mrs. Ketcham, with Mrs. Doe, chairman of the legislative committee, pleaded before the Committee on Resolutions for recognition of this measure. They were courteously treated and when about to retire their opinion was asked on a list of resolutions presented from Genesee County, viz.: That women professors be appointed at Michigan University until their number should bear a fair proportion to the number of women students; that women be appointed on boards of control of the State penal, reformatory and charitable institutions; that Municipal Suffrage for women be recommended, and that an amendment to the State constitution, striking out the word "male" as a qualification for voters, be submitted to the electors. The ladies indorsed all except the fourth proposition, but none of them was adopted.

After the nominations for the Legislature had been made, letters were written to candidates of all parties to ascertain their attitude toward the Municipal Suffrage Bill. Many favorable and some evasive replies were received, while not a few letters were wholly ignored. A suffrage lecture course was arranged in eight cities, from November, 1892, to March, 1893, inclusive, with Miss Anthony and Miss Shaw, president and vice-president-at-large of the National Association and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman of the organization committee, Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby of Washington, D. C., and Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether of Tennessee, as speakers.

The next annual convention was held in the Capitol, Feb. 1-3, 1893. Mrs. Colby had preceded it in January with her address on Wyoming, given in Representative Hall, the facts and figures of which left a strong impression.[332] The speakers addressed the Legislature in behalf of the Municipal Suffrage Bill.

In January, 1894, Miss Anthony lectured at Ann Arbor before the University Association. By the efforts of Mrs. Olivia B. Hall, her hostess and friend of many years, preparations had been made for a mass meeting, in which the State E. S. A. participated, Miss Shaw also being present. It convened in Newberry Hall, January 15-17, with a large attendance and resulted in the organization of the Ann Arbor E. S. A., with one hundred members and Mrs. Hall as president. On the last evening she gave a large reception at her home in honor of the two ladies, which was attended by President and Mrs. George B. Angell and many of the university faculty.

This year's convention assembled at Grand Rapids, May 7-10, with the Rev. Ida C. Hultin of Illinois as the principal speaker.

The meeting of 1895 took place at Saginaw, May 7-9. In the evening Representative George H. Waldo gave a review of his efforts in behalf of the Equal Suffrage Bill, and an enthusiastic indorsement of the measure. This convention had the assistance of Mrs. Chapman Catt, who made the chief address. Mrs. Ketcham retired from the presidency and the association elected Mrs. Knaggs. A new standing committee of five was appointed to secure women physicians and attendants in public institutions for the care of women and girls. After adjournment the Saginaw Political Equality Club was formed.

In 1896 the State convention met in Pontiac, May 19-22. Senator Palmer was the orator of the occasion.

The following July Mrs. Knaggs and Carrie C. Faxon addressed the Democratic State Convention at Bay City, through the courtesy of the Hons. John Donovan and O'Brien J. Atkinson. They were accorded an attentive hearing with much applause, and given a rising vote of thanks, emphasized by an exhortation from the chairman, the Hon. Thomas Barkworth, that the party prepare to concede to the women of the State their political rights.

The annual meeting of 1897 took place in Vermontville, May 11-13. On November 22, 23, a national conference was held in Grand Rapids by Miss Anthony, Miss Shaw and Mrs. Chapman Catt, together with the officers of the State association and many other Michigan women.

In 1898 the convention met in Bay City, May 3-5. On the last evening Mrs. May Wright Sewall of Indiana gave a brilliant address on The Duties of Women Considered as Patriots. Its strong peace sentiments aroused deep interest, as this was at the beginning of the Spanish-American War.

The invitation of the Susan B. Anthony Club of Grand Rapids to the National W. S. A., to hold its annual convention in that city in 1899, having been accepted, the date was fixed for April 27 to May 3, inclusive, and it was decided that the State meeting should immediately follow. This national gathering was full of interest, affording as it did an opportunity of attendance to many women of the State who were unable to go to the convention at Washington.[333] Grand Rapids women were generous in their hospitality, all visitors being entertained free of expense. The executive ability of Mrs. Ketcham was evident from first to last. The State association held a business session May 4, and was addressed by Mr. Blackwell and Mrs. Colby. Mrs. Lenore Starker Bliss was elected president.

An immediate result of the national meeting was the organization of the Anna Shaw Junior Equal Suffrage Club of Grand Rapids, with seventeen youthful members.

In December the American Federation of Labor held its annual convention in Detroit. Miss Anthony addressed it by invitation and urged the members to adopt a resolution asking Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment forbidding the disfranchisement of United States citizens on account of sex. Her speech was most enthusiastically received and the resolution she offered was immediately adopted, and, in the form of a petition which represented nearly 1,000,000 members, duly forwarded to Congress.

Prior to the State convention of 1900 Mrs. Chapman Catt, assisted by Miss Shaw, Miss Harriet May Mills of New York and Mrs. Root, held two days' conventions at Hillsdale, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor, organizing suffrage clubs at the first three places. The annual meeting convened in Detroit, May 15-17, Miss Shaw and Mrs. Chapman Catt giving addresses on consecutive evenings. Mrs. Bliss declining renomination, Mrs. Ketcham was unanimously replaced at the head of the State association.[334]

In July, at the request of Miss Anthony, the Columbia Catholic Summer School held in Detroit extended an invitation for a speech on suffrage. Mrs. Chapman Catt was selected, all arrangements being made by Mrs. Jenkins and others. Father W. J. Dalton, who introduced her, said he hoped to see women voting and filling all offices, even that of police commissioner.

The Greenback and the People's parties have welcomed women as assistants. Prominent among these have been Marian Todd, Martha E. Strickland and Elizabeth Eaglesfield. In 1896 Mrs. Emery and Mrs. Root were placed upon the State Central Committee of the People's Party. The Prohibitionists also have received women as party workers.

Besides those already named, others who have been foremost in every plan to forward equality for women are Giles B. and Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Sara Philleo Skinner, Lila E. Bliss, H. Margaret Downs, Delisle P. Holmes, Wesley Emery, Brent Harding, Smith G. Ketcham and John Wesley Knaggs; among the younger women, Florence Jenkins Spalding and Edith Frances Hall.

LEGISLATIVE ACTION: Prior to 1885 the charters of twelve cities made inoperative the early State law which gave School Suffrage to women. By appealing to the Legislature of that year the charters of Grand Rapids and Bay City were so amended that the right to vote at school meetings was conferred upon women.

The new State association organized in 1884 adopted as its principal plan of work a bill which had been drawn by the Hon. Samuel Fowler and introduced in the Legislature of 1883, to grant Municipal Suffrage to women.

In 1885 this bill was presented in the Senate by John W. Belknap, a strong supporter. Independent of the State association, Theodore G. Houk introduced in the House a joint resolution to strike the word "male" from the constitution. The Joint Judiciary Committees granted a hearing to the friends of woman suffrage in February. The Municipal Bill came to a vote in the Senate on May 21, which resulted in 14 ayes, 15 noes, but was not acted upon in the House. The Houk joint resolution passed the House by 81 ayes, 10 noes, but was not brought up in the Senate.

In 1887 the Municipal Suffrage Bill was again taken up, being introduced simultaneously in both Houses, in the lower by Henry Watson, in the upper by Charles J. Monroe, both staunch friends. A hearing was had before the Senate Judiciary and the House Committee on Elections in March. Miss Frances E. Willard aided the suffragists by a brief address. On April 12 the House committee reported in favor of striking out all after the enacting clause, thus completely obliterating the bill, which report was accepted by a vote of 50 ayes, 33 noes. The Senate Bill was not considered.

In 1889 the Municipal Suffrage Bill was introduced in the Senate by Arthur D. Gilmore and in the House by Dr. James B. F. Curtis. It was referred to the Judiciary Committees, and at their request the hearing was had before the entire Legislature during the annual convention of the State E. S. A. No outside lecturers were invited, because the friends of the measure were met by a strongly-expressed wish that the women of Michigan should speak for themselves. Short speeches were made by May Stocking Knaggs, Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Emily B. Ketcham, Lucy F. Andrews, Elizabeth Eaglesfield, Frances Riddle Stafford, Harriet A. Cook, Mrs. R. M. Kellogg, Phebe B. Whitfield and Mary B. Clay of Kentucky who was then residing in the State. Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby being present, she was invited to make the closing remarks.

Just before this hearing the bevy of officers and speakers passing through the corridor on their way to the House were warned by Joseph Greusel, a friendly journalist, that a circular of protest had been placed upon the desk of each member. This was headed: "Massachusetts Remonstrants against Woman Suffrage, to the Members of the Michigan Legislature;" and contained the familiar array of misrepresentations. With the co-operation of Lucy Stone, a reply was printed immediately after the convention and likewise distributed in the Legislature.

The House Bill remained under the judicious guardianship of Dr. Curtis. The chairman of the legislative committee, Mrs. Knaggs, was in constant attendance and secured valuable information on the practical working of Municipal Suffrage from Gov. Lyman U. Humphrey, Attorney-General Simeon B. Bradford, ex-Attorney-General L. B. Kellogg and Laura M. Johns, all of Kansas. The Hon. Charles B. Waite of Chicago prepared by request an exhaustive legal opinion on The Power of the Legislature of Michigan in Reference to Municipal Suffrage. The Judiciary Committee--John V. B. Goodrich, Russell R. Pealer, Byron S. Waite, Norris J. Brown, Oliver S. Smith, Thomas C. Taylor, James A. Randall--gave a unanimous report in favor of the bill, which included this opinion and the Kansas reports. Senator Thomas W. Palmer, who had been appointed Minister to Spain, went to Lansing on the very eve of leaving this country and, in an address to the joint Houses of the Legislature, made a strong plea for the measure.

As the day fixed for the consideration of the bill approached, the suffrage committee found itself confronted by an arrangement, quietly made by the opponents, to have an address delivered in Representative Hall by a Mrs. Mary Livermore, who had been holding parlor meetings in Detroit for pay and speaking against woman suffrage; and the false report was industriously circulated that this was the great suffragist of like name, who had discarded her lifelong convictions and gone over to the enemy.

The bill was considered May 15, 1889. By the courtesy of J. B. Mulliken, general manager of the D. L. and N. R. R., a special train which carried a large delegation of women was sent from Detroit. Some came from other parts of the State and the societies of Lansing were well represented. The galleries were filled and the floor of the House was lined with interested women. After a largely favorable discussion the vote was taken, resulting in 58 yeas, 34 noes. The bill was immediately dispatched to the Senate. That body lost no time, but at once brought the measure under consideration and after a brief discussion it was defeated by one vote--11 ayes, 12 noes.[335]

That evening Mrs. Livermore gave her belated dissertation and, upon motion, was followed by Adele Hazlitt, who with great courtesy slew her weak arguments.

At this session the charters of East Saginaw and Detroit were amended to give women of those cities the school ballot; the former through the efforts of Representative Rowland Connor.[336]

In 1891 the Municipal Suffrage Bill was again presented to the Legislature, in the House by Samuel Miller and in the Senate by Alfred Milnes, both champions of the measure. The State suffrage convention was in session at the capital February 10-12, and the Legislature gave a joint hearing in Representative Hall to its speakers, all Michigan women. The Senate Bill was taken up March 25, discussed and lost by 14 ayes, 12 noes. It was then tabled and taken up again May 13, receiving 14 ayes, 15 noes. Just prior to this consideration of the bill ninety-five petitions in its favor, representing eighty-eight towns and bearing several thousand signatures, were presented.

This discussion was the most trying of all during the ten years of effort to secure Municipal Suffrage, owing to the character of the chief opponent, Senator Frank Smith, who represented the basest elements of Detroit. Knowing his illiteracy, the reporters had expected much sport by sending his speech to the papers in full, but in the interests of decency they refrained from publishing it. Women came down from the galleries white with anger and disgust, and avowed that if they never had wanted the ballot before they wanted it now. The suffrage committee received many friendly courtesies from Lieut.-Gov. John Strong, besides a substantial gift of money. When asked for the use of the Senate Chamber for one evening of the convention he said: "Certainly; your money helped to build the State House. You have as much right to it as any of us."

In March, 1893, the bill was introduced by Henry Wirt Newkirk in the House and Samuel W. Hopkins in the Senate. Both were lawyers of distinguished ability, and among the most earnest advocates the measure ever had. The State suffrage convention was in session while it was being considered. The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw and the Rev. Caroline Bartlett made addresses before the Legislature, the latter speaking on Woman's Legitimate and Illegitimate Work in Politics. These speeches took the place of the customary committee hearing. The evening before the bill was voted on Miss Anthony addressed the Legislature with her customary acumen and force.

The measure had been made the special order for 2:30 P. M. the next day. The House assembled at 2 o'clock. Following the roll-call the usual order was the presentation of petitions. At this time a member in the rear, at a sufficient distance from the Speaker's desk to give impressiveness to what would follow, rose and presented "A petition from the people of Chippewa County in favor of the Municipal Woman Suffrage Bill." A page sprang forward and taking the document, which was prepared upon paper of an extra size and ornamented with long streamers of red and green ribbons, ran with it to the clerk's desk, and that officer proceeded to read it at length, including a long list of signatures which comprised Patrick O'Shea, Annie Rooney, Spotted Tail, etc. This petition was followed by two others of similar character, bearing Indian names of such significance as the wit of the opposition could invent. After this dignified prelude the House discussed the measure at length, and defeated it by a vote of 38 ayes, 39 noes. A reconsideration was moved and the bill tabled.

This Municipal Suffrage Bill was taken up again in May and passed the House on the 19th with an educational amendment: "Women who are able to read the constitution of Michigan in the English language." The vote was 57 ayes, 25 noes. On May 25 it was considered in the Senate and, after a vigorous battle, was carried by a vote of 18 ayes, 11 noes. Gov. John T. Rich affixed his signature May 27, and apparent victory was won after ten years of effort. Representative Newkirk and Senator Hopkins received the heartfelt gratitude of those for whom they had given their ardent labors, and local societies held jubilee meetings. The newspapers of the State were unanimous in expressing welcome to the new class of voters.

Mary L. Doe started at once upon a tour for the purpose of organizing municipal franchise leagues for the study of city government, and everywhere was met with eager interest. She left a league in every place she visited, men also joining in the plans for study. Thus in conscientious preparation for their new duties, women in the various municipalities passed the summer and early autumn of 1893.

Mayor Pingree of Detroit recognizing the new law, ordered a sufficient additional number of registration books, but Edward H. Kennedy and Henry S. Potter, who were opposed to it, filed an injunction against Hazen S. Pingree and the Common Council to restrain them from this extra purchase. Mary Stuart Coffin and Mary E. Burnett "countered" by filing a mandamus September 30, to compel the election commissioners to provide means for carrying out the law. As these were cases for testing the constitutionality of the law they were taken directly to the Supreme Court. They were set for argument October 10, at 2 P. M., but a case of local interest was allowed to usurp the time till 4 o'clock, one hour only being left for the arguments with three advocates on each side. Two of the women's lawyers, John B. Corliss and Henry A. Haigh, therefore filed briefs and gave their time to the first attorney, Col. John Atkinson.

A decision was rendered October 24, the mandamus denied and the injunction granted, all the judges concurring, on the ground that the Legislature had no authority to create a new class of voters. Those who gave this decision were Chief Justice John W. McGrath and Justices Frank A. Hooker, John D. Long, Claudius B. Grant and Robert M. Montgomery.[337]

In spite of this Waterloo, the names of those men who, through the ten years' struggle, in the various sessions of the Legislature, stood as champions of the political rights of women, are cherished in memory. Besides those already given are Lieut-Gov. Archibald Butters, Senators Edwin G. Fox, James D. Turnbull, Charles H. McGinley and C. J. Brundage, and Representative Fremont G. Chamberlain. In both Houses, session after session, there were many eloquent advocates of woman's equality.

No further efforts have been made by women to secure the suffrage; but in 1895 George H. Waldo, without solicitation, introduced into the House a joint resolution to amend the constitution by striking out the word "male." This was done in fulfilment of a promise to his mother and his wife, when nominated, to do all that he could to secure the enfranchisement of women if elected. Although the officers of the State association did not believe the time to be ripe for the submission of such an amendment, they could not withhold a friendly hand from so ardent and sincere a champion. The resolution was lost by one vote.

This Legislature passed what was known as "the blanket charter act," in which the substitution of "and" for "or" seemed so to affect the right of women to the school ballot in cities of the fourth class as to create a general disturbance. It resulted in an appeal to Attorney-General Fred A. Maynard, who rendered an opinion sustaining the suffrage of women in those cities.

In 1897 the main efforts of the association were directed toward securing a bill to place women on boards of control of the State Asylums for the Insane, and one to make mandatory the appointment of women physicians to take charge of women patients in these asylums and in the Home for the Feeble-Minded. These measures were both lost; but on April 15 Governor Pingree appointed Jane M. Kinney to the Board of Control of the Eastern Michigan Asylum for the Insane at Pontiac for a term of six years, and after twenty days' delay the Senate confirmed the appointment.

Interest was taken also in a bill requiring a police matron in towns of 10,000 inhabitants or more, which this year became law.

In 1899 a bill was again introduced into the Legislature to make mandatory the appointment of women physicians in asylums for the insane, the Industrial Home for Girls, the Home for the Feeble-Minded, the School for Deaf Mutes and the School for the Blind. This measure had now enlisted the interest of the State Federation of Women's Clubs and many other organizations of women, and thousands of petitions were presented. Emma J. Rose led the work of the women's clubs in its behalf. It passed the Legislature and became a law.

LAWS: In 1885 a law was enacted that manufacturers who employ women must furnish seats for them; in 1889 that no girl under fifteen years of age should be employed in factories or stores for a longer period than fifty-four hours in a single week; in 1893 that no woman under twenty-one should be employed in any manufacturing establishment longer than sixty hours in any one week; in 1895 that no woman under twenty-one should be allowed to clean machinery while in motion.[338]

A law enacted in 1897 prohibits the use of indecent, immoral, obscene or insulting language in the presence of any woman or child, with a penalty for its violation.

Dower but not curtesy obtains. The widow is entitled to the life use of one-third of the real estate, and to one-third of the rents, issues and profits of property not conveniently divisible, owned by her husband. She may stay in the dwelling of her husband and receive reasonable support for one year. She is entitled to her apparel and ornaments and those of her husband, $250 worth of his household furniture and $200 worth of his other personal property, which she may select. If he die without a will and there are no children she inherits one-half, and if there are no other heirs the whole of her husband's real estate, and personal property, if the latter, after all debts are paid, does not exceed $1,000. If there is excess of this it is distributed like real estate. This reservation is not made for the widower, but "no individual, under any circumstances, takes any larger interest than the husband in the personal property of his deceased wife."

Where the wife has separate real estate she may sell, mortgage or bequeath it as if she were "sole." The husband can not give full title to his real estate unless the wife joins so as to cut off her dower.

The wife's time, services, earnings and society belong to her husband, but he may give to his wife her services rendered for another, whether in his own household or elsewhere, so that she may recover for them in her own name. Damages for the loss of such services and society, resulting from injuries inflicted upon the wife, belong to the husband and are to be recovered in his own name. Her obligation to render family services for him is co-extensive with his obligation to support her. She can sue in her own name for personal injuries.

Husband and wife can not be partners in business; but of personal property owned by them jointly she is entitled to her share the same as if unmarried; and real estate held by them in fee or in joint tenancy goes entirely to the survivor without probate or other proceedings.

A wife may become a sole trader with the husband's consent, or may form a business partnership with another. She can not become security.

All persons, except infants and married women and persons of unsound mind, may submit differences to arbitration.

The father is legally entitled to the custody of the persons and education of minor children, and may appoint a guardian by will for the minority even of one unborn, but the mother may present objections to the Probate Judge and appeal from his decision.

The husband must provide the necessities of life according to his station and means while the wife remains in his domicile. If she is deserted or non-supported, the Circuit Court of the county shall assign such part of his real or personal estate as it deems necessary for her support, and may enforce the decree by sale of such real estate, which provision holds during their joint lives.

In 1887 the "age of protection" for girls was raised from 10 to 14 years. In 1895 a bill to raise the age from 14 to 18 was introduced in the Senate by Joseph R. McLaughlin. More than 10,000 persons petitioned for its passage, two similar bills having been introduced in the House. A hearing was granted by the Judiciary Committees, at which speeches were made by Senator and Mrs. McLaughlin, Clara A. Avery, Mrs. Andrew Howell, Dr. E. L. Shirley, the aged Lucinda Hinsdale Stone, Melvin A. and Martha Snyder Root. Mrs. Root also addressed the Legislature in Representative Hall. The bill was amended to 17 years and passed in the Senate. The next day, after its friends had dispersed, the vote was reconsidered and the bill amended to 16 years, passing both Houses in this form. The penalty is imprisonment for life, or for any such period as the court shall direct, no minimum penalty being named.

SUFFRAGE: When at the close of the Civil War the States eliminated the word "white" from their constitutions, Michigan in 1867 amended her School Law to conform and also struck out the word "male" as a qualification for the suffrage, and gave tax-paying women a vote for school trustees. In 1881 this law was further amended to include parents or guardians of children of school age. No woman can vote for county or State Superintendents, as these officers are provided for under the constitution. Tax-paying women may also vote on bonds and appropriations for school purposes.

The year of 1888 was marked by a test of the constitutionality of this School Law, which involved the right of the Legislature to confer any form of suffrage whatever upon women. The test was made through the prosecution of the inspectors of election of the city of Flint by Mrs. Eva R. Belles, whose vote was refused at a school election, she being a qualified voter under the State law. Mrs. Belles won her case which was then appealed to the Supreme Court. This affirmed the decision of the lower court and sustained the law.

In May, 1893, the Legislature conferred Municipal Suffrage on women, but in October the Supreme Court decided it unconstitutional on the ground that "the Legislature had no authority to create a new class of voters." (See Legislative Action.) The Court held that it could, however, confer School Suffrage as "the whole primary school system is confided to the Legislature and its officers are not mentioned in the constitution." By this decision women can have no other form of the franchise except by constitutional amendment.

OFFICE HOLDING: Hundreds of women are serving as officers and members of school boards throughout the State, as township school inspectors and as county school commissioners and examiners.

A number are acting as deputy county clerks, and one as deputy clerk of the United States District Court. The latter frequently opens the court. Women serve as notaries public.

For thirty years women have filled the office of State Librarian, the present incumbent being Mary C. Spencer.

Dr. Harriet M. C. Stone has been for several years assistant physician in the Michigan Asylum for the Insane at Kalamazoo.

The State Industrial School for Girls has two women on the Board of Guardians, one of whom, Allaseba M. Bliss, is the president and is serving her second term of four years, having been reappointed by Gov. Hazen S. Pingree.[339] Since 1899 the law requires women physicians in asylums for the insane and other State institutions where women and children are cared for.

In the autumn of 1898 Mrs. Merrie Hoover Abbott, law-partner in the firm of Abbott & Abbott of West Branch, was nominated on the Democratic ticket as prosecuting attorney of Ogemaw County. She was elected and entered upon her duties Jan. 1, 1899. Quo warranto proceedings were instituted by Attorney-General Horace M. Oren to test her right to the office, and October 17 the Supreme Court filed its opinion and entered judgment of ouster. In the meantime Mrs. Abbott had discharged successfully the duties of the position. The opinion was as follows: "Where the constitution in creating a public office is silent in regard to qualification to office, electors only are qualified to fill the same, and since under the constitution women are not electors, they are not eligible to hold such offices. The office of prosecuting attorney is a constitutional office which can only be held by one possessing the qualification of an elector."

From this opinion Justice Joseph B. Moore dissented, making an able argument. In closing he said:

The statutes of this State confer upon woman the right to practice law. She may represent her client in the most important litigation in all the courts, and no one can dispute her right. She may defend a person charged with murder. Can she not prosecute one charged with the larceny of a whip? To say she can not seems illogical.... Individuals may employ her and the courts must recognize her employment. If the people see fit, by electing her to an office the duties of which pertain almost wholly to the practice of the law, to employ her to represent them in their litigation, why should not the courts recognize the employment?... Where the constitution and the statutes are silent as to the qualification for a given office, the people may elect whom they will, if the person so elected is competent to discharge the duties of the office.... None of the duties of prosecuting attorney are of such a character as to preclude one from their performance simply because of sex.

Charles S. Abbott, Allen S. Morse and T. A. E. Weadock were the advocates for Mrs. Abbott, and she also made a strong oral argument in her own behalf. Unfortunately the case was not one which permitted an appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court.

OCCUPATIONS: No profession or occupation is forbidden by law to women.

EDUCATION: All universities and colleges admit women. The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), one of the largest in the country, was among the first to open its doors to them. (1869.) Mrs. Lucinda Hinsdale Stone was a strong factor in securing their admission. In having women on its faculty, it is still in advance of most of those where co-education prevails.

In the public schools there are 3,471 men and 12,093 women teachers. The average monthly salary of the men is $44.48; of the women, $35.35.

* * * * *

Michigan may truly be called the founder of Woman's Clubs, as the first one for purely literary culture of which we have any record was formed in Kalamazoo, in 1852, by Mrs. Stone, to whom the women of the State are deeply indebted in many ways. At present (1902) there are 133 in the General Federation with a membership of about 10,000, and a number are not federated. This State also leads all others in the number of women's club houses, ten of the leading clubs possessing their own. There are two of these in Grand Rapids--the St. Cecilia (musical) costing $53,000, and the Ladies' Literary costing $30,000, both containing fine libraries, large audience rooms and every convenience.

FOOTNOTES:

[330] The History is indebted for this chapter to Mrs. Mary L. Doe and Mrs. May Stocking Knaggs, both of Bay City and former presidents of the State Equal Suffrage Association.

[331] This year strong societies were formed in Detroit, Bay City and Battle Creek. Michigan sent three representatives, Melvin A. and Martha Snyder Root and Emily B. Ketcham, to the New England Woman Suffrage Bazaar held at Boston in December. Mr. and Mrs. Root had spent much time and money canvassing the State to arouse interest and secure contributions for this, and at its close New England gave to Michigan the total proceeds of her sales.

[332] Melvin A. Root presented at this convention a compact digest of The Legal Condition of Girls and Women in Michigan, which was published the following year. It has been used widely, not only in this but in other States, and has proved of inestimable service. A liberal gift of money came from the Hon. Delos A. Blodgett of Grand Rapids, a constant friend.

[333] See Chap. XVIII.

[334] Other officers elected: Vice-president, Clara B. Arthur; corresponding secretary, Alde L. T. Blake; recording secretary, Edith Frances Hall; treasurer, Martha Snyder Root; auditors, Margaret M. Huckins, Frances Ostrander; member national executive committee, Lenore Starker Bliss.

[335] Many petitions in favor of the bill had been sent unsolicited, this not being a part of the plan of work. After the quick defeat in the Senate it was found that the chairman of the committee to which these had been referred had on file the names of 5,502 petitioners (2,469 men, 3,033 women) out of twenty-one senatorial districts. These were in addition to many thousands sent in previous sessions, when petitioning had been a method of work.

[336] Although the Detroit women obtained the change in their law just before the spring election, they made a house to house canvass to secure registration and polled a vote of 2,700 women, electing Sophronia O. C. Parsons to the school board.

[337] It is interesting to note that in Wayne County women registered and attended primary meetings prior to this decision, but their votes were held not to invalidate the nominations, although at least one of the Judges of the Recorder's Court owed his election to being nominated through the votes of women.

[338] In April, 1896, a large number of the philanthropic women of Detroit, including many suffragists, organized the Protective Agency for Women and Children, opening an office in the Chamber of Commerce Building and employing an agent on salary. Since then it has done admirable work and has obtained some good legislation.

[339] Mrs. May Stocking Knaggs has been appointed (1901) a member of the Board of Control of the State Industrial School for Girls, by Gov. Aaron T. Bliss. [Eds.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XLVII. MINNESOTA.[340]

The first agitation of the question of woman suffrage in Minnesota, and the first petitions to the Legislature to grant it, began immediately after the Civil War, through the efforts of Mrs. Sarah Burger Stearns and Mrs. Mary J. Colburn, and the first suffrage societies were formed by these ladies in 1869. The work has continued with more or less regularity up to the present.

From 1883 to 1890 the State Suffrage Association held its annual meetings regularly in one or the other of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul. Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, the Hon. William Dudley Foulke, Mary A. Livermore, the Rev. Ada C. Bowles, Abigail Scott Duniway and other eminent advocates were secured as speakers at different times. Dr. Martha G. Ripley succeeded Mrs. Sarah Burger Stearns as president in 1883, and was re-elected each year until 1889. She was followed by Mrs. Ella M. S. Marble for that year, and Dr. Mary Emery for 1890.

The association contributed toward sending Mrs. Julia B. Nelson to South Dakota to speak in the suffrage campaign of 1890. On November 18, 19, the State convention was held in St. Paul, Mrs. Stearns presiding. Mrs. Nelson was elected president. Among the speakers were Attorney-General Moses E. Clapp, the Reverends Mr. Vail and Mr. Morgan, Mrs. A. T. Anderson, Mrs. Priscilla M. Niles, Mrs. Ella Tremain Whitford and the Rev. Olympia Brown of Wisconsin.

In the autumn of 1891 the convention met at Blue Earth City. This place had not lost the savor of the salt which Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Phoebe W. Couzins had scattered in the vicinity thirteen years before, and the meetings were enthusiastic and well-attended. The Rev. W. K. Weaver was the principal speaker.

It was largely as the superintendent of franchise of the State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which was better organized, that Mrs. Nelson, president of the suffrage association from 1890 to 1896, was able to secure thousands of signatures to the petitions for the franchise which were sent to each Legislature during those years.

The meeting of 1892 took place at Hastings, September 6-8, and was welcomed by the Rev. Lewis Llewellyn. Letters were read from many noted people, and addresses given by the Rev. Mr. Morgan, Mrs. Stearns and several local speakers.

The convention met in Lake City, Aug. 24, 25, 1893, with the usual fine addresses, good music and representative audiences.

In 1894 Woman's Day was celebrated at the State Fair, its managers paying the speakers.

In the spring and autumn of 1895 Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe of Illinois and Mrs. Laura M. Johns of Kansas, national organizers, lectured throughout Minnesota and formed a number of clubs. They also attended the State convention, which was held in the Capitol at St. Paul, September 10, 11. Gov. D. M. Clough was among those who made addresses.

In 1896 the president, Mrs. Nelson, gave one month to lecturing and visiting societies.

In October, 1897, the acting president, Mrs. Concheta Ferris Lutz, made an extended lecture tour. The annual meeting convened at Minneapolis in November, at the same time as a conference of the officers of the National Association. All arrangements were made by Dr. Cora Smith Eaton, Dr. Ripley and Mrs. Niles. The meetings in the First Baptist Church, one of the largest in the city, were very successful. On Sunday evening the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, vice-president-at-large of the National Association, preached in the Universalist Church, and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, lectured in the Wesley M. E. Church, both to crowded houses. The next evening, when Miss Anthony, national president, and the latter spoke, every foot of standing ground was occupied, and on Tuesday, when Miss Shaw gave her lecture on The Fate of Republics, the church was equally well-filled.

Mrs. Nelson, after seven years' service, relinquished the office of president and Dr. Eaton was elected. Professional duties soon made it necessary for her to resign and her place was filled by Mrs. Lutz. Political equality clubs were formed in six different wards of Minneapolis by Dr. Eaton.

The convention of 1898 was called October 4, 5, at Minneapolis, with Mrs. Chapman Catt in attendance. The meetings were held in the G. A. R. Hall, the Masonic Temple and the Lyceum Theater. Mrs. Martha J. Thompson was elected president and Dr. Ethel E. Hurd corresponding secretary.

In 1899 the convention met in the court-house of Albert Lea, October 9, 10. On the first evening Mrs. Chapman Catt was the speaker, her theme being A True Democracy. The Rev. Ida C. Hultin of Illinois lectured on The Crowning Race. Miss Laura A. Gregg and Miss Helen L. Kimber, both of Kansas, national organizers, gave reports of county conventions conducted by them throughout Minnesota, with the assistance of Mrs. Evelyn H. Belden, president of the Iowa Equal Suffrage Association. The records showed ninety-eight suffrage meetings altogether to have been held during the year.

In 1900 the convention took place at Stillwater, October 11, 12. The officers elected were: President, Mrs. Maude C. Stockwell; vice-president, Mrs. Jennie E. Brown; corresponding secretary, Miss Delia O'Malley; recording secretary, Mrs. Maria B. Bryant; treasurer, Dr. Margaret Koch; auditors, Sanford Niles and Mrs. Estelle Way; chairman executive committee, Mrs. Martha J. Thompson.[341]

Judge J. B. and Mrs. Sarah Burger Stearns, C. W. and Mrs. Martha A. Dorsett have been among the oldest and most valued suffrage workers in the State. Miss Martha Scott Anderson, on the staff of the Minneapolis Journal, gives efficient help to the cause. Three presidents of the State W. C. T. U., Mesdames Harriet A. Hobart, Susanna M. D. Fry and Bessie Laythe Scoville have been noted as advocates of equal rights.[342]

LEGISLATIVE ACTION AND LAWS: In February, 1891, at the request of Mrs. Julia B. Nelson, president, and Mrs. A. T. Anderson, chairman of the executive committee of the State association, S. A. Stockwell introduced in the House a bill conferring Municipal Suffrage upon women. Mrs. Nelson spent several weeks at the capital looking after the petitions which came from all parts of the State, interviewing members of the Legislature, distributing literature and trying to get the bill out of the hands of the Committee on Elections, to which it had been referred. After repeated postponements a hearing finally was granted, at which she made a strong plea and showed the good results of woman suffrage in Kansas and Wyoming. The bill was indefinitely postponed in Committee of the Whole, by a vote of 52 yeas, 40 nays.

Among the leaflets placed on the desk of each member was one especially prepared by Mrs. Nelson, entitled Points on Municipal Suffrage. One of its twelve points was this: "If the Legislature has the power to restrict suffrage it certainly has the right to extend it. The Legislature of Minnesota restricted the suffrage which had been given to women by a constitutional amendment, when it granted to the city of St. Paul a charter taking the election of members of the school board entirely out of the hands of women by giving their appointment to the mayor, an officer elected by the votes of men only."[343]

Early in the session of 1893 Mrs. Nelson had a conference with Ignatius Donnelly, leader of the Populists, who was then in the Senate. He was willing to introduce a suffrage bill, but as the Republicans were in the majority it was thought best to have this done by John Day Smith, the leader of that party in the Senate. Mr. Smith consented, with the understanding that Mr. Donnelly should help by championing the bill. "Municipal Suffrage for women with educational qualifications," was all this bill asked for. Mrs. Nelson, Mrs. Anna B. Turley and Senator Donnelly made addresses before the Judiciary Committee at a hearing in the Senate Chamber, with an interested audience present. Mrs. Nelson also gave an evening lecture here on The Road to Freedom.

In place of this bill one to submit an amendment to the voters was substituted. The suffragists were averse to this, but accepted it with the best grace possible, and enthusiastically worked for the new bill to amend the State constitution by striking the word "male" from the article restricting the suffrage. Senators Smith, Donnelly and Edwin E. Lommen spoke for the bill, and it passed the Senate by 31 yeas, 19 nays.

In the House it was persistently delayed by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, George H. Fletcher, and the friends could not get it upon the calendar in time to be reached unless it should be made a special order. Edward T. Young endeavored to have this done, but as there were several hundred other bills to be considered and less than three days of the session left, his motion was lost. On the last night, Mr. Young and H. P. Bjorge made an effort to have the rules suspended and the bill put upon its final passage. The vote on this motion was 54 yeas, 44 nays, but as a two-thirds vote is necessary it was lost. Speaker W. E. Lee voted with the affirmative.[344]

Three Suffrage Bills were introduced into the Legislature of 1895, two in the House and one in the Senate. The first, for an amendment to the State constitution, was offered by O. L. Brevig and was indefinitely postponed. S. T. Littleton presented the second, which was to give women a vote upon all questions pertaining to the liquor traffic. This found favor in the eyes of the W. C. T. U., as did also the County Option Bill of J. F. Jacobson, but both were unsuccessful. George T. Barr introduced a Municipal Suffrage Bill into the Senate, but too late for it to be acted upon.

In 1897 Ignatius Donnelly secured the introduction of a bill to enfranchise taxpaying women. A hearing was given by the Judiciary Committee, at which Mrs. Nelson argued that in simple justice women who pay taxes should have a voice in their expenditure or be exempted from taxation, but the bill was not reported.

This year the State Federation of Clubs secured a resolution to submit an amendment to the electorate in 1898, giving women the privilege of voting for and serving on Library Boards.

In 1899 the Local Council of Women of Minneapolis obtained the Traveling Library Bill.

During this year no petitioning or legislative work was done by the suffragists. The previous legislature had submitted an amendment, which carried, providing that all amendments hereafter must receive a majority of the largest number of votes cast at an election, in order to be adopted. The precedent had been established in 1875 of requiring a vote of the electors on the granting of School Suffrage to women, and in 1898, of Library Suffrage, and it was held that the same would have to be done on granting Municipal or any other form of the franchise.

Dower and curtesy were abolished March 9, 1875. If either husband or wife die without a will, the survivor, if there is issue living, is entitled to the homestead for life and one-third of the rest of the real estate in fee-simple, or by such inferior tenure as the deceased was possessed of, but subject to its just proportion of the debts. If there are no descendants, the entire real estate goes absolutely to the survivor. The personal property follows the same rules. If either husband or wife has wilfully and without just cause deserted and lived separately from the other for the entire year immediately prior to his or her decease, such survivor shall not be entitled to any estate whatever in any of the lands of the deceased.

The estate of a child who dies without a will and leaves neither wife nor children, goes to the father; if he is dead, to the mother.

The wife can not convey or encumber her separate real estate without the joinder of her husband. The husband can sell or mortgage all his real estate without her joinder, but subject to her dower. They are both free agents as to personal property.

If divorce is obtained for the adultery of the wife, her own real estate may be withheld from her, but not so in case of the husband.

In case of divorce, the court decides which parent is more fit for the guardianship of children under fourteen years of age; over fourteen, the child decides. Except when children are given to the mother by decree of court, the father is the legal guardian of their persons and property. He may appoint by will a guardian for a child, born or unborn, to the exclusion of the mother.

The husband must support the family according to his means. Failure to do so used to be considered a misdemeanor but it has recently been made a felony punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary from one to three years unless he give bond for their maintenance. This is likely to be of little effect, however, because of the law of "privileged communications" which makes it impossible for the wife to testify against the husband.

In 1891 the "age of protection" for girls was raised from 10 to 16 years, after thousands of women had petitioned to have it raised to 18. If the child is under 10 years the penalty is imprisonment in the penitentiary for life; between 10 and 14 not less than seven nor more than thirty years; between 14 and 16 not less than one nor more than seven years, or it may be imprisonment in the county jail not less than three months nor more than one year.

SUFFRAGE: An amendment to the constitution was adopted in 1875, giving women a vote on all questions pertaining to the public schools. It being held afterward that this did not enable them to vote for county superintendents, an act for this purpose was passed by the Legislature in 1885. (!) The constitution was further amended by popular vote in 1898, granting to women the franchise for members of Library Boards, and making them eligible to hold any office pertaining to the management of libraries. On as harmless an amendment as this 43,600 men voted in the negative, but 71,704 voted in the affirmative; and it was adopted.

This was probably the last election at which any amendment whatever could have been carried; for, among four submitted in the same year, was one providing that thereafter no amendment could be adopted by merely a majority of those voting upon it, but that it must have a majority of the largest number of votes cast at that election.[345] None ever has been submitted which aroused sufficient interest to receive as large a vote of both affirmative and negative combined as was cast for the highest officer. Therefore in Minnesota it is impossible for women to obtain any further extension of the franchise. Their only hope for the full suffrage lies in the submission of an amendment to the Federal Constitution by Congress to the Legislatures of the various States.

OFFICE HOLDING: An act of 1887 declares that a woman shall retain the same legal existence and legal personality after marriage as before, and shall receive the same protection of all her rights as a woman which her husband does as a man; and for any injury sustained to her reputation, person or property, she shall have the same right to appeal, in her own name alone, to the courts for redress; but this act shall not confer upon the wife the right to vote or hold office, except as is otherwise provided by law. By a constitutional amendment adopted in 1875 women were made eligible to all offices pertaining to the public schools and to public libraries. They have served as State librarians.

Miss Jennie C. Crays was president of the Minneapolis school board for two years. There are forty-three women county superintendents at the present time, each having from 100 to 130 districts to visit. Women have served as clerks and treasurers of school districts.

A law of 1889 gave to women as well as men the powers of constables, sheriffs or police officers, as agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

A law of 1891 enabled women to be appointed deputies in county offices.

Dr. Adele S. Hutchison is a member of the State Medical Board which examines physicians for license to practice. She was appointed by Gov. John Lind and is the first woman to hold such a position. Women can not sit on any other State boards.

There is no law requiring police matrons but they are employed in Minneapolis and St. Paul by the city charters.

The State hospitals for the insane are required by law to have women physicians. The steward's clerk in the State Institute for Defectives is a woman. The State Public School for Dependent and Neglected Children has a matron, a woman agent and a woman clerk. The State Training School, once called the Reform School, has women for agent and secretary.

The State Prison has a matron for the eight women prisoners. There are about 500 men prisoners (1900).

The Bethany Home at Minneapolis was established by women in 1875, and is entirely officered by them. In 1900 it cared for 126 mothers and 226 infants, and had a kindergarten and a training school for nurses. The city hospitals send all their charity obstetrical cases here, and about half of its support comes from the city.

The Northwestern Hospital for Women and Children was founded by women in 1882, and until 1899 was entirely officered and managed by them.

The Maternity Hospital for unfortunate women was founded by Dr. Martha G. Ripley in 1888. In 1899 it cared for 103 mothers and 99 infants.

OCCUPATIONS: No profession or occupation is forbidden to women by law. Women were admitted to the bar in 1877 by act of the Legislature. There are sixty-eight women doctors registered as in actual practice in the State. In Minneapolis there is an active Medical Women's Club of physicians of both schools. Women ministers are filling pulpits of Congregational, Universalist, Christian and Wesleyan Methodist churches, and the superintendent of the State Epworth League is a woman.

Women are especially conspicuous in farming, which is one of the greatest industries of the State.[346]

A number of women own and publish papers, and each of the large metropolitan dailies has one or more women on its staff.

EDUCATION: Women have been admitted to all departments of the State University since its foundation, and there are women professors and assistants in practically every department, including that of Political Science and the College of Engineering and Mechanic Arts. Of the four officers of the Department of Drawing and Industrial Art, three are women. The College of Medicine and Surgery also has women professors in every department, and women are on the faculty of the College of Dentistry.

The State School of Agriculture was established in the fall of 1888. In October, 1897, women were admitted to the regular course of study. In the Academic Department their class work is with the men, but instead of the especial branches of carpentry, blacksmithing and field work, they have sewing, cooking and laundering. They also have a department of home management, home economy, social culture, household art and domestic hygiene, Mrs. Virginia C. Meredith, preceptor.

All the other educational institutions are open to women, and the faculties of the Normal Schools are largely composed of women.

In the public schools there are 2,306 men and 9,811 women teachers. The average monthly salary of the men is $46; of the women, $35.

* * * * *

The State Federation of Women's Clubs, Mrs. Lydia P. Williams, president, is in effect a suffrage kindergarten, many of its members working on committees of education, reciprocity, town and village improvements, household economics, legislation, etc.

In Minneapolis a stock company, capitalized at $80,000, is being formed to erect a club house for the women's societies.

The Local Council of Women of Minneapolis, organized 1892, is one of the strongest associations of the kind in the United States. During the past seven years it has been composed of nearly one hundred different organizations in the city, and now comprises twelve departments: reform and philanthropy, church, temperance, art, music, literature, patriotism, history, education, philosophy, social and civic. Honorary president, Mrs. T. B. Walker, acting president Mrs. A. E. Higbee, and corresponding secretary, Mrs. J. E. Woodford, are largely responsible for the success of the Council. (1900).

The School and Library Association was formed in 1899 at a meeting called by representatives of the Political Equality, the Business Women's, the Medical Women's and the Teachers' Clubs of Minneapolis. Eleven hundred signatures are required for the nomination of a member of the school board, but the women secured over 5,000 names on each petition for their candidates for school and library trustees, the largest one having 5,470. The association sent out dodgers with pictures and brief write-ups of the candidates, and also leaflets explaining to the women how to register and vote. Mrs. A. T. Anderson has been at the head of this work.

Women attend the conventions of the Prohibition and the People's parties as delegates, and are welcome speakers. Miss Eva McDonald (Valesh) was secretary of the Populist Executive Committee. Both Prohibitionists and Populists have passed woman suffrage resolutions in their State conventions. The Federation of Labor and the Grange have done the same.

FOOTNOTES:

[340] The History is indebted for this chapter to Mrs. Julia B. Nelson of Red Wing, who for twenty years has been the rock on which the effort for woman suffrage has been founded in this State. She acknowledges much assistance from Drs. Cora Smith Eaton and Ethel E. Hurd, both of Minneapolis.

[341] Among the officers of the State association at different times have been Mesdames Harriet Armstrong, Sarah C. Brooks, S. P. T. Bryan, E. G. Bickmore, Fxine G. Bonwell, Annie W. Buell, Charlotte Bolles, Jessie Gray Cawley, E. L. Crockett, L. B. Castle and Hannah Egleston, Prof. S. A. Farnsworth, Mesdames Eleanor Fremont, Sarah M. Fletcher, May Dudley Greeley, Mary A. Hudson, Julia Huntington, Dr. Bessie Park Hames, Oliver Jones, Miss Anna M. Jones, Mrs. Charles T. Koehler, Miss Ruth Elise Kellogg, the Rev. George W. Lutz, Mrs. Julia Moore, William B. Reed, Mesdames Susie V. P. Root, Lottie Rowell, Antoinette B. St. Pierre, H. G. Selden, Miss Blanche Segur, Mesdames Martha Adams Thompson, T. F. Thurston, Mr. J. M. Underwood, Miss Emma N. Whitney, Mesdames Belle Wells, Roxana L. Wilson and Mattie B. Whitcomb.

[342] It would be impossible to name all of the men and women, in addition to those already mentioned, who have rendered valuable assistance. Among the more conspicuous are Miss Pearl Benham, Mesdames R. Coons, M. B. Critchett, J. A. Clifford, Edith M. Conant, Lydia H. Clark, Miss A. A. Connor, Mesdames Eliza A. Dutcher, L. F. Ferro, H. E. Gallinger, Doctors Chauncey Hobart, Mary G. Hood, Nettie C. Hall, Mesdames Norton H. Hemiup, Rosa Hazel, Julia A. Hunt, Doctors Phineas A. and Katherine U. Jewell, Mrs. Lucy Jones, Miss Eva Jones, Mesdames Leland, Kirkwood, A. D. Kingsley, V. J. D. Kearney, Frances P. Kimball, M. A. Luly, Viola Fuller Miner, Paul McKinstry, Jennie McSevany, the Rev. Hannah Mullenix, Mesdames E. J. M. Newcomb, Antoinette V. Nicholas, the Reverends Margaret Olmstead, Alice Ruth Palmer, Mesdames Pomeroy, E. A. Russell, D. C. Reed, the Rev. W. W. Satterlee, Mesdames Rebecca Smith, Abigail S. Strong, C. S. Soule, Anna Smallidge, M. A. Van Hoesen, Dr. Mary E. Whetstone, Mesdames L. May Wheeler, Sarah E. Wilson and E. N. Yearley.

[343] Mrs. Nelson published at this time, through financial aid from Mrs. Sarah Burger Stearns, a little paper for gratuitous distribution, called the Equal Rights Herald.

[344] This Legislature of 1893 provided for the adoption of a State Flag, and appointed a committee of women to select an appropriate design. At the request of a few women the Moccasin Blossom was made the State Flower by an act of the same Legislature, which was passed with great celerity.

[345] The vote on this was 69,760 for, and 32,881 against, a total of 102,641; yet the whole number of votes cast in that election of 1898 was 251,250. The amendment itself could not have been adopted if its own provisions had been required!

[346] The woman farmer turns up the soil with a gang-plow and rakes the hay, but not in the primitive fashion of Maud Muller. She is frequently seen "comin' through the rye," the wheat, the barley or the oats, enthroned on a twine-binder. The writer has this day seen a woman seated on a four-horse plow as contentedly as her city cousin might be in an automobile. Among the many plow-girls of Nobles County is Coris Young, a genuine American of Vermont ancestry, who has plowed 120 acres this season, making a record of eighty acres in thirteen days with five horses abreast.

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XLVIII. MISSISSIPPI.[347]

In 1884 the idea of an organization devoted exclusively to the advancement of the "woman's cause" in Mississippi had not assumed tangible form, granting that even the audacious conception had found lodgment in the brain of any person. The nearest approach seems to have been a Woman's Press Club, which sprung into being about this time, but was short-lived, due to the fact, it is charged, that a little leaven of "woman's rights" having crept in, "the whole lump" was threatened.

To the Women's Christian Temperance Union the State is largely indebted for the existence of its Woman Suffrage Association, which was organized in Meridian, May 5, 1897, immediately upon the adjournment of a convention of the State W. C. T. U. The seed sown in 1895 by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, and Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates of Maine, and in 1897 by Miss Ella Harrison of Missouri and Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford of Colorado, now produced a harvest of clubs, and resulted in a roster of friends in twenty-four towns. Mrs. Nellie M. Somerville was elected president of the association, and Mrs. Lily Wilkinson Thompson corresponding secretary.

The first annual convention was held in Greenville, March 29, 30, 1898. The second and third took place at Clarksdale, the former April 5, 6, 1899, and the latter in May, 1900.[348] At this meeting the report of the superintendent of press, Mrs. Butt, showed that twenty-two newspapers had opened their columns to suffrage articles. Mrs. Chapman Catt and Miss Mary G. Hay, national organizer, were present, and the former gave an address to a large and sympathetic assemblage. She was likewise greeted with good audiences at seven other towns, among them Jackson, the capital, where she spoke in the House of Representatives. A work conference was held at Flora in September of this year.

LEGISLATIVE ACTION AND LAWS: The W. S. A. has not attempted any legislative work, other than the one effort made in 1900 to secure a bill providing for a woman physician at the State Hospital for the Insane. This was introduced and championed in the Senate by R. B. Campbell (to whom the association is also indebted for the compilation of a valuable pamphlet on The Legal Status of Mississippi Women). It passed that body almost unanimously, but did not reach the House.

The measure which provided for the State Industrial Institute and College for Women (white) was the conception of Mrs. Annie Coleman Peyton, the bill itself being framed by her brother, Judge S. R. Coleman, a legislator and a leading attorney. It was sent to the Legislature as early as 1877, but was not at that time even considered. Mrs. Peyton continued her agitation in its behalf and succeeded in having it introduced in 1880 and in 1882, but it was twice defeated. By the time the Legislature convened in 1884, however, its author had enlisted the sympathy of so many of the prominent men and women of the State that the bill was passed at that session. Wiley P. Nash and Mac C. Martin were its earnest champions on the floor of the House; while Col. J. L. Power, the present Secretary of State, Major Jonas, of the Aberdeen Examiner, and Mrs. Olive A. Hastings were among the ablest coadjutors of Mrs. Peyton.

In 1900 the suffrage association petitioned Gov. A. H. Longino to appoint one woman on the board of this institution, which is wholly for women, but he refused on the ground that it would be unconstitutional.

In 1880 the Legislature abrogated the Common Law as to its provisions for wives, being a pioneer among the Southern States to take such action. It declared:

The Legislature shall never create any distinction between the rights of men and women to acquire, own, enjoy and dispose of property of all kinds, or their power to contract in reference thereto. Married women are hereby emancipated from all disabilities on account of coverture. But this shall not prevent the Legislature from regulating contracts between husband and wife; nor shall the Legislature be prevented from regulating the sale of homesteads.

The property belonging to the wife at the time of marriage no longer passes to her husband, although it is still largely under his control. He becomes her debtor and is accountable to her for her separate property; and she must have him account to her annually for the income and profits which he may receive from it, otherwise she will be barred. If the wife permit the husband to employ the income or profits of her estate in the maintenance of the family, he will not be liable to her therefor.

Dower and curtesy are abolished. If either husband or wife die without a will, leaving no children nor descendants of any, the entire estate, real and personal, goes to the survivor. But if there are one or more children or descendants by this or by a former marriage, the surviving wife or husband has a child's share of both real and personal estate.

Each has equal rights in making a will, although if the provisions are not satisfactory to the survivor he or she can take under the law, but this can not be done if separate property is owned equal to what would be the inheritable portion of the estate.

If the residence is upon the property of the husband, that is the homestead and exempt from his debts and he is the head of the family. If it is upon the property of the wife, that is the homestead and exempt from her debts, and she is the head of the family. In neither case can it be mortgaged or sold unless both join, but the one owning it may dispose of it by will.

A married woman may qualify as executor or administrator of the estate of a deceased person, and as guardian of the estate of a minor or person of unsound mind.

She may contract, sue and be sued and carry on business in her own name as if unmarried and her earnings belong to her.

The father is the legal guardian of the minor children and by will may appoint a guardian of their property, but he can not deprive the mother of the custody of their persons.

The husband is required by law to support and maintain his family out of his estate and by his services unless the wife sees fit to allow him to use her property for this purpose.

Alimony is allowed to the wife whether the suit for divorce is brought by her or against her, or whether she asks simply for separation; but, even if divorced, unchastity on her part will bar her right to further alimony.

The "age of protection" for girls remains at 10 years. The penalty is death or imprisonment in the penitentiary for life.

The Constitutional Convention of 1890 provided that no Legislature should repeal or impair the above property rights of married women.

This convention was called primarily to change the constitution with reference to the elimination of the negro vote. It was composed of representative men thoroughly alive to what they construed as the best interests of the State. As one way of circumventing the threatened supremacy of this vote, the enfranchisement of women was variously considered. The first amendment for this purpose was submitted by Judge John W. Fewell:

Resolved, That it is a condition necessary to the solution of the franchise problem, that the right to vote shall be secured by proper constitutional enactment to every woman who shall have resided in this State six months, and who shall be 21 years of age or upward, and who shall own, or whose husband, if she have a husband, shall own real estate situate in this State of the clear value of $300 over and above all incumbrances.

The vote of any woman voting in any election shall be cast by some male elector, who shall be thereunto authorized in writing by such woman so entitled to vote; such constitutional amendment not to be so framed as to grant to women the right to hold office.

This was referred to the Committee on Franchise, composed of thirty-five members, but was defeated. The idea was that a great many white women owned property, while very few negro women did, hence the woman vote would furnish a reserve fund which could be called out in an emergency, the author of the measure himself being "not an advocate of female suffrage generally," according to his remarks before the convention. Many, perhaps a majority, at one time favored the scheme, it was said, though comparatively few of the committee recognized the justice of woman's enfranchisement per se.

J. W. Odom offered, among other measures from the "California Alliance" of DeSoto County, a proposition that the right of suffrage be conferred upon women on "certain conditions" not specified. John P. Robinson and D. J. Johnson also submitted sections providing for "female suffrage under certain conditions." Jordan L. Morris offered the following:

The Legislature shall have power to confer the elective franchise on all women who are citizens of the State and of the United States, 21 years of age and upwards, who own, in their own right, over and above all incumbrances, property listed for taxation of the value of $500 or upwards, or who, being widows, own jointly with their own or their husband's children, property of said value listed for taxation; or who are capable of teaching a first-grade public school in this State, as prescribed by law, and who never have been convicted, and shall not thereafter be convicted of any crime or misdemeanor and not pardoned therefor, to such extent and under such restrictions and limitations as it may deem proper to prescribe.

All of these noble efforts resulted in no action whatever to enfranchise women.

SUFFRAGE: Since 1880 a woman as a freeholder, or leaseholder, may vote at a county election, or sign a petition for such an election to be held, to decide as to the adoption or non-adoption of a law permitting stock to run at large. She may also, if a widow and, as such, the head of the family, manifest by ballot her consent or dissent to leasing certain portions of land in the township, known as the "sixteenth sections," which are set apart for school purposes. As a patron of a school, which presupposes her widowhood, she may vote at an election of school trustees, other than in a "separate school district," which practically limits this privilege to women in the country.[349]

As a taxpayer a woman can petition against the issuance of bonds by the municipality in which she resides (except where the proposed issuance is governed and regulated by a charter adopted previous to the code of 1892), but if a special election is ordered she can not vote for or against issuing the bonds.

The Legislature in dealing with the liquor traffic may make the grant of license depend upon a petition therefor signed by men and women, or by women only, or upon any other condition that it may prescribe; and it seems to be equally true that the Legislature may grant to women the right to vote at elections held to determine whether or not local option laws shall be put in force, but it never has done so.

OFFICE HOLDING: The constitution provides that "all qualified electors, and no others, shall be eligible to office."

In the constitutional convention of 1890 Jordan L. Morris offered a resolution "that the Legislature may make women, with such qualifications as may be prescribed, competent to hold the office of county superintendent of schools." This amendment was tabled. J. W. Cutrer submitted a section "making eligible to all offices connected with the public schools, except that of State Superintendent of Public Education, all women of good moral character, twenty-five years or upwards of age," which was not favorably reported. A clause was introduced by W. B. Eskridge making "any white woman twenty-one years old, who has been a bona fide citizen of the State two years before her election, and who shall be of good moral character," eligible to the office of chancery or circuit clerk; and another, that "any white woman, etc., shall be qualified to hold the office of keeper of the Capitol and State librarian."

The last office, as recommended in a separate measure by George G. Dillard, which was adopted, is the only one to which women are specifically eligible, but none has held it.

In some counties the constitution has been liberally interpreted to make women eligible to serve on school boards; this, however, is regulated usually by the judgment of the county superintendent. Women are elected to such positions occasionally in the smaller towns.

The code of 1892 created the text-book committee, whose duty is to adopt a uniform series of books for use in the public schools of a county. An official record is kept of its specific functions, all members being required to "take the oath of office," etc., and thus constituted public officers according to a recent ruling of the Attorney-General. The majority of these committees are women teachers, appointed by the county superintendents, but no provision has been made for their remuneration.

Women can not serve as notaries public.

OCCUPATIONS: No profession or occupation is legally forbidden to women. They are licensed to practice medicine, dentistry and pharmaceutics. It is believed that the statute would be construed to enable them to practice law, but the test has not been made. Several women own and manage newspapers.

EDUCATION: The State University has been open to women for twenty years, and annually graduates a number. Millsaps College, a leading institution for men, has recently admitted a few women to its B. A. course, and this doubtless will become a fixed policy. The Agricultural and Mechanical College and the State Normal School (both colored) are co-educational. Several women hold college professorships.

In the public schools there are 3,645 men and 4,254 women teachers: The average monthly salary of the men is $32.18; of the women, $26.69.

* * * * *

The State Federation of Women's Clubs was organized in 1897 and has a membership of fifteen societies.

Women have never actively participated in public campaigns except in local politics where the liquor question has been the paramount issue. Miss Belle Kearney is a temperance lecturer of national reputation, and a pronounced advocate of woman suffrage.

FOOTNOTES:

[347] The History is indebted for this chapter to Mrs. Hala Hammond Butt of Clarksdale, president of the State Woman Suffrage Association and editor of the Challenge, a county paper.

[348] Officers elected: President, Mrs. Hala Hammond Butt; vice-president, Mrs. Fannie Clark; corresponding secretary, Mrs. Harriet B. Kells; recording secretary, Mrs. Rebecca Roby; treasurer, Miss Mabel Pugh. Other officers have been Miss Belle Kearney and Mesdames Nellie Nugent, Charlotte L. Pitman and Pauline Alston Clark.

[349] Any municipality of 300 or more inhabitants may be declared a "separate school district" by an ordinance of the mayor or board of aldermen if it maintain a free public school at least seven months in each year. Four months is the ordinary public term, the additional three months' school being supported by special taxation. Thus as soon as a woman has to pay a special tax she is deprived of a vote.

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XLIX. MISSOURI.[350]

The movement toward equal suffrage in Missouri must always recognize as its founder Mrs. Virginia L. Minor. She was a thorough believer in the right of woman to the franchise, and at the November election of 1872 offered her own vote under the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. It was refused; she brought suit against the inspectors and carried her case to the Supreme Court of the United States, where it was argued with great ability by her husband, Francis Minor, but an adverse decision was rendered.[351]

The first suffrage association in the State was organized at St. Louis in the winter of 1867. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony lectured under its auspices at Library Hall in the autumn of that year, and a reception was given them in the parlors of the Southern Hotel. For many years meetings were held with more or less regularity, Mrs. Minor was continued as president and some legislative work was attempted.

On Feb. 8, 9, 1892, an interstate woman suffrage convention was held in Kansas City. Mrs. Laura M. Johns, president of the Kansas association, in the chair. Mrs. Minor, Mrs. Beverly Allen and Mrs. Rebecca N. Hazard were made honorary presidents and Mrs. Virginia Hedges was elected president. Addresses were given by Mrs. Clara C. Hoffman, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell of New York and Miss Florence Balgarnie of England. A club was formed in Kansas City with Mrs. Sarah Chandler Coates as president.

During the next few years the State association co-operated with other societies in public and legislative work. Mrs. Minor passed away in 1894, an irreparable loss to the cause of woman suffrage.

In May, 1895, the Mississippi Valley Congress was called at St. Louis under the auspices of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and various other organizations participated. Miss Anthony and Miss Shaw, president and vice-president-at-large of the National Association, stopped on their way to California and made addresses. Just before Miss Anthony began her address, seventy-five children, some of them colored, passed before her and each laid a rose in her lap, in honor of her seventy-five years.

The preceding spring the National Association had sent Mrs. Anna R. Simmons of South Dakota into Missouri to lecture for two months and reunite the scattered forces. A State suffrage convention followed the congress and Mrs. Addie M. Johnson was elected president. At its close a banquet with 200 covers was given in the Mercantile Club Room, with Miss Anthony as the guest of honor. A local society, of nearly one hundred members, was formed in St. Louis. During October Mrs. Simmons again made a tour of the State at the expense of the National Association.

On June 15, 16, 1896, the annual convention took place in St. Louis with delegates present from seventeen clubs. Addresses were made by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, Henry B. Blackwell, editor of the Woman's Journal, Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford of Colorado and others who were in the city trying to obtain some recognition for women from the National Republican Convention. Miss Ella Harrison was made president. Public meetings were called for November 12, 13, in Kansas City, as it was then possible to have the presence of Miss Anthony, Miss Shaw and Mrs. Chapman Catt on their return from the suffrage amendment campaign in California.

In January, 1897, Mrs. Bradford spent three weeks lecturing in the State, and the president devoted a month to this purpose during the autumn. The annual meeting convened in Bethany, December 7-9, Mrs. Johns and Mrs. Hoffman being the principal speakers.

The convention of 1898 was held at St. Joseph, October 17-19, with Miss Anthony and Mrs. Chapman Catt in attendance, and the board of officers was re-elected.

In the fall of 1899 a series of conferences, planned by the national organization committee, was held in twenty counties, being managed by Mrs. Johnson and Miss Ella Moffatt, and addressed by Miss Lena Morrow of Illinois and Mrs. Mary Waldo Calkins. These ended with a State convention at Chillicothe in October.

The annual meeting of 1900 was held in St. Joseph during October, and Mrs. Johnson was elected president.[352]

LEGISLATIVE ACTION AND LAWS: In 1887, through the efforts of Mrs. Julia S. Vincent and Mrs. Isabella R. Slack, a bill was introduced in the Legislature to found a Home for Dependent Children. The bill was amended until when it finally passed it created two penal institutions, one for boys and one for girls.

In 1893 a bill proposing an amendment to the State constitution, conferring Full Suffrage on women, was brought to a vote in the Assembly and received 47 ayes, 69 noes. In 1895 a similar bill was lost in the Assembly.

In 1897, largely through the efforts of Miss Mary Perry, a bill was secured creating a State Board of Charities, two members of which must be women. This was supported by the Philanthropic Federation of Women's Societies, who also presented one for women on school boards, which was not acted upon.

Bills for conferring School Suffrage on women have been presented on several occasions, but never have been considered. One has been secured compelling employers to provide seats for female employes.[353]

Dower and curtesy both obtain. If there are any descendants living, the widow's dower is a life-interest in one-third of the real estate and a child's share of the personal property. If there are no descendants, the widow is entitled to all her real estate which came to the husband through the marriage, and to all the undisposed-of personal property of her own which by her written consent came into his possession, not subject to the payment of his debts; and to one-half of his separate real and personal estate absolutely, and subject to the payment of his debts. If the husband or wife die intestate, leaving neither descendants, father, mother, brothers, sisters, or descendants of brothers or sisters, the entire estate, real and personal, goes to the survivor. If a wife die, leaving no descendants, her widower is entitled to one-half of her separate real and personal estate absolutely, subject to her debts. (Act of 1895.)

In 1889 an attempt was made to give a married woman control of her separate real estate, which up to that time had belonged to the husband. Endless confusion has resulted, as the law applies only to marriages made since that date. To increase the complications a wife may hold real property under three different tenures: An equitable separate estate created by certain technical words in the conveyance, and this she can dispose of without the husband's joining in the deed; a legal separate estate, which she can not convey without his joining; and a common-law estate in fee, of which the husband is entitled to the rents and profits. In either case, if the wife continually permits the husband to appear as the owner and to contract debts on the credit of the property, she is estopped from withholding it from his creditors. There may be also a joint estate which goes to the survivor upon the death of either.

No married woman can act as executor or administrator.

The wife's separate property is liable for debts contracted by the husband for necessaries for the family. If he is drunken and worthless she may have him enjoined from squandering her property. For these causes and for abandonment the court may authorize her to sell her separate property without his signature.

The wife may insure the husband's life, or he may insure it for her, and the insurance can not be claimed by his creditors.

A married woman may sue and be sued, make contracts and carry on business in her own name, and possess her wages. She may recover in her own name for injuries which prevent her from conducting an independent business, but not for those which interfere with the performance of household duties, as her services in the home belong to the husband. She may, however, bring suit in her own name for bodily injuries.

The wife may sue for alienation of her husband's affections and recover, according to a recent Supreme Court decision, "even though they may not be entirely alienated from her and though he may still entertain a sneaking affection for her."

The husband is liable for torts of the wife and for slanders spoken by her, although out of his presence and without his knowledge or consent. (1899.)

The father is the guardian of the persons, estates and education of minor children. At his death the mother is guardian, but if she marries again she loses the guardianship of the property because no married woman can be curator of a minor's estate.

If the husband abandon or fail to support his family, he may be fined and imprisoned and the court may decree their maintenance out of his property. The wife must live where and how the husband shall determine. If she chooses to live elsewhere his obligation to support her ceases. In case of divorce he must support the children, even if their custody is given to the mother.

The "age of protection" for girls was raised from 12 to 14 years in 1889 and to 18 years in 1895. The penalty was reduced, however, and is at present "imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term of two years, or a fine of not less than $100 or more than $500, or imprisonment in the county jail not less than one month nor more than six months, or both such fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court." Between the ages of 14 and 18 years, the girl must be "of previously chaste character."

SUFFRAGE: Women possess no form of suffrage.

OFFICE HOLDING: In 1897 the Supreme Court decided that women may hold any office from which they are not debarred by the constitution of the State. They are now eligible as county clerks, county school commissioners and notaries public, and for various offices up to that of judge of the Supreme Court, which are not provided for by the constitution. It is the opinion of lawyers that they may serve on city school boards, and they have been nominated without objection, but none has been elected. Women are barred, however, from all State offices.

Two women sit on the State Board of Charities, but they can not do so on any other State boards.

A number are now serving as county clerks and county commissioners.

The W. S. A. and the W. C. T. U. have secured the appointment of salaried police matrons from the board of police commissioners in St. Louis, Kansas City and St. Joseph. There are also depot matrons in these cities, and the first two have women guards at the jails and workhouses.

St. Louis has a woman inspector of shops and factories.

OCCUPATIONS: No profession or occupation is legally forbidden to women.

EDUCATION: This was one of the first States in the Union to open its Law and Medical Schools to women. In 1850, when Harriet Hosmer, the sculptor, could not secure admission to any institution in the East where she might study anatomy she was permitted to enter the Missouri Medical College.

In 1869 the Law College of Washington University at St. Louis admitted Miss Phoebe W. Couzins, and she received her degree in 1872.

The State University and all the State institutions of learning are co-educational. The Presbyterian Theological School admits women.

In the public schools there are 5,979 men and 7,803 women teachers. The average monthly salary of the men is $49.40; of the women, $42.40.

FOOTNOTES:

[350] The History is indebted for material for this chapter to Mrs. Addie M. Johnson of St. Louis, president of the State Woman Suffrage Association.

[351] See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 734, and following, or Wallace's Supreme Court Reports, Vol. XXI.

[352] Other officers elected: Vice-president, Mrs. Kate M. Ford; corresponding secretary, Dr. Marie E. Adams; recording secretary, Mrs. Sue DeHaven; treasurer, Mrs. Alice C. Mulkey; auditors, Miss Almira Hayes and Mrs. Ethel B. Harrison; member national executive committee, Mrs. Etta E. M. Weink.

Among those who have held official position since 1894 are: Vice-presidents, Mrs. Cordelia Dobyns, Mrs. Amelie C. Fruchte; corresponding secretaries, Mrs. G. G. R. Wagner, Mrs. Emma P. Jenkins; recording secretary, Mrs. E. Montague Winch; treasurer, Mrs. Juliet Cunningham; auditors, Mrs. Maria I. Johnston, Mrs. Minor Meriwether.

[353] In 1901 women obtained a law and appropriation for a State Home for Feeble-Minded Children.

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