Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/310

 their ablest advocates to the tribunal which must decide the case, it was the general belief of impartial observers that they would have won a victory. But instead, they called a mass meeting of the public, where excellent speeches were made but a majority of the members who were to decide the fate of the amendment were not present and the bill lacked four votes of a constitutional majority on the Senate roll call. It passed the House by the decisive vote of fifty-eight ayes to thirty-nine nays. Had the suffrage managers taken the advice of the able and experienced legislator, there is little doubt that equal suffrage would have been engrafted upon our State Constitution. The liquor power at that time was in the minority and powerless to manipulate the defeat of woman suffrage as it has ever since done. The advocates of equal suffrage have never ceased to press the reform upon succeeding Legislatures but every saloon in the State stands on guard to defeat a reform which would strike the death knell to its existence.

When the Republican State Convention met in 1874, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert was given a hearing before the committee on resolutions where by argument and eloquence she succeeded in securing the following declaration from the Convention:

Governor Carpenter, in his message to the Sixteenth General Assembly, urged the approval of the suffrage amendment; Matilda Hindman was granted a hearing before the Legislature and Susan B. Anthony made a powerful appeal to the members in a public speech. The measure was, however, defeated in the Senate after having passed the House.

In the face of many discouragements the crusade went