Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/325

Rh that a female citizen who has paid a State or county tax within two years shall have the right to vote. The town assessor, whose duty it was to inform the women on this point of the law when asked concerning the matter, willfully withheld the desired information, saying he "did not know," though he afterwards said that he did know, but intended to let the women "find out for themselves." This assessor forgot that the women, as legal voters, had a right to ask for this information, and that by virtue of his official position he was legally obliged to answer. In another town two ladies who were property tax-payers were made to pay the two dollars poll-tax, and the record of this still stands on the town books. Some ladies were frightened and paid the tax under protest; others ran the risk. Here is a letter addressed to a lady 83 years of age:

, Dec. 2, 1879. Harriet Hanson: There is a balance of ninety cents due on your poll-tax of 1879, duly assessed upon you. Payment of the same is hereby demanded, and if not paid within fourteen days from this date, with twenty cents for the summons, the collector is required to proceed forthwith to collect the same in manner provided by law. Collector.

Mrs. Hanson paid no attention to the summons, and that was the end of it.

In 1881, under the amended act the poll-tax was reduced to fifty cents, and the property tax-paying women (who are not required to pay a poll-tax) are no longer obliged to make a return of property exempt from taxation, as was required under the original statute. Though some of the disabilities were removed, yet the privileges are no greater; and it is for members of school-committees and for nothing else, that the women of this State can vote. This is hardly worthy to be called "school suffrage"! It is to be regretted that a better test than that of school-committee suffrage, could not have been given to the women of the State, so that the issue of what under the circumstances cannot be called a fair trial of their desire to vote, might be more nearly what the friends of reform had desired.

The first petition to the Massachusetts legislature, asking that women might be allowed to serve on school-boards was presented in 1866 by Samuel E. Sewall of Boston. The same petition was again presented in 1867. About this time Ashfield and Monroe, two of the smallest towns in the State, elected women as members of the school committee. Worcester and Lynn soon