Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/396

Rh The Portland Press, in a leading editorial on the "Moral Eminence of Maine," says:

Maine has been first in many things. She has taught the world how to struggle with intemperance, and pilgrims come hither from all quarters of the earth to learn the theory and practice of prohibition. She was among the first to practically abolish capital punishment and to give married women their rights in respect to property. She is, perhaps, nearer giving them political rights, also, than any of her sister commonwealths. If Maine should be first among the States to give suffrage to women, she would do more for temperance than a hundred prohibitory laws, and more for civilization and progress than Massachusetts did when she threw the tea into Boston harbor in 1773, or when she sent the first regiment to the relief of Washington in 1861. The leaders of the temperance reform in Maine are fully alive to the necessity of woman suffrage as a means to that end. At the meeting of the State Temperance Association of Maine, in Augusta, recently, Mr. Randall said that "as the woman suffrage convention has adjourned over this afternoon in order to attend the temperance meeting, he would move that when we adjourn it be to Thursday morning, as the work at both conventions is intimately connected. If the women of Maine went to the ballot-box, we should have officers to enforce the law." Mr. Randall's motion was carried, and the temperance convention adjourned.

The Woman Suffrage Association assembled Wednesday, January 29, in Granite Hall, Augusta. There was a very large attendance, a considerable number of those present being members of the legislature. Hon. Joshua Nye presided. He made a few remarks relating to the removal of political disabilities from women, and introduced Mrs. Agnes A. Houghton of Bath, who spoke on the "Turning of the Tide," contending that woman should be elevated socially, politically and morally, enjoying the same rights as man. She was followed by Judge Benjamin Kingsbury, jr., of Portland, who declared himself unequivocally in favor of giving woman the right to vote, and who trusted that she would be accorded this right by the present legislature. More than 1,000 persons were in the audience, and great en-