Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/695

636 resolved in favor of that measure as a necessity for the furtherance of their cause.

On March 31, 1880, Judith Ellen Foster, of Clinton, made an able and eloquent argument before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, at Washington, on Senator Logan's proposition to constitute the revenue on alcoholic liquors a national educational fund. At a meeting of the State Union held in 1883, resolutions were passed, declaring woman's efforts in temperance of no avail, until with ballots in their own hands, they could coin their ideas and sympathies into law, and that henceforward they would labor to secure that power, that would speedily make their prayers and tears of some avail. This action gave a new impetus to the suffrage movement. At the State convention, Mrs. Jane Amy M'Kinney was appointed Superintendent of Franchise. Circulars were issued advising the Unions to make suffrage a part of their local work, and the advice was promptly followed in many sections of the State. At the election on the prohibitory amendment, June 29, 1882, women rallied at the polls, and furnished tickets to all whom they could persuade to take them, and this helped to roll up a large vote in favor of the amendment. The laws of Iowa have been comparatively liberal to woman, and with each successive codification have been somewhat improved. By the code of 1857, the old right of dower, or life interest in one-third of the real estate of a deceased husband, was made an absolute interest; and this is the law at the present time. Of the personal property, the wife takes one-third if there are children, and one-half if there are no children to inherit. The same rule applies to the husband of a deceased wife. The codes of 1857 and 1860 each provided that the husband could not remove the wife, nor their children, from their homestead without the consent of the wife; and the code of 1875, now in force, changed this only so as to provide that neither shall the wife remove the husband without his consent. Deeds of real estate must be signed by both husband and wife, but no private examination of either has ever been required in Iowa. A husband and wife may deed property directly to each other.

By the code of 1851 the personal property of the wife did not vest at once in the husband, but if left within his control it became liable for his debts, unless she filed a notice with the recorder of deeds, setting forth her claim to the property, with an exact description. And the same rule applied to specific articles of personal property. Married women abandoned by their husbands could be authorized, on proper application to the District Court, to transact business in their own name. The same provisions were substantially reënacted in the code of 1860. Under both codes the husband was entitled to the wages and earnings of his wife, and could sue for them in the courts.

But the code of 1873 made a great advance in recognizing the rights of married women; and it is said the revisers sought, as far as possible, to place the husband and wife on an entire equality as to property rights. By its provisions, a married woman may own, in her own right, real and personal property acquired by descent, gift or purchase; and she may manage, sell, convey, and devise the same by will to the same extent,