Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/712

Rh the adoption of the amendment. The request was complied with, and the editor in a private letter, thanking Mrs. Stearns, said he "had quite forgotten such an amendment had been proposed."

At this last moment the question was, what could be done to secure the largest favorable vote. Finding that it would be legal, the friends throughout the State appealed to the committees of both political parties to have "For the amendment of Article VII. relating to electors—Yes," printed upon all their tickets. This was very generally done, and thereby the most ignorant men were led to vote as they should, with the intelligent, in favor of giving women a voice in the education of the children of the State, while all who were really opposed could scratch the "yes," and substitute a "no." When election day came, November 5, 1875, the amendment was carried by a vote of 24,340 for, to 19,468 against. The following legislature passed the necessary law, and at the spring election of 1876, the women of Minnesota voted for school officers, and in several cases women were elected as directors.

I have given these details because the great wonder has been how the combined forces of ignorance and vice failed to vote down this amendment, as they always have done every other proposition for the extension of suffrage to women in this and every other State where the question has been submitted to a popular vote. I believe our success was largely, if not wholly, attributable to our studied failure to agitate the question, and the affirmative wording of all the tickets of both parties, by which our bitterest opponents forgot the question was to be voted upon, and the ignorant classes who could not, or did not read their ballots, voted unthinkingly for the measure.

In the cities the school officers are elected at the regular municipal elections usually held in the spring, while in the rural districts and smaller villages they are chosen at school meetings in the autumn. In East Minneapolis, Hon. Richard Chute, chairman of the Republican nominating convention, having, without their knowledge, secured the nomination of Mrs. Charlotte O. VanCleve and Mrs. Charlotte S. Winchell