Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/729

729 the women of Chamberlain, of Watertown and a great many of the more important cities in southern Dakota, would be disqualified from voting under these special enactments, even though this bill became a law at this very session. Charters have been created with that provision retained, and they would make this bill abortive and largely inoperative. A still more objectionable feature, and one deliberately inserted, is the clause debarring women from the right to hold office. If the word[Pg 668] "male" had been stricken out of the code, and no other action taken, they would have been eligible, and I believe there is a wide feeling that many offices, particularly those connected with penal and benevolent institutions, could be most appropriately filled with women, but this clause practically forbids their appointment. If women are good enough to vote they are good enough to be voted for. If they are qualified to choose officials, they are qualified to be chosen. I don't say that I would approve this measure were it otherwise worded, but I certainly would not indorse a bill which thus keeps the word of promise to the ear and breaks it to the hope, which deliberately and avowedly debars and disqualifies women while assuming to exalt and honor them. These objections are apart from the abstract right of women to the ballot, but they show how necessary it is to approach such a subject with deliberation. If women are to be enfranchised, let it be done, not as a thirty days' wonder, but as a merited reform resulting from mature reflection, approved by the public conscience and sanctioned by the enlightened judgment of the people. [Signed:], Governor.

An effort was promptly made to carry the measure over the governor's veto, which failed by a vote of 18 to 26.

During the last session of the legislature a large public meeting was held in Bismarck, at which many of the members spoke strongly in favor of the woman suffrage amendment, the chief-justice and a majority of his associates advocating the measure. Mrs. Gage, in a letter from Dakota, said:

An acquaintance of mine, the owner of a green-house, sent each of the members voting "aye" a buttonhole bouquet, a badge of honor which marked our friends for a few hours at least. It is a pertinent fact that, while the opposition insist that women do not want to vote, in a single county of this sparsely settled territory 222 women did vote in the midst of a severe storm. In a series of articles signed "Justice," published in the Bismarck Tribune, we find the following:

The women of Dakota do desire the power to vote. One year ago a majority of the commissioners of Kingsbury county signed a request that at an election to be held March 4, 1884, the women should, with the men, express their wishes by vote upon a specified question of local policy. The women immediately responded, prepared their separate ballot-boxes, placed them in charge of the election officers by the side of the men's boxes upon the same table at De Smet and other towns, and voted all day side by side with the men, casting throughout the county 222 votes. A more orderly election was never known. No self-respect was lost and no woman was lowered in public esteem. Clergymen, lawyers, merchants, farmers, all voted with their wives, the ballots going into different boxes. One thousand men voted in the county. The day was stormy and snow deep on the ground. If 222 women in one county would without previous experience spring forward to vote on a week's notice, is it to be supposed they do not appreciate the right?

2em

Mr. Pickler, who had taken an active part in the discussion on the amendment, received many letters of thanks from the friends of woman suffrage throughout the nation, and made his acknowledgments in the following cordial letter to Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage:

, D. T., April 20, 1885.

Matilda Joslyn Gage, Syracuse, N. Y.:


 * Your kind letter addressed to me on the Woman Suffrage bill, at Bismarck, would have been earlier acknowledged had it not been that I suffered quite a severe illness upon my return from the legislature. I beg to assure you that words of encouragement from such able and distinguished personages as yourself have been highly appreciated in my effort to secure suffrage for women in Dakota. I am half inclined to think that your indication as to a coming political party, with woman suffrage as one plank in its platform, may not be without foundation.