Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/791

718 went on to state the qualifications of voters, namely, that all should be male citizens, with one exception, and that was, that women might vote for school district officers.

Mr. A. K. Yount of Boulder, spoke in favor of the motion to strike out the word "male" in section 1: "That every male person over the age of 21 years, possessing the necessary qualifications, shall be entitled to vote," etc. He called attention to the large number of petitions which had been sent in, asking for this, and to the fact that not a single remonstrance had been received. He believed the essential principles of human freedom were involved in this demand, and he insisted that justice required that women should help to make the laws by which they are governed. The amendment was lost by a vote of 24 to 8.

Mr. Storm offered an amendment that women be permitted to vote for, and hold the office of, county superintendent of schools. This also was lost. The only other section of the report which had any present interest to women, was the one reading:

2. The General Assembly may at any time extend by law the right of suffrage to persons not herein enumerated, but no such law shall take effect or be in force until the same shall have been submitted to a vote of the people, at a general election, and approved by a majority of all the votes cast for and against such law.

After much discussion it was voted that the first General Assembly should provide a law whereby the subject should be submitted to a vote of the electors.

After this the curtain fell, the lights were put out, and all the atmosphere and mise en scène of the drama vanished. It was well known, however, that another season would come, the actors would reäppear, and an "opus" would be given; whether it should turn out a tragedy, or a Miriam's song of deliverance, no one was able to predict. Meantime, the women of Colorado—to change the figure—bivouacked on the battle-field, and sent for reïnforcements against the fall campaign. They held themselves well together, and used their best endeavors to educate public sentiment.

A column in the Denver Rocky Mountain News, a pioneer paper then edited by W. N. Byers, was offered the woman suffrage association, through which to urge our claims. The column was put into the hands of Mrs. Campbell, the wife of E. L. Campbell, of the law firm of Patterson & Campbell of Denver, for editorship. This lady, from whose editorials quotations will be given, was too timid (she herself begs us to say cowardly) to use her name in print, and so translated it into its German equivalent of Schlachtfeld, thus nullifying whatever of weight her own name would have carried in the way of personal and social endorsement of an unpopular cause. Her sister, Mrs. T. M. Patterson, an early and earnest member of the Colorado Suffrage Association, "bore testimony" as courageously and constantly as her environment permitted.

Mrs. Gov. McCook, as previously stated, had been the first woman in Colorado to set the example of a spirited claim to simple political justice for her sex, but she, alas! at the date now reached in our sketch, was dead—in her beautiful youth, in the first flower of her sweet, bright womanhood. Her loss to the cause can best be measured by those who know