Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/619

 was appointed from that body, consisting of Alice M. A. Pickler, Superintendent of the Franchise Department, Helen M. Barker and Julia Welch, to appear before the Committee on Suffrage and ask that the word "male" be left out of the qualifications of electors. They were helped by letters to members of the convention. from Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, Susan B. Anthony, Lillie Devereux Blake and others of national reputation.

Seven of the eleven members of the committee were willing to grant this request but there was so much Opposition from the convention, lest the chances for Statehood might-be imperiled, that they compelled a compromise and it was directed that the first Legislature should submit the question to the voters. They did incorporate a clause, however, that women properly qualified should be eligible to any school office and should vote at any election held solely for school purposes. This applied merely to school trustees, as State and county superintendents are elected at general and not special elections.

The constitution was ratified by the voters in 1885, with a provision that "the Legislature should at its first session after the admission of the State into the Union, submit to a vote of the electors at the next general election, the question whether the word 'male' should be stricken from the article of the constitution relating to elections and the right of suffrage."

Congress at that time refused to divide the Territory and thus the question remained in abeyance awaiting Statehood.

In 1889, an enabling act having been passed by Congress, delegates were elected from the different counties to meet in convention at Sioux Falls to prepare for the entrance of South Dakota into Statehood. This convention reaffirmed the constitution adopted in 1885, and again submitted it to the voters who again passed upon it favorably, and the Territory became a State, Nov. 2, 1889.

The first Legislature met at once in Pierre, and although they were required by the constitution to submit an amendment for woman suffrage a vote was taken as to whether this should be done. It stood in the Senate 40 yeas, one nay; absent or not voting, 4; in the House 84 yeas, 9 nays; 21 absent.

On Nov. 11, 1889, Miss Anthony, in response to urgent re-