Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/668

 for suffrage for certain city, county and township officers and for Presidential electors, were introduced by him but failed to pass.

In the special session of 1898 only such matters could be considered as were named by Gov. John R. Tanner in calling it. The State association petitioned him to include woman suffrage in the list, but he did not grant the request. One of the subjects named was taxation. The association prepared a bill to exempt the property of women from taxation until they were allowed to vote. All the metropolitan papers were interested in or amused by this bill, and gave it considerable publicity, but it was not acted upon.

In 1899 the three bills championed by Senator Monroe in 1897 were managed by Senator Isaac H. Hamilton. He forced two of them to a vote, but neither received a majority.

During all this time Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, a practicing lawyer of Chicago, auditor of the National Association and former president of the State E. S. A., was the very efficient legislative superintendent. She pressed the bills with a force which almost brought success by its own momentum, and yet by her good judgment and fair methods kept the respect of legislators who were bitterly opposed to her measures.*

Sometimes the hearings on these bills occurred in the Senate Chamber or the House of Representatives. One of the most noteworthy was in 1895, when about twenty women, representing many different localities, societies and nationalities, made clever five-minute speeches.

The State association has sent the Woman's Journal, the Woman's Column and other suffrage literature to members of the Legislature for months at a time. Petitions always have accompanied the bills. Added to those presented in 1899 were resolutions adopted by various Chicago labor organizations of men, representing a membership of 25,000. The petitions of the State association generally have exceeded all those presented for all other measures.

"During these years various suffrage bills were introduced by other organizations. The school board of Winnetka had one to give women a right to vote on all matters relating to schools; the W. C. T. U. one for a constitutional amendment; and members of the Legislature occasionally on their own responsibility introduced bills.