Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/737

 lance of Mrs. Farmer observed and seized the opportunity offered by the revision of city charters, after the adoption of the new constitution, to put in clauses granting full School Suffrage to all women. At her instigation, in 1892, the equal rights associations of Covington, Newport and Lexington, the only second-class cities, petitioned the committee selected to prepare a charter for such cities to insert a clause in the section on education, making women eligible as members of school boards and qualified to vote at all elections of such boards. This was done, and the charter passed the General Assembly in 1894, and was signed by Governor Brown on March 19. The influence of the State association was not sufficient, however, to have School Suffrage put in the charters of cities of the first, third and fourth classes. The Hons. Charles Jacob Bronston, John O. Hodges, William Goebel and Joel Baker did excellent service for this clause.

The changes wrought by liberal legislation and the part the State association had in securing this will be best understood by quotations from a leaflet issued by the State Association:

In 1888 the Kentucky E. R. A. was organized for the purpose of obtaining for women equality with men in educational, industrial, legal and political rights.

We found on the statute books a law which permitted a husband to collect his wife's wages.

We found Kentucky the only State which did not allow a married woman to make a will.

We found that marriage gave to the husband all the wife's personal property which could be reduced to possession, and the use of all her real estate owned at the time or acquired by her after marriage, with power to rent the same and receive the rent.

We found that the common law of curtesy and dower prevailed, whereby on the death of the wife the husband inherited absolutely all her personalty and, when there were children, a life interest in all her real estate; while the wife, when there were children, inherited one-third of her husband's personalty and a life-interest in one-third of his real estate.

I. In 1890 we secured a law which made the wife's wages payable only to herself.

II. From the General Assembly of 1892-93 we secured a law giving a married woman the right to make a will and control her real estate.

III. From the General Assembly of 1894 we secured the present Law for Husband and Wife. The main features of this are:

I. Curtesy and dower are equalized. After the death of either husband or wife, the survivor is given a life estate in one-third of