Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/749

 February 24, in Tulane Hall, before the assembled convention and a large throng of listeners in the galleries, Mrs. Chapman Catt made a strong argument for the enfranchisement of Louislana women.

For many days woman suffrage was seriously considered as a means to the end of securing white supremacy in the State. The following week the Athenæum, the finest lecture hall in New Orleans, was crowded with men and women from all classes of society anxious to hear more on this daily topic of discussion, as presented by Mrs. Chapman Catt, Miss Clay and Miss Frances A. Griffin of Alabama. Seats were reserved for the members of the Constitutional Convention, who responded almost unanimously to the invitation to be present.

Dr. Henry Dickson Bruns, a member of the Suffrage Committee, bent every effort to secure Full Suffrage for women as the only means to effect the reform in political conditions so much desired. The majority report of the committee, however, contained only this clause: "All taxpaying women shall have the right to vote in person or by proxy on all questions of taxation."

While the women were greatly disappointed, this was really a signal victory in so conservative a State.

Those who supposed that women would make practically no use of this scrap of suffrage were soon to be undeceived. New Orleans was at this time a city of 300,000 with absolutely no sewerage system; an inadequate water supply, and what there was of this in the hands of a monopoly; an excellent drainage system plodding along for the want of means at a rate which would have required twenty years to complete it. The return of yellow fever, the city's arch-enemy, after a lapse of eighteen years, created consternation. Senseless quarantines prevailed on all sides; business was paralyzed; property values had fallen; commercial rivals to the right and left were pressing. A crisis was at hand, and all depended on the hygienic regeneration of the city.

The lawful limit of taxation had been reached. One of two ways alone remained—either to grant franchises to private corporations, or for the taxpayers to vote to tax themselves for the necessary improvements. Finally a plan was evolved, where, by a combination with the drainage funds, the great public necessi-