Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/774

 the Hon. William Dudley Foulke and Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace of Indiana. At the Festival Music Hall was crowded to overflowing and Miss Susan B. Anthony was one of the guests of honor.

This year great excitement was aroused among both men and women by a controversy over the historical text-books used in the public schools of Boston. At the request of a priest the school board removed a history which the Catholics regarded as unfair in its statements, and substituted one which many Protestants considered equally unfair. The school vote of women never had risen much above 2,000, and generally had been below that number. This year 25,279 applied to be assessed a poll tax and registered, and 19,490 voted, in one of the worst storms of the season. All the 'Catholic candidates were defeated. The suffrage association kept out of the controversy as a body, but its members as individuals took sides as their personal views dictated.

In 1889 Gov. Oliver Ames, for the third time, recommended women suffrage in his inaugural, saying: "Recent political events have confirmed the opinion I have long held, that if women have sufficient reason to vote they will do so and become an important factor in the settlement of great questions. If we can trust uneducated men to vote we can with greater safety and far more propriety grant the same power to women, who as a rule are as well educated and quite as intelligent as men."

The convention met January 29-31. Among outside speakers were Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick of Kentucky, Prof. William H. Carruth of Kansas, and the Hon. Hamilton Willcox of New York. Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson presided at the May Festival and Mrs. Howe's seventieth birthday was celebrated. Mrs. Laura M. Johns of Kansas, Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell of New York, Mrs. Emily P. Collins of Connecticut, and many from other States were present.

An organizer was kept in the field eight months and a State lecturer two months; summer meetings were held at Swampscott, Hull and Nantasket. Two quarterly conferences took place in Boston between the State officers and representatives from the eighty-nine local leagues. A great Historical Pageant was given under Miss Pond's supervision in May and October, which netted $1,582; the Woman's Journal was sent four months to all the