Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/804

 hundred prominent men. The Woman's Journal, which printed this document on October 19, said:

In the main the protest represents merely money and social position. There are half-a-dozen names on it which it is a pity and a shame to see there. All the rest were to be expected. They are men whose opinion would be of weight on questions of stocks and bonds, but whose opinion on questions of moral reform has only a minus value. Its signers have pilloried themselves for posterity. It is regarded as discourteous to-day to remind President Eliot of Harvard that his father was the only member of Congress from Massachusetts who voted for the Fugitive Slave Law. Forty years hence it will be regarded as cruel to remind the children of these gentlemen [among whom was President Eliot] that their fathers put their names to a protest against equal rights for women.

At first the two anti-suffrage associations, the men's and the women's, co-operated with the suffragists in getting up debates; but no man ever consented to take part in one against suffrage a second time, and toward the end of the campaign it became almost impossible to secure speakers in the negative. Both sides published appeals and counter-appeals and the question was discussed in the press, at public meetings and in social circles to an extent unprecedented in the history of the State. Even the advertisements in the street cars began with the query in large letters, Should Women Vote? in order to attract attention to a particular brand of soap, etc.

During the early part of the canvass the opponents of suffrage circulated pledges for signature by women promising to vote "No" in November, but they soon became convinced that in trying to get out a large vote of women against suffrage they had undertaken more than they could accomplish. The Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women supplied in plate form to a large number of State papers a series of articles one of which urged women to express themselves against suffrage, warned them that "silence will be cited as consent," and said: "It is our duty in any clear and forcible way that presents itself, to say 'I am not sure that our country should run this enormous new risk.'"

The "antis" have since asserted that in saying "in any clear

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