Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/836

 bald Butters, Senators Edwin G. Fox, James D. Turnbull, Charles H. McGinley and C. J. Brundage, and Representative Fremont G. Chamberlain. In both Houses, session after session, there were many eloquent advocates of woman's equality.

No further efforts have been made by women to secure the suffrage; but in 1895 George H. Waldo, without solicitation, introduced into the House a joint resolution to amend the constitution by striking out the word "male." This was done in fulfilment of a promise to his mother and his wife, when nominated, to do all that he could to secure the enfranchisement of women if elected. Although the officers of the State association did not believe the time to be ripe for the submission of such an amendment, they could not withhold a friendly hand from so ardent and sincere a champion. The resolution was lost by one vote.

This Legislature passed what was known as "the blanket charter act," in which the substitution of "and" for "or" seemed so to affect the right of women to the school ballot in cities of the fourth class as to create a general disturbance. It resulted in an appeal to Attorney-General Fred A. Maynard, who rendered an opinion sustaining the suffrage of women in those cities.

In 1897 the main efforts of the association were directed toward securing a bill to place women on boards of control of the State Asylums for the Insane, and one to make mandatory the appointment of women physicians to take charge of women patients in these asylums and in the Home for the Feeble-Minded. These measures were both lost; but on April 15 Governor Pingree appointed Jane M. Kinney to the Board of Control of the Eastern Michigan Asylum for the Insane at Pontiac for a term of six years, and after twenty days' delay the Senate confirmed the appointment.

Interest was taken also in a bill requiring a police matron m towns of 10,000 inhabitants or more, which this year became law.

In 1899 a bill was again introduced into the Legislature to make mandatory the appointment of women physicians in asylums for the insane, the Industrial Home for Girls, the Home for the Feeble-Minded, the School for Deaf Mutes and the School for the Blind. This measure had now enlisted the interest of the State Federation of Women's Clubs and many other organizations of