Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/995

 months in South Carolina this year at her own expense. . Half of the time was spent in Columbia, assisting Mrs. Young and others in the effort to have an amendment giving suffrage to taxpaying women incorporated in the new constitution then being framed. They had hearings before two committees in September, and presented their arguments to the entire Constitutional Convention in the State House, with a large number of citizens present. The amendment failed by a vote of 26 yeas, 121 nays.

President D. B. Johnston, of the Girls' Industrial and Normal College, and John J. McMahan, State superintendent of instruction, have done much to advance the educational status of women, and both believe in perfect equality of rights. Among other advocates may be mentioned the Hon. Walter Hazard, Dr. William J. Young, McDonald Furman, B. Odell Duncan, George Sirrene, Col. John J. Dargan, Col. Ellison Keith, the Rev. Sidi H. Brown, Col. V. P. Clayton, the Rev. John T. Morrison, Samuel G. Lawton, J. Gordon Coogler and William D. Evans, president of the State Agricultural Society.

Miss Martha Schofield, superintendent of the Colored Industrial School at Aiken, regularly enters a protest against paying taxes without representation. Other women who have been devoted workers in the cause of suffrage are Miss Mary I. Hemphill, editor with her father of the Abbeville Medium; Mesdames Marion Morgan Buckner, Daisy P. Bailey, Florence Durant Evans, Lillian D. Clayton, Gertrude D. Lido, Cora S. Lott, Abbie Christensen, Martha Corley and Mary P. Screven; Dr. Sarah Allen; Misses Claudia G. Tharin, Iva Youmans, Annie Durant, Kate Lily Blue and Floride Cunningham.

In 1892 Mrs. Virginia Durant Young petitioned the Legislature for her personal enfranchisement, adopting this method of presenting the arguments in a nutshell, and as "news" they were widely published and commented on. At this session Gen. Robert R. Hemphill, a stanch advocate, presented a bill in the Senate to give women the franchise and the right of holding office, and brought it to a vote on December 17; yeas, 14, nays, 21.

In 1895 numerously signed petitions for suffrage were sent to the Legislature by the women of Fairfax, Lexington and Marion.