Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/205

 organized they should at once begin another campaign. The half-century-old resolution was presented to the General Assembly of 1917, and, though there were arguments that the voters had just spoken and that the question ought not again be submitted in so brief a time, the resolution passed by a vote of 35 ayes, 13 noes in the Senate and 85 ayes, 20 noes in the House.

The women continued their work for the second vote, which must be given by the Legislature of 1919. When it convened the discovery was made that the Secretary of State, William S. Allen, did not publish notice of the passage of the resolution the first time, as required by law and it had to be voted on again as if the first time. It passed with but one dissenting voice in each House but the second vote could not be taken till 1921.

A bill for Primary suffrage passed the Lower House in 1919 by 86 ayes, 15 noes, but met with great opposition in the Senate even from men posing as friends of woman suffrage. In a one-party State, as Iowa had been for many years, the dominant party hardly could feel that its supremacy would be threatened by women's votes in the primary, but, as one speaker naively disclosed in the debate, the "machine" might be thrown entirely out of gear. "Why," said he dramatically to the listening Senate, "the Republican party would be in hopeless confusion. Nobody could tell in advance what candidate the women might nominate in the primary!" The bill was postponed by 31 ayes, 17 noes.

The next step was to have a bill introduced to give women a vote for Presidential electors. One of the contributing factors to its success was the ever-increasing number of victories for similar bills in other States, particularly the recent victory in Missouri, which had completed the circle of "white" States surrounding Iowa. One of the features of the debate in the Senate was the reading of a letter from John T. Adams, vice-chairman of the National Republican Committee, heretofore an anti-suffragist, by Senator Eugene Schaffter, the sponsor of the bill, in which he impressed upon the Republicans the political urgency of granting the Presidential franchise to women. After a hard campaign by the Legislative Committee of the State Suffrage Association, with Mrs. Frank W. Dodson of Des Moines as chairman, the Iowa legislators joined the procession and on April 4, 1919.