Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/305

 attorney for the Anti-Suffrage Association. Miss Blackwell usually replied for the petitioners. In recent years the suffragists had influential politicians of both parties to speak at the hearings, thus making woman suffrage a political question.

1901. The State association asked for the Municipal and Presidential franchise and for the submission to the voters of aconstitutional amendment giving full suffrage. At the hearing on the latter, held February 18, the crowd broke all records and members of the committee who came late had to reach their seats by walking on top of the long table. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt was among the speakers. The measure was defeated March II by a vote, including pairs, of 156 to 53. Individuals petitioned for Municipal suffrage for women taxpayers, which was referred to the next Legislature without a roll call.

1902. The association's petition for a constitutional amendment was debated in the House on March 5 and defeated by a vote (including pairs) of 153 to 61. Petitions from individuals for Municipal suffrage for taxpaying women and that women qualified to vote for school committee might vote in the primaries on the nominations for it and a petition of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union that women might vote on licenses, were all rejected, after lively hearings. The AntiSuffrage Association opposed all of them.

The great legislative triumph of 1902 was the passage of the Equal Guardianship bill. Ever since Lucy Stone in 1847 began to urge the amendment of the old law, which gave the father