Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/318

 From 1902 to 1906 the work was largely confined to the preparing of public opinion for the probable revision of the State constitution. Legislatures refused to submit a woman suffrage amendment to the voters on the plea that a new constitution would soon be in force. It was decided to make an intensive educational campaign, especially among the club women. To this end suffragists served on club committees working for legislative or civic ends, and the rebuffs of the measures urged by them finally resulted in the endorsement of woman suffrage by the State Federation of Women's Clubs with 8,000 members, at Battle Creek in October, 1908.

In 1906 speakers were sent over the State for lectures and debates. Prizes for suffrage essays were offered in high schools with material supplied. At county and State fairs, church bazars, picnics and meetings of various societies, literature was freely distributed. The Woman's Journal was placed in all public libraries and small suffrage tracts kept in interurban waiting rooms and in rest rooms of churches, societies and dry-goods stores. Birthdays of pioneer suffragists were celebrated by special meetings, local clubs always responding to a call with so concrete an object. A committee of members in all parts of the State attended constantly to press work, sending in items of interest concerning the progress of women, educationally and politically, and answering attacks on woman suffrage.

This year the Supreme Court decided that Mrs. Merrie Hoover Abbott, who had been elected prosecuting attorney of Ogemaw county, could not serve because no woman was entitled to hold office. The association used this decision as a practical lesson on the position of women under the present constitution. Finally the Legislature of 1907 arranged for a constitutional convention. The annual convention of the association promptly met the situation by appointing a Constitutional Revision Committee headed by Mrs. May Stocking Knaggs of Bay City, a former president, and each auxiliary was invited to appoint one woman to serve on an advisory committee. The purpose of this committee was to urge upon the convention the omission of the word "male" from the suffrage clause as a qualification for voting.

The Committee on Elective Franchise of the constitutional