Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/395

 that many of the signatures were obtained by infants incapable at law of properly circulating or certifying to the petition sheets and that a number of circulators named had engaged in a systematic course of fraud and forgery, thereby making invalid all of the names. Attached were twenty pages of exhibits in proof of these charges.

The evidence in Omaha was matched by that in fifty-nine other counties taken by the referee and attorney.

The attorneys enjoined the Secretary of State from putting the referendum on the ballot. Nineteen suffragists appeared as plaintiffs in the case as follows: Edna M. Barkley, Gertrude L. Hardy, Katharine Sumney, Ida Robbins, Grace Richardson, Margaretta Dietrich, Grace M. Wheeler, Ella Brower, Ellen Ackerman, Henrietta Smith, Inez Philbrick, Harriet M. Stewart, Mary Smith Hayward, Mamie Claflin, Margaret T. Sheldon, Alice Howell, Ellen Gere, Eliza Ann Doyle, Katharine McGerr. As the suit had been brought against the Secretary of State the Attorney General appeared for him and was joined by the attorneys of the women's Anti-Suffrage Association. They argued that the plaintiffs were not legally entitled to sue because they were not electors. The court upheld their right. The Secretary of State became convinced that the petition was fraudulent and did not appear in the further litigation. The suffrage forces were prepared with their evidence and wished to proceed at once with the case but all the dilatory tactics possible were used and it was not until the full legal time was about to expire that the opponents were brought to the point on May 17, 1918 Mrs. Draper Smith's account continued:

Inspection of the original petition showed that of 116 petitions secured by A. O. Barclay 68 were in the same handwriting The name of one Omaha business man who had died three months previous to the circulation of the petition was found; another who was killed two months before, and another who had been dead for three years. Witness after witness testified that his name on it was forged.

Several other circulators forged so many names we asked that all their work be thrown out. The hearing developed that forty exsaloon keepers and bartenders had these petitions on the bars in their soft drink places; 831 names were secured by Dick Kennedy, a negro who could neither read nor write. He appeared in court in jail clothes, being under indictment for peddling "dope," and was unable to identify the petitions certified by him. Ten boys, ranging in age from 8 to 15, were circulators. Several men who could not read or