Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/740

 724 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE it left the many educated, tax paying women, the woman in busi- ness, the teachers in government and mission schools, the nurses in the hospitals, the social workers, wholly in the power of men. About 1916 there was incorporated in Porto Rico an organiza- tion called La Liga Feminea de Puerto Rico, which worked energetically for the social uplift of the people and for the political enfranchisement of women. The official organ was La Mujer del Siglo Veinte The Twentieth Century Woman. Early in the spring of 1917 Mrs. Geraldine Maud Froscher, an American living in Porto Rico, appealed to the National Suffrage Associa- tion for financial assistance for a campaign preparatory to the introduction of the woman suffrage bill in the Legislature that year. Literature was sent immediately and the association agreed to pay the expenses of Mrs. Froscher, who organized suffrage leagues in all towns of any considerable size, addressed women's clubs, interviewed legislators and distributed literature. In this work she had the able assistance of Mrs. Ana Roque Duprey, the first president of the San Juan Suffrage League, editor of the above paper and later of El Heraldo de la Mujcr The IVomans Herald, with Mrs. Froscher as the American editor. In August, 1917, at the first session of the new Legislature, a bill was introduced in the Lower House to give women the right to hold office but without the right to vote and one to give them equal rights. Later two more bills were introduced but none was passed. As Porto Rico is an unincorporated Territory of the United States, its women were not enfranchised by the Federal Suffrage Amendment in 1920. At three consecutive sessions of the Legislative Assembly a petition for woman suffrage has been presented.