House by the opposing members withdrawing and breaking the quorum.[1] A bill introduced by the Hon. William B. Smith, making it obligatory upon employers to pay wages earned by married women to themselves and not their husbands, became a law at this session.
The Constitutional Convention held in 1890-91 was the field of much labor by the State association. In October a committee consisting of Mrs. Henry, Miss Clay, Mrs. Eugenia B. Farmer, Mrs. Isabella H. Shepard and Mrs. Sarah Clay Bennett went to Frankfort to appeal for clauses in the new constitution empowering the General Assembly to extend Full Suffrage to women; to secure the property rights of wives; and to grant School Suffrage to all women. The importance of their claims was so impressed upon the convention that it appointed a special Committee on Woman's Rights, with one of its most esteemed members, the Hon. Jep. C. Jonson, as chairman, who did all in his power to bring their cause favorably before this body.
On the evening of October 9, in Representatives' Hall, Miss Clay, Mrs. Shepard and Mrs. Bennett addressed an audience composed largely of members, being introduced by Mr. Jonson. Later, Mrs. Henry was. given a hearing before the committee. Her tract appealing for property rights was read before the convention by Mr. Jonson and supplied to each of the 100 members. In addition she supplied them several times a week with leaflets, congressional hearings, etc., and wrote 200 articles for the press on property rights and thirty-one on suffrage.
The five ladies, with Mrs. Sarah Hardin Sawyer and Mrs. Margaret A. Watts, met in Frankfort again on December 8, and obtained hearings before the Committees on Revision of the Constitution, Education and Woman's Rights. Mrs. Henry also addressed the Committee on Elections, who asked that her speech be printed and furnished to each member of the convention.
On December 12 the Hon. W. H. Mackoy, at the request of the suffragists, offered this amendment to the section on elections: "The General Assembly may hereafter extend full or partial suffrage to female citizens of the United States of the age of
- ↑ This bill, drawn up with legal precision and clearness, was practically the one passed four years later (1894), which raised Kentucky's property laws for wives to a just and honorable plane.
