are in mutiny against Providence because it made them women;" and that "if the ballot were granted to women it would be a burden so crushing that life would be a misery."
This year 315 petitions for suffrage with 21,608 signatures were presented. The remonstrants who set out with the avowed intention of getting more secured about 3,000. A number of persons who signed the anti-suffrage petition in Boston published letters afterwards over their own names and addresses saying that they had signed without reading, upon the assurance of the canvasser employed by the remonstrants that it was a petition to permit women to vote on the question of liquor license.
In the House Municipal Suffrage was discussed March 12, 13, and finally was defeated by 61 yeas, 155 nays. A bill to let women vote on the license question, which had not been asked for by the suffrage association, was voted down without a count.
A law was enacted requiring two women trustees on the board of every State lunatic hospital, and one woman physician in each. Samuel E. Sewall, Frank B. Sanborn, Mr. Blackwell and Miss Mary A. Brigham had been the speakers at the hearing in behalf of this measure. All the other petitions were refused.
1885 — On Municipal Suffrage and the submission of a constitutional amendment a hearing was given February 17. As usual the Green Room was crowded. There were before the committee petitions for suffrage with 16,113 signatures, and petitions against it with 285. The speakers in favor were the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Mrs. Cheney, Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Mr. Bowditch, William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., Miss Eastman, Mrs. Adelaide A. Claflin, Mrs. Abby M. Gannett and Miss Lelia J. Robinson. The opposition was conducted by Mr. Brandeis and the speakers were Judge Francis C. Lowell, Mrs. Gannett Wells, Thomas Weston, Jr., Henry Parkman and the Rev. Brooke Hereford, lately from England, with letters from President L. Clark Seelye of Smith College, Miss Mary E. Dewey and Mr. Sayward. The committee reported in favor of Municipal Suffrage with only one dissenting. The House on May 4 rejected the bill by 61 yeas, 131 nays.
While the women sat in the gallery waiting for the measure to be discussed, the bill proposing to limit the working day for
