The bill to grant women Municipal Suffrage at once, irrespective of what the expression of opinion in November might be, was then passed to be engrossed, by a vote, including pairs, of 118 yeas, 107 nays. A motion to reconsider was voted down.
On April 5 the bill came up in the Senate. Floor and galleries were crowded and hundreds were turned away. Senator William B. Lawrence of Medford, a distiller, offered as a substitute for the bill a proposal to submit the question to the men at the November election for an expression of opinion as a guide to action by the next Legislature. He said it was absurd to grant women the suffrage first and call for an expression of opinion by the men afterward. The vote on the substitute was a tie, 19 yeas, 19 nays. To relieve the president of the Senate from the necessity of voting Senator John F. Fitzgerald changed his vote, but Senator Butler declined to be so relieved and gave his casting vote against the substitute. The bill for Municipal Suffrage was then defeated by 14 yeas, 24 nays.
The Boston Herald, of April 9, had an editorial entitled Liquor and Woman Suffrage, expressing satisfaction in the defeat of the bill but emphatic disapproval of the corrupt methods used against it in the Senate. A majority of the Senators had promised to vote for it but the Liquor Dealer's Association raised a large sum of money to accomplish its defeat, a persistent lobby worked against it and several Senators changed front. The Herald plainly intimated that the result was due to bribery.
The credit of the unusually good vote in the House in 1893 and '94 was largely due to Representative Alfred S. Roe of Worcester, an able member, highly esteemed and very popular, who worked for the bill with the utmost zeal and perseverance.
There were petitions this year from many different organizations representing a vast aggregate membership. On June 9 a bill to allow women to be no tes public was defeated in the Senate by 10 yeas, 12 nays.
1895. — On January 30 a great hearing was held in old Representatives' Hall at the State House, with floor, aisles and galleries crowded to the utmost capacity. Senator Alpheus M. Eldridge presided and Mrs. Livermore, as president of the State Association, conducted the hearing for the five organizations
