and forcible way that presents itself," they did not mean to include the most obvious way, i. e., by voting "No" when given an opportunity by the Legislature to do so. Later in the campaign they issued a manifesto declaring that they did not urge women to register or vote, and that silence was not to be interpreted as consent. And finally, just before registration closed in Boston and the other cities, when it was clear that the majority of women were not going to register to vote either way, they issued another manifesto urging women not to vote against suffrage!
This was a transparent device to conceal the fewness of their numbers, and they thus stultified all their previous professions, as they had asserted for years that whenever women were given the right to vote on an important question it would be their duty to do so, irrespective of their personal inclinations, and it was in order to save women from this burden that their enfranchisement was opposed. If they could have brought out an overwhelming vote of women against equal suffrage, of course they would have done so. Since they could not, it was their policy to advise women not to express themselves and thus let the few who were strongly opposed be confounded with the mass of those who were indifferent. The Man Suffrage Association, which professed to be working in full harmony with the women's organization, declared in small and inconspicuous type that it did not urge women to take the trouble to register, merely for the sake of expressing themselves on the referendum, but that it did urge those who voted at all to vote "No." It published a circular giving reasons "why women and the friends of women should vote no," and it covered walls and fences from one end of the State to the other with huge placards bearing in enormous letters the words, "Men and Women, Vote No!"
The main object of this association, however, was not to get an expression of opinion from the women (which would weigh little either way) but to influence the Legislature through a large negative vote from the men. Mr. Saunders was reported in an interview in the Boston "Herald" as saying that the women who took the trouble to vote at all would probably vote in favor ten to one (it proved to be twenty-five to one), but that if the men
