Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/940

her sex. The application was granted on the ground that the Act conferring upon women the right to vote for School Commissioner was unconstitutional. The inspectors obeyed the order. Mrs. Gage appealed to the General Term, where the order was affirmed, and then she carried her case to the Court of Appeals. The decision here was in brief that a School Commissioner is a county officer, and that by the State constitution only male citizens may vote for such officers. The decision closed by saying: "A Constitutional Convention may take away the barrier which excludes the claimed right of the appellant, but until that is done we must enforce the law as it stands."^[1]

Thus after twenty years of time, four acts of the Legislature and three decisions of the highest courts, the School Suffrage for women is still confined exclusively to those of the villages and country districts. The law condensed reads as follows:

Every person of full age residing in any school district, etc., who owns or hires real property in such district liable to taxation for school purposes; and every such resident who is the parent of a child who shall have attended the school in said district for a period of at least eight weeks within one year preceding such school meeting; and every such person, not being the parent, who shall have permanently residing with him or her a child of school age, etc.; and every such resident and citizen as aforesaid, who owns any personal property, assessed on the last preceding assessment-roll of the town, exceeding $50 in value, exclusive of such as is exempt from execution, and no other, shall be entitled to vote at any school meeting held in such district, for all school district officers and upon all matters which may be brought before said meeting. No person shall be deemed ineligible to vote at any such school district meeting, by reason of sex, who has one or more of the other qualifications required by this section.^[2]

1. This decision covers many pages with hair-splitting definitions, tracing the laws governing School Commissioners back to 1843, and summing up with the following unintentional satire:   "The Constitution, in Article 2, Section 1, prescribes the qualifications of voters 'for all officers that now are or hereafter may be elected by the people,' and confines the franchise specifically to 'male citizens.' The office of School Commissioner was one thereafter made 'elective by the people,' through the operation of the alternative given by Article 10, Section 2, which provides that 'all officers whose offices may hereafter be created by law shall be elected by the people or appointed as the Legislature may direct.' That is, in such cases, it may choose between election and appointment and in the latter event may dictate the authority and mode of appointment. The Legislature chose that the office should be elective, and, becoming such, it fell within the scope and terms of the constitutional provisions applicable to elections by the people."
2. By the charters of the third class cities of Auburn, Geneva, Hornellsville, Jamestown, Norwich, Union Springs and Watertown women have School Suffrage on the same terms