useless to try to obtain any legislative action on woman suffrage, and no further attempts have been made. To influence public sentiment, however, mass meetings addressed by the best speakers were held in the Hall of the House of Representatives during the sessions of 1893, '95, '97 and '99.
In 1897 and 1899 the suffragists made strenuous attempts to secure a bill to amend the Intestate Law, which greatly discriminates against married women, but it was killed in committee.
Owing to a gradual advance in public sentiment laws have been enacted from time to time protecting wage-earning women; also enlarging the property rights of wives, enabling them to act as incorporators for business of profit, and giving them freedom to testify in court against their husbands under some circumstances.
In 1891 a number of influential women decided to form a corporation, with a stock company, for the purpose of building a club house and equipping the same to rent as a business of profit. The charter was refused, because several of the women making application were married. After some delay enough single women were found to take out the letters patent. When incorporated the original number organized the company and built the New Century Club House in Philadelphia, which paid five per cent. to stockholders the first year. One of the members of this board of directors, to save time and trouble, made application to be appointed notary public, but she was refused because the law did not permit a woman to serve. Public attention was thus called to the injustice of these statutes and, after much legislative tinkering, laws were passed in 1893 giving wives the same right as unmarried women to "acquire property, own, possess, control, use, lease, etc." The same year women were made eligible to act as notaries public.
Dower and curtesy both obtain. If there is issue living, the widow is entitled to one-third of the real estate for her life and one-third of the personal property absolutely. If no issue is living, but collateral heirs, the widow is entitled to one-half of the real estate, including the mansion house, for her life, and one-half of the personal estate absolutely. If a wife die intestate, the widower, whether there has been issue born alive or not, has a life interest in all her real estate and all of her personal property
