Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/147

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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

GEORGIA 133 to provide some way for the women to vote in the general election, but he said he could not. Then she went to a full meeting of the State Democratic Executive Committee, held September 1 6, but no chance to be heard was given her. The next day she attended a meeting of the Fulton County Commissioners, who declared their willingness but their inability to do anything. She then called on Attorney General R. A. Denny, who advised her to go to the polls and make the effort, saying: "The ipth Amend- ment is above the laws of any State." Women in Georgia, how- ever, were not permitted to vote at the Presidential election two months after they had been enfranchised by this amendment. LEGISLATIVE ACTION. The first request for woman suffrage was put before the Legislature in 1895, the last in 1920, and in the interim every session had this subject before it, with petitions signed by thousands of women, but during the quarter of a century it did not give one scrap of suffrage to the women of the State. From 1895 bills for the following measures were kept continuously before it: Age of protection for girls to be raised from 10 years; co-guardianship of children; prevention of em- ployment of children under 10 or 12 years old in factories ; women on boards of education ; opening of the colleges to women. Year after year these bills were smothered in committees or reported unfavorably or defeated, usually by large majorities. In 1912 a lull was passed enabling women to be notaries public; in 1916 one permitting women to practice law, which the suffragists had worked for since 1899; in 1918 one raising the age of consent . The suffrage association had worked for it twenty-three rs and always asked that the age be 18. In H) another association to further the movement for woman suffrage was formed in Atlanta, the Woman Suffrage _, r ue, and Mrs. Frances Smith Whiteside, who had been from days a member of the old association, was elected president. Whiteside was for thirty years principal of the Ivy Street ol and during the first ten years of the existence of the State -ion she .is the only teacher who dared avow herself a as the very name <>f suffrage v.i< BO <><1i"ii- in the public. Through her family connections and wide acquaintance