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MASSACHUSETTS 2Q5 dropped in. This year about sixty were present. Mrs. Crowley and Mrs. Luce conducted the hearing for the two sides. The petitioners had arranged delegations representing different groups of women mothers, home-makers, leisure women, lawyers, mission and church workers, artists, authors and journalists, doctors and nurses, Socialists, W. C. T. U., the "unrepresented" (widows and single women), business women, trade unions, teachers, social workers, taxpayers, saleswomen, clerks and stenographers and college women. These 1,500 or more marched to the State House from Ford Hall, each group urider its own banner, and presented themselves before the committee in turn, the spokeswoman of each group telling briefly why she, and women like her, wanted the ballot. Then they went over to Ford Hall, where a big rally was held and the main address was made by Mrs. Fanny Garrison Villard. An overflow meeting was held on the State House steps addressed by Edwin D. Mead and others. In order to line up the labor vote in the Legislature, resolutions by different labor unions, signed by their secretaries, were sent to each legislator, under the direction of Mrs. Page. The measure was defeated March 31 by 148 to 47. 1911. For the first time in many years, the Legislative Com- mittee of the State association, Mrs. Crowley, chairman, appeared, before the Resolutions Committee of the political parties to urge the adoption of a suffrage plank. The Democratic party inserted one favoring the submission of the question to the voters; the iblican party ignored it. The legislators were interviewed both at flic State I louse and by representative suffragists within their districts, and they received suffrage literature. The hearing Vbrnarv 23 was unusually successful from a political and publicity standpoint. It was conducted by Mrs. Crowley and was adduced by Mrs. I 'ark and Mrs. Katharine Dexter McConnick : John Sherman Weaver, representing the State branch of the American Federation of Labor, and Henry Abrahams for the ton Central Labor 1'nion. Sylvia Pnnkhurst addressed the committee in a simple and effective v;ty. Two of the opposition essor Sedgwick. The debate itcd and was conducted for the suffragists by prominent Senators and Representatives. Four members spoke in opposi-