Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/311

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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

MASSACHUSETTS 297 legislators who had been prominent opponents by making an active political campaign in their districts. The first was begun at the primaries against State Senator Roger Wolcott of Milton, chairman of the Constitutional Amendments Committee in the preceding Legislature. The women compiled a record of his negative votes on many liberal measures, including suffrage, and spread this record before his constituents. This work was done at the suggestion and under the direction of Mrs. Fitzgerald, who conducted open-air meetings in the district. The effort to defeat his renomination in the primary failed, however, largely through their inexperience. The Legislative Committee at the time con- sisted of Mrs. Crowley, chairman, Mrs. Leonard, Mrs. Park, Mrs. Page, Miss Foley and Mrs. Mary Agnes Mahan and remained substantially the same during the next two or three years, with the addition of Mrs. Marie Burress Currier, Miss Cora Start and Mrs. Evelyn Peverley Coe. Then they made a fight against Mr. Wolcott's election and by a most thorough cam- paign defeated him at the polls and a Democrat was returned from that district for the first time in many years. This year marked the high tide of the Progressive party in Massachusetts. It had put a straight suffrage plank in its plat- form and its members in the Legislature were very helpful. The defeat of Wolcott, the publicity, the increasing vote in the Legis- lature and the general stirring of the suffrage question, had < the opponents to fear that the constitutional amendment would be submitted. Consequently a bill was filed calling for her referendum like the one in 1895 which would have no t after it was taken. The Executive Board of the State iation protested against it but the situation looked extremely dark. Levi 1 1. ( ireenwood, President of the Senate, and Grafton I >. < nulling, Speaker of the House, were bitter opponents of woman suffrage and on the Committee on Constitutional Amend- ment* there was only one avowed friend, Lewis H. Sullivan of The association's Legislative Committee worked noiisly to pledge votes against the bill. A visit to every editor in the city by Mr- Page and Mrs. Crowley enlisted them against it and the numerous editorials that followed were sent day by day to th itors. The bill's support dwindled, and on April 18 VOL. VI