Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/453

NEW MEXICO 439 passed. The president of the convention, Charles A. Spiess, spoke urgently in Committee of the Whole to save women's eli- gibility to the county superintendency from being eliminated. The clause gave women the right to vote for school trustees, on the issuing of bonds and in the local administration of public schools but not for county or State superintendents. It provided that "if a majority of the qualified voters of any school district shall, not less than thirty days before any school election, present a petition to the county commissioners against woman suffrage in that district it shall be suspended and only renewed by a peti- tion of the majority !" No effort could obtain any larger extension of the franchise to women but the new State constitution gave universal suffrage to men and carefully protected the right to vote of those who could not speak, read or write either the English or Spanish language. It then provided that the suffrage clause could only be amended by having the amendment submitted by a vote of three-fourths of each House of the Legislature. In order to be carried, it must have a three-fourths majority of the highest number voting at a State election and a two-thirds majority of the highest number voting in every county. This was expressly designed to prevent woman suffrage and it destroyed all possi- bility of it until conferred by a Federal Amendment. Among the women who worked for woman suffrage in addi- tion to those mentioned in the chapter were Mesdames Margaret Cartright, S. F. Culberson, George W. Carr, Josie Lockard, J. R. Kinyon, H. F. LaBelle, N. J. Strumquist, Margaret Medler, William J. Barker, Lansing Bloom, C. E. Mason, R. P. Donahoe, Ruth Skeen, John W. Wilson, S. C. Nutter, Catherine Patterson, Minnie Byrd, Howard Huey, Alfred Grunsfeld, Edgar L. Hewett, I. II. Elliot and I. H. Rapp. As all women were fully enfranchised by the Federal Amend- ment a State branch of the National League of Women Voters was formed with Mrs. Gerald Cassidy as chairman.